Toronto: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation today commended Minister of Finance Greg Sorbara for embarking on a program review of provincial government spending, but noted that this review should have begun earlier in the government's mandate.

"We commend the Minister for this review and hope it will yield significant savings for taxpayers by increasing efficiencies in government," said Ontario Director Tasha Kheiriddin. "Unfortunately, this kind of review should have started earlier. Premier McGuinty already talked about $1.2 billion in Tory waste during last fall's provincial election. The government had been in office a full year and delivered its budget in May. Why is the Finance Minister only taking action now "

Kheiriddin noted that any kind of review must involve cutting the size of the public service. Ontario's public sector employment has now ballooned to the highest level since 1994. The provincial government currently employs over 447,000 people, or one in eight workers in Ontario - up 2.9% since Premier McGuinty took office last October. Simply maintaining this number of employees will add $327 million dollars in additional salary costs to ministerial budgets in 2004.

"The government must find less costly ways to deliver the services Ontarians need. This means contracting out more services to the private sector when they can deliver them more efficiently then unionized government employees," remarked Kheiriddin. "In health care, this course of action has already been recommended by a government-commissioned study, the Hay Report on hospitals. Health care consumes an astounding 43% of the provincial budget and simply flatlining 15 ministries will not get that spending under control."