Premier Ford can learn from Trump

Canada’s most populous province has a new premier. Douglas Robert Ford, better known simply as Doug, was sworn in as Ontario’s 26th premier on Friday. He has his work cut out for him.

The challenge isn’t terribly complicated, but it is terribly difficult. Ontario has been badly managed for well over a decade, run into the shoals by a politically corrupt Liberal government that routinely put its own partisan interests ahead of the province’s and the people’s. The Liberals are no longer a problem for Ontarians; they were crushed in the recent election, reduced to an unofficial-party rump of seven seats. But the damage they did remains and will for decades.

Ontario, once the proud economic engine of this wealthy nation, is hobbled. Its power has been crushed by both an intrusive and outof-control regulatory state and hundreds of billions of dollars in runaway debt. The Liberals built their swamp with heavily borrowed money. That made even their isolated examples of policy success, and there were a few, financially unsustainable — they simply refused to spend within the province’s means. And that puts everything government does at risk.

There are justifications for borrowing to finance longterm infrastructure projects, especially when a public asset will be used for generations. But Ontario’s Liberals borrowed simply to sustain current operations. As just one particularly egregious example, because the Liberals’ borrowed to subsidize power bills made too expensive by renewable contracts — which they also subsidized — kids starting their holidays today from elementary school will still one day be paying off the electricity their parents use this summer.

Ford therefore inherits a government that is vast in scope, beset by genuine crises in several critical portfolios, notably health care and energy, while also delivering mediocre (or worse) services in many other areas, including, tragically, education.

Liberals nevertheless had the gall in the recent election to campaign on their hallucinatory self-perceptions of their own competency, claiming they were the only party moderate and experienced enough to fix an ailing province, deluded into forgetting that they were the ones entirely responsible for bringing Ontario to the low place from which it must now recover.

Voters didn’t buy it. They demanded a thumping Progressive Conservative majority and effectively wiped the Liberals from the political map. That was necessary. But, as noted here before the election, the PCs ran on talking points and general notions, not policy proposals. Now that they are in government, they need to flesh out their scattered commitments and intimations into a coherent policy agenda. It must be one that’s up to the task of tackling Ontario’s many major problems.

One of their initial promises, among the few firm ones, was exactly on the money, and should be implemented immediately: a top-to-bottom review of Ontario’s financial ledgers. We know that the Liberals were compulsively dishonest about the state of the province’s finances, therefore we don’t know how badly off the province really is. Answering that question is job one.

After that, if we could give the new premier any advice, it’s simply a laser-focus on making Ontario’s economy great again. Many of the Liberals’ worst mistakes are irreversible — money wasted is lost forever — and some of their worst decisions are baked in for many years. This is particularly true with the province’s catastrophic energy policies. Getting Ontario out of that mess, and all the other ones that the previous government either created or permitted to develop, will require time and money.

But the province’s credit card is nearly maxed out and raising taxes will only further discourage growth. More money can only be realistically raised via a booming economy. Growing the economy by a point or two a year, always fearing the next recession or world crisis, simply won’t do — the province is in too deep a hole.

The Republican administration in the U.S. has shown once again what a powerful tonic it can be to roll back a business-stifling overregulating nanny state while reforming taxes to boost growth: the Atlanta Fed just this week projected secondquarter growth in the U.S. to come in at a blistering 4.5 per cent. In the first 17 months of his presidency, Donald Trump has repudiated for good the dismal Obama-era defeatists who insisted that the sun had set on the economic miracle of Western capitalism and innovation and truly booming growth could never happen again.

Ford can learn from this. He must slash red tape, steadily reduce the size of government, lower taxes and return stability, if not improvements, to the province’s energy system. Most of all, he needs to recreate the environment, ruined over the last few years, where businesses feel confident setting up and know they can thrive. Only a surging private sector can deliver what Ontario needs to eventually recover from its current mess.

This will take years of government discipline and hard choices. It will mean painful reckonings for a public service so used to being treated preferentially in return for votes, and will be bitterly resisted by the province’s powerful labour unions.

Ford should resist his usual impulse to sugarcoat the truth with soothing, vague populist slogans. The people of Ontario voted for change knowing full well it might hurt, as it has before, but that it will be worth the return on their sacrifice soon enough. If Ford can deliver enough economic growth to restore confidence and also begin fixing Ontario’s problems, rather than just delaying pain with borrowed money, the public will stick with him, even during painful moments.

Good luck, Premier Ford.

THE PEOPLE VOTED FOR CHANGE KNOWING IT MIGHT HURT.