For Andrea Horwath, time is running out to make change
Bad luck is said to be transmitted by close proximity to habitual sufferers. Unfortunately, so is COVID.
Andrea Horwath’s statement on Thursday that she tested positive and is obliged to isolate could not have come at a worse time. The NDP is mired in third place in the polls, two weeks before election day, yet she and some of her policies are popular.
There is still everything to play for — NDP support appears to have stagnated but the party is second choice for one-third of Green voters and nearly two-thirds of those leaning toward the Liberals, only 39 per cent of whom are locked in.
Horwath was due to swing through northern Ontario this weekend to remind people which party is promoting policies like free dental care and gas price regulation. Now, she says she’ll be connecting with people “however I can.”
Green Leader Mike Schreiner has also tested positive, so it is entirely possible that all four leaders who took part in the debate in Toronto on Monday night are equally hamstrung. At this stage though, Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford and the Liberals’ Steven Del Duca have tested negative.
It is an unexpected turn in a campaign that, to this point, has been boringly predictable.
In some elections, it becomes clear quite quickly that the voters have decided to kick the incumbent out and are weighing the alternatives. Federally, the 2006 and 2015 elections fell into that category; in Ontario, 2003 and 2018 did too. The current campaign does not have that feel, which makes it difficult for opposition parties to gain any kind of traction.
I met Horwath at a press conference in a backyard in Ottawa, intended to highlight the NDP’S policy on pharmacare.
She said she is not knocking on doors day to day but takes her feedback from her candidates, and they are telling her there is a sense people are looking for something different from the Ford government. She said her candidate in Ottawa West Nepean, Chandra Pasma, just told her that she has three times as many sign locations as she did when she was beaten by just 176 votes by PC candidate Jeremy Roberts in 2018.
Bathed in late spring sunshine, Pasma introduced Horwath as a “great leader who really cares about people.” That sense of empathy is clearly the former Hamilton city councillor’s strong suit — she feels the issues she champions in her gut, not her head.
It has worked for her so far — she is fighting her fourth election as leader and in each of the others, she has added to the NDP’S seat count at Queen’s Park. This culminated in her becoming leader of the Opposition with 40 MPPS in 2018, after the collapse of Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals.
But 2018 is likely to be a tough result to replicate, particularly now that Horwath is isolating.
Her ability to connect with voters was evident in her backyard press conference, where she interviewed three young people with mental and physical health issues who have faced problems accessing and paying for medications that they say have been removed from public insurance coverage by the Ford government. Michaela Domenica suffers from fibromyalgia, a medical condition defined by the presence of widespread chronic pain, fatigue and depression. She said that at one point her treatment was covered by public health insurance but now costs her $58 every two weeks. “I found medication that gets me through every day, but the horrible reality is I have to choose between rent or my symptoms getting worse.”
Alex Harris suffers from anxiety and panic disorders that require a combination of counselling and drugs to manage, at a cost of $400 a month. Some days, his anxiety is so debilitating that he says he can’t get out of the door. “I am missing work days and don’t have paid sick days. I can’t get evicted and I have to eat, so I’m caught in a vicious cycle where my mental health is not being looked after.” He says he can’t afford treatment at the moment.
The NDP is promising universal pharmacare and to cover mental health counselling with public insurance.
These stories play into Horwath’s pitch that, other than in 1990, Ontario has bounced between the Liberals and PCS, without the most vulnerable seeing any improvements in their lives. “Hospitals continue to deteriorate or public services are less well funded and less reliable. But we don’t have to go back and forth.”
She made the point that six out of 10 Ontarians don’t want to give Ford a second mandate. “And when you look at which alternative has the capacity to hit the ground running by forming government with experienced legislators, and with a program that people can see as beneficial, something that will help them, then the answer is the NDP.” She pointed out that the Liberals only have five or six candidates with legislative experience. “That would be a huge learning curve,” she said.
Horwath said that her job is to resolve the disconnect between her party’s standing in the polls and the relative popularity of its leader and policies. “People need to know that it’s not risky to vote NDP. We’ve seen that with other NDP governments in other provinces,” she said.
The problem is the costing of the party’s platform, released earlier this week, suggests the risk is very real.
The costing document shows a party that is proposing $57 billion in new spending over the next three years. Even allowing for new sources of revenue and savings (which rarely live up to expectations), the NDP will add $53 billion to a provincial debt that currently stands at $427 billion in a short period of time.
This is straightforward living beyond our means; consumption today, paid for by our children and grandchildren tomorrow. Higher interest rates will crystallize at some point in the future and drive brutal spending cuts.
Horwath is unapologetic. “What I’m saying to folks is that we’ve been through a rough ride for the last couple of years, families have been having a difficult time making ends meet. They’re worried about keeping a roof over their heads and that’s when governments are supposed to step up. They’re supposed to step up on rainy days.”
I pointed out that the economy is going full-tilt, that unemployment has never been as low and that Canadian households accumulated a record amount of savings during the pandemic.
But Horwath referred to a level of inflation we haven’t seen in three decades as evidence that people can’t pay their bills. “That’s a big problem. People can’t get the basics like health care, like their ability to get the prescription drugs they need. So, these are the kinds of things we need to fix.”
This is the crux of the NDP’S dilemma. People like many of their policies, but don’t trust the party to enact them.
A Leger poll this week offered respondents to rank a number of proposals, without identifying the party proposing them. The NDP’S plan for dental care and regulating gas prices proved most popular.
On gas prices, there is less to the New Democrats’ idea than meets the eye. Quebec and the Atlantic provinces also regulate prices and the cost of gas is higher there than in Ontario.
Horwath concedes there are “limitations” on what any one jurisdiction can do when world oil prices are high but says she wants to see stability. “We hear from people all the time that they don’t like the gouging that happens at the pumps, so for us that’s important. We are coming up to the Victoria Day weekend and we know that even though gas prices are high, the likelihood is that they’re going higher in an opportunistic gouge by Big Oil and Gas… It has nothing to do with what’s going on in the world and it just rots people’s socks.”
The extensive list of NDP spending commitments, including an additional $13.6 billion on health care, home care and long-term care and $18 billion on social assistance, would be paid for in part by squeezing corporations and those earning more than $220,000 (referred to by Horwath as “multi-millionaire folks”).
“I think it’s really clear that a lot of the bigger corporations made windfall profits during COVID-19. We’re going to ask them to pay more — and the multi-millionaire folks that are in this province. And that helps us to make sure we bring hope back for Millennials, for example, who are having a really hard time right now. I talked to people who are putting off getting into serious relationships because they have debt. They can’t afford a place to live. They can’t even imagine starting a family. We have to give hope back to those people,” she said.
Yet even the traditional backbone of the NDP — the trade unions — have expressed their concerns about the lack of focus on economic development. On Wednesday, the Ontario Pipe Trades Council became the sixth big union to endorse Ford, who accused Horwath of being “out of touch” with working people during the leaders’ debate. “There’s no truth to that whatsoever,” she said. “Working people know who is always on their side and who is a fair-weather friend. When a premier cancels a minimum wage increase, that’s not supportive of working people. When he caps wages at a 1 per cent increase while inflation is going up, that’s not being a friend to working people.”
If decency and compassion were all that were needed, Horwath would be premier. But it’s not enough to tell people they are poorer than they were four years ago; they also need to be convinced they will be better off four years from now.
“Sometimes people need to see change is possible for change to happen,” she said. For Horwath, isolated for at least the next five days, time is running out to make change happen.