Ontario’s Tories shift to the centre
Latest platform offers pathway to victory
Patrick Brown got it out of the way fairly early in his speech to the Ontario Progressive Conservative convention in Toronto on Saturday: “This platform recognizes that climate change is real, it must be taken seriously,” he said, risking mass revolt among the assembled party faithful. “But the platform does not use climate change as an excuse for a government cash grab.”
It was an artfully crafted applause line, and it got a ton of applause. Brown never actually said “carbon tax” — the federal Conservatives’ policy arch-nemesis. But it’s one of the signature elements of the slick, magazine-style Tory platform — titled the “People’s Guarantee” — that dropped at the convention.
A government led by Brown would scrap the Liberal cap-and-trade scheme and “opt in to the federal carbon pricing benchmark.” Ottawa has given the provinces no choice but to price carbon, the platform notes — and while it essentially invites readers to blame the feds if they don’t like it, the party has nevertheless embraced the most conservative approach, a revenueneutral carbon tax, as opposed to the Liberals’ “slush fund.”
The Tories promise a 22 per cent cut in the second income bracket, and 10 per cent in the first. They promise to cut hydro rates by 12 per cent on top of what the Liberals have desperately. They promise a means-tested refund on child care expenses of up to 75 per cent. They promise to lower small business tax rates by 28.5 per cent.
That’s a strong pitch to the pocketbook, which they intend to fund, in the main, with carbon tax revenues and a 2 per cent acrossthe-board savings to be unearthed in a value-for-money audit. Arguing they’ve allowed for the traditional “hidden deficit” to be discovered upon their taking office, the Tories project a $2.8 billion deficit in 2018-19 and a return to balance in 2019-20, with future surpluses going to debt reduction.
Former Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, now of the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa, has signed off on the costing: It has been “deemed reasonable.”
Some other early reviews are positive as well. In a blog post, UBC economist Kevin Milligan argues the child care proposal “delivers the largest benefit to lower and middle income families who most need help with childcare expenses,” while also “support(ing) flexibility for those families who need part-time care, shift work, or irregular care.”
(Some reviews are not positive. Energy analyst Tom Adams accuses Brown of “continu(ing) the Wynne government’s fundamentally damaging, fraudulent electricity policies, but on a grander scale.”)
You can certainly argue it’s “Liberal lite.” The Common Sense Revolution, it isn’t.
Party officials want you to know that if the platform doesn’t explicitly propose to change something, it’s not going to get changed.
And there are certainly some silly baubles in there: free Wi-Fi on GO trains ($20 million a year); restoring the subsidy-hog Northlander train to Cochrane ($45 million a year, or about $150 per passenger journey if ridership rebounds to 2012 levels); tax credits for kids’ arts and sports programs ($70 million) and winter tires ($19 million); a promise of $5 billion for new subways that contemplates wasting some of it on a patently ludicrous extension of the Sheppard subway to Scarborough Town Centre. (All aboard the White Elephant Connector!)
But you can no longer accuse these Tories of just trying to ride into power off Kathleen Wynne’s soiled, tattered coattails.
It might not be especially conservative vision, but it is a vision — a different vision, a mostly defensible vision, an positive and upbeat vision despite its swipes at the Liberals, and a vision the Liberals will have some trouble trying to attack without looking foolish. (A simple carbon tax is the best policy, and they know it.)
In the hours since Saturday’s convention, the Liberals’ strategy appears totally unchanged: Brown will do the opposite of what he says he’ll do, they say; he’s a monster, basically. They immediately dusted off the spectre of Mike Harris and wheeled him out to terrify the children. Remember him? It’ll be even worse!
Do most Ontarians remember Mike Harris? I don’t really know. Patrick Brown was 17 when Mike Harris took office.
When Ontarians next go to the polls, it will have been more than 16 years since he left.
And whatever you think of the results, Harris did pretty much what he said he was going to do — and got reelected for his trouble.
If enough Ontarians believe Brown intends to do what his People’s Guarantee guarantees, and if enough Conservatives themselves can get behind a platform with which they might have a good few quibbles, then it just might be a pathway to victory.
At the very least, on Saturday, Ontario politics got a whole lot more interesting and substantive than it was on Friday.