The lesser of two evils
ALTHOUGH FORD LIKES TO SPOUT RIGHT-WING NOSTRUMS, HE ISN’T A FANATIC
The choice is between the Progressive Conservatives and the New Democrats. Both are running on platforms that don’t add up. Neither will be able to keep its promises.
To say Ontario’s election has been strange doesn’t capture the half of it. Just four months before the vote, the leading party had to dump its leader in a sexual misconduct scandal. The Liberals are so unpopular they’ve already conceded defeat. The next government will be formed by one of two parties that haven’t won an election since the past century. Ontario could be the first province to send millions of voters to the polls, all holding their noses.
The choice is between the Progressive Conservatives and the New Democrats. Both are running on platforms that don’t add up. Neither will be able to keep its promises. Each appeals to specific voter groups with fixed beliefs that pit one part of the province against the other. The question isn’t which is the best of a bad lot? It’s which will do the least damage to the province, hurt fewer people, and have the least harmful impact over the long term?
Of the two, the PCs have the biggest leadership problem. It’s unlikely any premier has ever been less qualified than Doug Ford. He appears to barely understand how government operates, has only the shallowest grasp of major issues, gives every indication of being badly out of his depth and shows no interest in learning. His approach to campaigning is to shout slogans and talk over challengers. He’s a poor debater, a bad speaker and has trouble explaining himself.
His “platform” is a collection of odd offerings with no apparent linkage. He’ll cut taxes, return “buck-a-beer,” be kinder to small business and put slots back at the racetrack. Perhaps his oddest promise is a pledge to cut gasoline taxes by 10 cents a litre, which, by past experience, might last a few weeks before the oil companies make up the gap and prices return to previous levels. He promised a costed platform, but didn’t provide it. His pledge to find $6 billion in “efficiencies” without firing anyone is unconvincing at best. If he actually tries to follow through on his promises, the swollen debt will get worse, not better.
The NDP’s Andrea Horwath is more experienced, more polished and more coherent. But that may not be an advantage. As her party erased the PC lead, it became clear that beneath her pleasant exterior lies a hardedged ideologue devoted to left-wing dogma and with a distinct distrust of the private sector. Her daycare plan stresses that “public childcare dollars should go to notfor-profit and public providers,” because public funds “shouldn’t pad the profits of private companies.”
Why in heaven not? Free enterprise built Canada into a prosperous place. We trust private companies to produce and supply the food we eat. Is food not as important as daycare? Are farmers to be distrusted? Horwath’s rigid creed sees any attempt to make a living outside government auspices as suspicious. Her plan to control rents would eliminate the one means landlords have of keeping up with cost increases. By adding to the long list of limits that already restrict landlords, the NDP would ensure the slow deterioration of rental stock as landlords decline to spend money on maintenance they are unable to recoup. Availability would dry up as developers refuse to build structures certain to lose money. Those who have apartments would be able to stay indefinitely, provided they don’t mind peeling walls and smelly halls, but new arrivals would be out of luck. Too bad for you, young people.
Ford says he won’t fire anyone, but reducing government without eliminating salaries is like boiling an egg without using water. One way or another he’ll be faced with breaking a promise: either he fails to cut spending, or he does so by reducing the wage bill. There is little doubt Ontario could survive quite nicely without maintaining every single subsidy or pointless program the government now provides. Corporate welfare is a rich vein of potential savings; lower taxes in return for fewer business breaks would be a fair trade-off. But by promising the impossible, Ford has made it harder for himself to do the sensible.
Horwath’s pledge to never, ever, use the government’s power to forcibly end a strike ensures union bosses will do their best to test her resolve. Ontario’s teachers are utterly non-partisan in their militance: they’ve fought with every Tory, Liberal and NDP government going back almost 30 years. Horwath maintains such conflicts won’t happen, because sweet reason will be used to avoid disputes in the first place. She might as well also believe babies are delivered by storks.
Ford’s vow to find “efficiencies” could also lead to confrontation. Mike Harris, the last premier to seriously attack spending, remains just this side of cholera in the panoply of public-sector enemies. The difference between their strategies is that the PCs hope to stop the waste of public money, while Horwath aims only to redirect it from Liberal priorities to NDP priorities.
So which is least bad? A major difference between Ford and Horwath is his lack of ideological fervour. Though he likes to spout right-wing nostrums, he isn’t a fanatic: when it became evident Ontarians didn’t like his plan to allow development in the protected green belt around Toronto, he quickly abandoned it. Ditto his ditching of candidate Tanya Granic Allen when her extremist rhetoric became a weight on the campaign.
Not everyone will see such flexibility as an asset. But it’s arguably preferable to the doctrinaire rigidity of Horwath, who seems intent on imposing left-wing dogma, or go broke trying. Ford also is fortunate to have a number of capable figures as potential cabinet members: either Christine Elliott or Vic Fedeli might have made a much more attractive leader, and will be on hand to offer experienced and competent assistance. Caroline Mulroney may not have been ready to lead yet, but her ability and star power are such that the party has been using her to build support outside her own riding.
Horwath’s team, in contrast, is so thin she won’t even talk about a potential cabinet: it would be presumptuous to “disrespect the people of Ontario” by thinking she might win, she says. (Failing to prepare for the role of premier might be even more disrespectful, one might think). Meanwhile, critics have had a happy old time rooting out numerous cranks and oddballs among the NDP team: the woman who hates Christmas and poppies, the guy who carried a “F--- The Police” sign at a 2006 rally, the woman who quoted advice from Adolf Hitler …
Ford has had his own trouble with candidates, without question. Voters can only hope that, with a majority, he’d have the ability to ignore them.
It’s not a great choice, by any means. Personally, I suspect the Tories would at least try to slow the borrowing that is such a threat to the future. Whether they’d succeed is anything but certain. But I doubt the NDP believes bottomless debt is even a real problem.
THE CHOICE IS BETWEEN THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVES AND THE NEW DEMOCRATS.