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Since the overall provincial economy is booming, the report says, with “historically low unemployment,” the government’s been having trouble filling jobs with qualified people. Which sounds like it could be a help to the Tory government — just leave those jobs unfilled! — except that the part of the public sector where they’re having the most difficulty is hospitals.

“In the public sector, the job vacancy rate increased from 1.1 per cent in 2015 to 1.5 per cent in 2017. However, within the public sector, the vacancy rate for hospital jobs has increased more dramatically, rising from 1.9 per cent in 2015 to 2.8 per cent in 2017, suggesting that hospitals may be experiencing increasing difficulty hiring new workers,” the report says. “Given Ontario’s tight labour markets, public sector employers will likely need to continue offering higher wages to compete for available workers.”

The vacancy rate for jobs is higher in the private sector, 3.2 per cent according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, so public-sector work is still desirable. But less so than it used to be.

You can blow out the definition of a public-sector worker in Ontario to cover about 1.3 million people, with pay totalling almost $69 billion — among other things, that means throwing in doctors (and their employees) and nursing homes. Ford’s promised to deal more kindly with doctors, whose relationship with the province was fractured over Liberal efforts to limit their billings; above all, they want more money than they’ve been getting, for the same work. And he’s promised to build 30,000 more nursing-home spaces. So if we use a broader definition, the picture for the government gets worse, not better.

The only way this can work is if Ford really does have gifts he can apply that will make tens of thousands of workers redundant and then can re-sort the provincial workforce so we only have the people we need. Particularly a lot more doctors and nurses and related health workers.

Ford waved all this away throughout the campaign: He’s a businessman so he knows how to make things efficient, next question.

OK, well, let’s see it.

dreevely@postmedia.com

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