Tangled

Do you feel safer? Are you better protected than you were a decade ago? In 2004, policing services cost local taxpayers $3 million. This year, Prince Edward County ratepayers will spend more than $4.1 million for these same services—more than a third higher than 2004. Do you feel 37 per cent safer? If not, why not. What are we getting for the additional cost? Does inflation explain it? No. Cost of living? No.

Inflation has hovered around one per cent a year for more than a decade. Granted, the cost of some goods and services have increased— namely energy—but others have declined or remained flat. So the question must be asked again: what are we getting for the additional $1.1 million we are spending in 2014?

Understanding what happens to this money will become a more urgent question next year when the price tag for policing in Prince Edward County jumps to about $6 million, as some forecast. The province appears set to claw back a significant portion of the $1.3 million it provides, in part, to cover policing of its provincial park. Furthermore, municipalities are currently being herded into a new cost-sharing agreement, in which mayors will be pitted against mayors in a bid to deflect the key question: where is the money going? I daresay we don’t ask this question enough—particularly in regard to our public services. My comment today need not be construed as a challenge to policing services in our community—rather, it is merely a symptom of a greater disease.

The bottom line is this: if we feel as safe in 2014 as we did in 2004, why are we spending 37 per cent more for policing, and other, public services? Most of us aren’t earning 37 per cent more.

OPP Detachment Commander Barry Freeburn told a sparsely attended public meeting earlier this year that bureaucracy is part of the problem—observing that it can take up to 14 hours to process an impaired driving charge.

Does that sound right to you? I don’t doubt the detachment commander, but clearly something is broken if he is right. More to the point—are our roads safer when we spend 14 hours processing this charge rather than four? Or two? Freeburn will say he has no choice— that the procedures and process he must administer require 14 hours. It is, then, a systemic problem.

It is vital to the contract we have with government that escalating costs of public services be substantiated by improvements to services or better quality. That linkage, however, has been broken. We no longer demand that rising costs be dependent upon better service. Instead we tend to shrug our shoulders and move on. Or we construct myths to dull the pain.

We accept the notion that rising public services costs will benefit either the overall or local economy. But simply paying people more money does not achieve economic growth when there is no incremental value created. If I dig a hole in my neighbour’s yard and he pays me $100 and then he digs a hole in my yard and I pay him $100—the economic value of the transaction is zero?

Like most folks, I am proud, and feel incredibly fortunate, to live in a safe and charitable community—supported by good education, health care and a sturdy safety net for those less fortunate. That doesn’t absolve me, however, from insisting that our tax dollars be spent well—and that those who seek to reach deeper into our pockets explain clearly and persuasively how this additional funding will add to the quality of life for me or those around me.

We have become complacent, I fear, seemingly helpless to stem the rising costs of government and public services. I offer a few examples.

A horde of bureaucrats from the Liquor Control Board and the Alcohol and Gaming Commission insert themselves daily into the lives and businesses of the County’s wineries, cideries, brewers and distillers. What value are they providing? What benefit do they serve?

At one time, government reasoned that these folks protected consumers and the broader society. Now, it is abundantly clear, they only serve to benefit large multinational competitors—those who have figured out they can make their product in lower regulation jurisdictions and sell it here under the protection of free trade agreements.

Regulations have become so warped and invasive that County entrepreneurs do battle every day against the triple threat of international competition, government bureaucracy and municipal indifference. It is absurd. Yet we continue to fund these regulators and their enablers believing, falsely, they serve us, or our community.

More examples.

The Ministry of Environment is spending millions of taxpayer dollars in Ontario courts fighting with environmentalists, its own adjudicators and others, led by the Prince Edward County Field Naturalists. What benefit or value does this serve our environment?

The Ministry of Natural Resources conspires with developers to devise ways in which to work around concerns about the fate of endangered species. What is the value of this to the birds, animals and habitat the Ministry is responsible to protect?

Have you noticed the number of retirement homes in the County is steadily shrinking? In one of the oldest communities in the country? Does that make sense?

Here again the increased burden of regulation is punishing the small family operators and rewarding large conglomerates. In time, perhaps, we will all be warehoused in our final years in massive gulags on the edge of greater Toronto. Who precisely, is being served by this?

Bureaucracy erodes competitiveness and rewards the powerful and the jurisdictionally agile. We accept this tradeoff when we receive real value or benefit in terms of protection either for our selves or our community. But when we lose sight of these benefits and the ability to control these costs we are no longer protected by regulations, instead, our lives and businesses are dictated by them.

So when a provincial politician pledges to cut 100,000 public sector positions while vowing to create a million more jobs in the private sector— some pundits describe it as a hard turn to the right.

I call it a good start.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca