Vulnerable Ford must produce economic plan
Being anti-Wynne not good enough as Ontario election enters final stage
When Ontario’s election campaign began earlier this month, it was enough for Tory Leader Doug Ford to be the anti-Wynne.
A good many Ontarians were sick of Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne and ready to support whichever party leader was bestpositioned to deny her another term in government.
In those early days, that leader was Ford. His Progressive Conservatives formed the official opposition and, to many voters, represented the obvious alternative to the Liberals.
The fact Ford hadn’t cobbled together a coherent platform didn’t matter. Nor did his controversial history as a Toronto councillor.
His critics compared him to Donald Trump, but that didn’t matter either. He wasn’t Wynne and that was sufficient.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the June 7 election. The voters discovered in New Democratic Party Leader Andrea Horwath another alternative to Wynne.
What’s more, to so-called progressive voters, Horwath seemed to offer the best of both worlds.
Her party’s platform, with its commitment to pharmacare, child care and denticare was similar to that of Wynne. But Horwath herself was not a member of the discredited governing party.
In effect, she offered voters Liberalism without the Liberals.
For Horwath this is good news. She was clearly chuffed this week that people are paying attention to the NDP - even though the increased scrutiny has revealed a $1.4 billion arithmetical mistake in its platform.
But for Ford it means the easy ride is over. He now has to specify exactly what he would do if elected and explain why his solutions are superior to Horwath’s. He has given some idea of where he wants to go. Like the Liberals and NDP, he is not hung up on balancing the budget and says he would run a deficit in his first year of governing.
His broad economic plans, such as they are, reflect the standard Conservative trinity of tax cuts, spending cuts and deregulation.
He has fleshed out his proposed tax moves, which include a 1.5 percentage point cut in the corporate tax rate, a marginal cut in the small business tax rate, a cut in the personal income tax rate for middle and upper income earners and a reduction in gasoline taxes.
But he has not revealed how he plans to cut $5.6 billion in government spending without affecting jobs.
Nor has he revealed what regulations he would scrap in order to encourage more economic growth.
He says he would kill the Liberal cap and trade system, which is aimed at reducing carbon emissions. But he has not offered any other solution to the problems posed by climate change.
His social policy suggestions are bareboned. He would institute a tax rebate for parents to partially offset child care costs. And he would subsidize dental care for poor seniors.
“Now that public opinion polls show (Andrea) Horwath is a real contender for the premier’s job, more attention will be paid to the NDP platform.”