Tories search for Horwath’s weak spot
Ford, NDP tackling many of the same issues
Let us peer back through the mists of history to a time called A Few Months Ago. Ontarians were telling pollsters they were sick of Kathleen Wynne and her Liberal government, but they nevertheless seemed tolerant of some of their policies: polls found solid support for the $15 minimum wage, expanding rent control and cutting hydro bills by 25 per cent.
In this long, long ago time, the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario was led by a man called Patrick Brown, and he had fashioned a middle-of-the-road platform that seemed tailor-made for this reality: no big cuts, no overturned apple carts, no alarms, no surprises. There was even a carbon tax. Despite mediocre personal polling numbers, Brown seemed ready to ride that platform to victory on June 7.
Much has since occurred. Recent polls suggest Andrea Horwath’s New Democrats are gaining on Doug Ford’s PCs; an Ipsos poll released Tuesday suggests they’re neck and neck. Any number of things could explain this besides policy: as more people better familiarize themselves with Ford, some will be put off. There are astonishing allegations of data theft and mass vote-rigging in multiple PC nomination races, and there’s no good answer Ford can give.
The allegations date from the Brown era, as he says. But if true, their effects live on. Most people vote for their party preference, but if you suspect your local candidate might have rigged his nomination using stolen identities, that could plant a hell of a seed of doubt.
❚ It would make sense on policy, too. The NDP actually specifies what Ford will supposedly cut: 36 hospitals, 28,000 nurses, 780 schools and 28,000 teachers, according to a new campaign website dubbed “Can’t Afford Ford.”
❚ It’s the sort of thing many people would call a “lie” if it were coming from the Tories: Ford promises no cuts, only “efficiencies,” and without a single job lost. But especially with no PC platform available to consult, that will quite rightly strike people as highly suspicious.
Viewed from a mile up, there’s not much difference between the NDP and Liberal platforms. The NDP’s thus offers a natural home for the “sick of the Liberals, but not necessarily their policies” vote.
These are still New Democrats, though. As recent events have helpfully underscored, they are a breed apart, with their own unique hangups, bugbears and obsessions that have made it very difficult for certain kinds of voters (I’ll raise my hand here) to consider them.
Whereas the Liberals distrust the free market, New Democrats sometimes seem to loathe it. Heading into the long weekend, Horwath reminded us of her plan to regulate gasoline prices — not just to end pre-weekend “gouging” (which is to say prices going up in a period of increased demand), but apparently to set regional prices.
“You get to the next destination and, all of a sudden, the gas is, say, five cents cheaper and you feel like you’ve been ripped off because you’ve just paid five cents more 40 kilometres down the highway,” Horwath told reporters.
Yeah, see, I don’t. Because I know that some things — most things; almost everything! — cost more in certain places at certain times than in others. But this is the sort of non-problem NDP governments set out to solve. This is the party whose federal arm put out an angry press release amid skyrocketing cauliflower costs that called the easily explicable situation “bizarre.”
❚ The Tory war room has introduced us to five interesting characters running for the NDP. They are who you would expect: 9/11 Truthers, boycott-divestment-and-sanctions types, peaceniks who won’t wear poppies, an anti-mining zealot.
“Meet the real NDP,” a Tuesday press release from the PCs intoned. Frankly, if that’s all they could find, I’m kind of impressed with the NDP’s vetting process. Ideological parties in particular attract people who passionately believe weird and inconvenient things. Just ask the Ontario Tories about Tanya Granic Allen and Andrew Lawton.
Last week, the Ottawa Citizen’s David Reevely caught the NDP out in a math error, blowing a $1.4-billion hole in their platform’s costing. The Tories might credibly use it as an example of questionable fiscal probity — but Horwath has admitted the error, the Tories haven’t released a platform and Ford is promising to find billions in efficiencies beneath unspecified floorboards at Queen’s Park.
And when it comes to regulating gas prices and other populist NDP idiocies, it’s easy to imagine lots of Tory supporters nodding in agreement. Ford wants people to pay less for gas too, and he’s not exactly an evangelist for laissez-faire capitalism.
“I like having the market dictate,” Ford once said of rent control; when the Liberals publicized it, he promised he wouldn’t take away anyone’s rent control.
The NDP certainly has a ceiling. But whatever that is, at this point it’s difficult to see what the Tories might do to halt their rise toward it. Ford and Horwath are pledging to solve many of the same problems. And while they propose doing so in very different ways, I suspect few Ontarians are partisan or ideological enough to see the future of civilization hanging in the balance.