Dalton Attempts To Implement Unsuccessful "Rae Days"

Dalton McGuinty is toying with the idea of forcing provincial government employees to take time off without pay in an attempt to save money and reduce Ontario’s whopping $25 billion deficit.

Certainly not a novel idea as Bob Rae implemented this very same concept in 1993. Nowadays, I would be surprised if the idea of Dalton Days materializes. Of course, I must assume he would like to be re-elected in 2011. "’No government is going to cast its fate to the wind roughly [two years] before they have to go to the public’, said Hugh Mackenzie, research associate with the left-of-centre Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.”

Unfortunately, Dalton seems to be headed down the same erroneous path as Bob Rae. The first attempt at this concept suggested that unpaid time off was a good alternative to job cuts. Granted the imposing of unpaid holidays on civil servants saved $2 billion; even more of the savings occurred by cutting spending. These cuts saved $4.4 billion, but not without the loss of nearly 11,000 jobs. In addition, Bob Rae raised taxes; an alternative the public never wants to face. The problem is that the reduction in deficit cannot be credited solely from the implementation of the infamous “Rae Days”, so Dalton will have to impose other methods to reduce his deficit.

“Indeed, it was Rae's health-care cutbacks – not those of his Conservative successor Mike Harris – that led to Ontario's chronic nursing shortage.” This risk is one the Ontario government cannot afford to take. The public cannot withstand a slashing of critical services. Hospitals cannot even manage the current influx of H1N1 patients. I would be interested to know how McGuinty expects the public to get more with less.

Furthermore, during Bob Rae’s supremacy, unpaid time off was said to be an effective way to save money. This has been proven to be untrue. “Toronto, for instance, had to pay almost $800,000 to hire replacements for child care workers on unpaid furlough. At a Guelph correctional centre, guards were called in to work overtime at time-and-a-half pay – to cover their own Rae Days.”

Also, McGuinty will indeed be up for a struggle if he chooses to impose unpaid holidays on provincial government employees. “In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that a British Columbia version of Rae Days – in which the legislature overrode existing labour contracts – was unconstitutional.”

Regardless of past blunders, I am certain the McGuinty government can develop more intelligent alternatives to reduce the deficit. For one, he could reconsider full-time kindergarten, but that’s a whole other can of worms that demands separate attention. He could consider freezing wages temporarily rather than cutting essential services. What if McGuinty hired one of those highly paid consultants to examine management positions and trim that fat, rather than continually eliminating critical front line workers?

Besides, the public won’t be the only losers; the feds will miss out come income tax time.

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