With rumors of a spring election in the air, both Mike Harris and Dalton McGuinty are out wooing Ontario's voters. With April's showers comes a deluge of competing statistics pelting us all with bits of information about health care spending in Ontario.

Here is what the Liberals say: $870 million in overall cuts; $775 million spent on firing and rehiring nurses for a $95 million net reduction in spending. Here is what the Tories say: $800 million in overall cuts; $1.5 billion in overall increases; for a $700 million increase in spending.

Now any political debate comes with consequent competing ideas and statistics, but voters can be forgiven for their "emergency ward waiting to happen" dizzy spells given the big differences between the claims of the Tories and the Liberals. And we haven't accounted for the claims of the spin-doctors, pardon the pun, over at Hampton HQ.

But don't reach for the Tylenol just yet, here comes the full-fledged migraine. Gerald Kennedy, Liberal Health critic says that: $400 million was spent firing nurses; $375 million was then spent re-hiring new nurses, so $25 million less has been spent on nurses.

While the Ministry of Health counters and claims that only $100 million was paid out in severance to nurses. Ouch, my head really hurts.

Lost in this entire debate is a focus on outcomes. It's time we stopped measuring our commitment to health care or even worse, the quality of our health care system, by the amount of money we spend. Why don't we focus on outcomes like reducing waiting lines, driving down weighted costs per patient stays and reducing the numbers of readmissions of improperly discharged patients Surely these and other measures are a truer reflection of progress and accomplishment.

But such a reasoned debate seems to be beyond the capability of those that aspire to govern us. Instead, we have a war of election-style ads in the unofficial election campaign. So far the Harris government has spent 90 million taxpayer dollars for partisan advertisements during the last four years. Much of this has been spent on health care information dissemination.

And now the Liberals are countering with their own ads. At least Mr. McGuinty and crew aren't making the taxpayer pay for their politicking efforts like Mr. Harris is. And to his credit, if elected, Dalton McGuinty has also promised to end the practice of taxpayer funded partisan ads.

Someone should tell Mr. Harris and the campaign braintrust that it is the job of the Premier, his cabinet and his caucus to sell Ontario's health care reforms to the public. It is not the job of the public to pay for this selling job.

But even when we get past this issue of the misuse of public funds, we're still no further ahead because of the confusing statistics, claims and counterclaims of the various parties. And it's going to get worse, not better when the nurses' unions and hospital associations weigh into the debate in the coming weeks.

So what are voters to do Who should they believe And how do they sift through all these competing statistics

Well, Ontario taxpayers should ask their respective candidates to focus on outcome measurements. If Joe Candidate or Mary Voteforme can't give you this information on your doorstep or during the local all-candidates debate, regardless of their party affiliation, wish them luck and send them packing.

Voters have a responsibility to educate themselves so that they may indeed cast an informed ballot: their health depends on it!