Ford, Horwath turn their attacks on each other
Few Ontarians had likely heard of Ramsey Hart before Friday, and most will probably soon forget his name.
But the bespectacled foodbank administrator may well represent a major turning point in Ontario’s election.
Doug Ford suggested the NDP candidate in Kingston is an anti-mining “extremist,” as the Progressive Conservative leader turned his sights squarely on the surging New Democrats for the first time this campaign.
Ford repeatedly attacked NDP Leader Andrea Horwath during the leaders’ second televised debate, at one point even predicting a repeat of the deficit-ridden New Democratic government of the early 1990s.
He also chastised Horwath for running Hart as a candidate, citing him as evidence of a party beholden to “downtown Toronto” leftists who are out of touch with the province’s heartland.
“She has a candidate named Ramsey Hart. He’s an extremist, an environmentalist,” said Ford at the event in Parry Sound. “He spent his whole career, his whole career, trying to close down mines. Who does that? Who targets people working at the mines?”
Hart, running in LanarkFrontenac and Kingston, used to work for MiningWatch Canada, a non-profit group that describes its mission as ensuring that mineral development worldwide is “consistent with the goals of sustainable communities and ecological health.”
Ford’s jabs come as recent polls have shown the NDP growing markedly in support, vaulting past the governing Liberals into second place behind the Tories. Surveys suggest the New Democrats have room to expand further, with more respondents picking them as a potential second choice than the other two parties.
Horwath also seemed to pivot Friday from mainly critiquing the flagging Liberals to more directly confronting Ford, questioning his promise of $6 billion in spending reductions without laying off any public-sector workers.
“The last time Mr. Ford’s party was in office, they closed 28 hospitals, they fired 6,000 nurses; seven and a half thousand hospital beds — gone,” she said of the Mike Harris government from 1995 to 2002.
“This time, Mr. Ford is talking about all kinds of cuts, but he’s not being honest with people about what those cuts will look like.”
The debate was organized by a northern municipalities group to address issues specific to the region.
Premier Kathleen Wynne, sounding uncharacteristically subdued, sought to defend her record in the north and again suggested that voters have a stark choice between the Ford Conservatives and her Liberal party.
“This is a really important election,” she said. “This is an election where people in this province are going to be asked to choose between investing more in the people of this province, the care they need … and cutting.”
The early narrative in the campaign for the June 7 election had featured a clash between Ford and Wynne, as each moved their parties further from the centre.
But Horwath has long had the highest personal ratings among the leaders, and now her party may be benefiting from voters’ lack of enthusiasm for Ford or Wynne.
As if he had suddenly recognized the threat from the third party, Ford turned his focus on the New Democrat, suggesting her carbon-taxing plans could lead to $2-alitre gasoline and, at one point, raising the spectre of Bob Rae’s NDP government from 1990 to 1995, which left behind an $11-billion deficit.
“We saw the disaster; once the NDP got in, they destroyed this province in four years, devastated it,” he said. “Taxes were going up, businesses were closing.”
The current NDP leader promoted her party’s detailed platform, which outlines the expected cost of the promises and how they will be paid for, something the Conservatives have yet to release for their platform planks.
“I’m going to be the NDP leader who is going to be honest and transparent about my plan,” said Horwath. “It was costed, it has a fiscal plan that goes with it. Mr. Ford, where’s your plan?”
Much of the debate Friday concerned how to develop mining, with a focus on the years-long delay in opening up the so-called Ring of Fire, a vast deposit of the mineral chromite below James Bay.
The lack of roads to the remote region, First Nations land rights and environmental issues have contributed to slow progress.
Wynne said her government has been trying to open up the region to industry, while keeping other interests in mind, too.
“What we want to do is find the right balance,” she said. “When we talk about important projects like the Ring of Fire, I want to know exactly what the land is like, I want to know where those structures are going to be built … I am determined to get it right for the environment and for your industry.”