By David Zylberberg, PhD Candidate, Department of History, York University
Last week the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services, chaired by Don Drummond, released its much anticipated report. Despite the numerous useful suggestions and rethinking of health-care delivery, this report feels like a missed opportunity. Commissions to fundamentally rethink what services governments provide and how they are delivered do not happen every decade. As such, they are unique opportunities to redesign administrative structures and improve services.
The most famous such commission was the Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services, commissioned by the British government in 1941 and chaired by William Beveridge. The Beveridge Report was released in December 1942 advocating a comprehensive system of social insurance to protect Britons from want, “disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness” (6). Its proposals included a national program of Social Insurance to help poor people, a National Health Care System, Old Age Pensions and benefits for disabled people.
This was done in trying circumstances as the report was commissioned a year after Britain had been nearly invaded and while it continued to be at war against a much larger power with only its former colonies as allies. The Committee deliberated while German tanks advanced through the Soviet Union and its final report was presented during the Battle of Stalingrad, a point when the defeat of its main ally seemed likely and its own invasion possible.
The Beveridge Report’s proposals were implemented between 1945 and 1950, a point in which the British government’s fiscal situation was much worse than Ontario’s currently is. The government owed a massive debt to the United States that was incurred to fund the war, required exports to be one-third larger than imports to meet its debt payments and had converted most of its consumer manufacturing to military needs during the war. Given what the Beveridge Report proposed and Atlee government did, Drummond could have proposed more. Continue reading →