Category: Opinion

By Tony Dean Government responses to Toronto’s summer of gun violence have been sadly fractious. The merits of simplistic, sound-bite, tough-on-crime policies are once again being contrasted with a more sensible mix of ...

By Tony Dean The Progressive Conservatives’ new policy paper on Flexible Labour Markets lobs a few missiles at Ontario’s unions. This is good traditional red meat for Tory voters but does it make for sensible public pol ...

By Tony Dean It has been a tough few months for the provincial government. Mid-July is usually political sleepy time but the government continues to be in firefighting mode. The budget process started well but turned ...

By Tony Dean This is Dalton McGuinty’s ninth year as premier and his toughest by far. Running a minority government was always going to be turbulent and unpredictable but no one could have guessed how the budget proces ...

By Tony Dean Some reflections on the Elliot Lake mall collapse and labour reform, two issues that dominated the deadlines last week: What a tough and emotionally wrenching couple of weeks for the people of Elliot Lake ...

By Tony Dean All jurisdictions in Canada are looking for efficiencies in government spending and at the same time ways to improve public services. Yet we have not seen much recent effort to tackle the duplication of res ...

By Tony Dean We are seeing the unfolding reality of minority government at Queen's Park. It's tough and can be a free-for-all. It is also a new game for everyone involved. This week we unexpectedly saw the NDP voting ...

By Tony Dean Public servants and their managers are focusing a lot these days on finding efficiencies. Governments are asking them to find new and more effective ways of providing public services at a lower cost. We of ...

By Tony Dean I'm continuing to enjoy the Liberal and NDP deal-making on the budget. It's a window, albeit narrow, on what a more representative form of government might look like. NDP supporters are seeing their electi ...

By Tony Dean The departure this month of Jamison Steeve, the Premier's Principal Secretary and Chief of Policy is another big jolt in the political world at Queen's Park. Dalton McGuinty credits Steeve as a driving for ...