The Doug Ford cabinet that could have been
Ford is centralizing decisions and ensuring ministers speak in a single voice
Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government is blessed with the best bench strength in recent memory. Whatever Doug Ford’s weaknesses flying solo in the premier’s office, there is surely strength in (cabinet) numbers.
That’s what Tories and many voters across the province told themselves when holding their noses June 7. That, at least, was the plan.
The problem with power, however, is that it tends to flow in the opposite direction. Toward the centre.
There is one cabinet veteran who could have led the way forward for Ford — a former health minister in the government of Mike Harris, a former interim leader of the Progressive Conservatives.
Spare a thought for Economic Development and Trade Minister Jim Wilson, a man of substance who has lost his way by succumbing to the premier’s hyperbole and hypocrisy. Consider Wilson’s transformation from serious policy-maker to simplistic partisan in these three areas:
When Statistics Canada announced last Friday that Ontario’s unemployment had inched up to 5.9 per cent from 5.7, Wilson counterintuitively claimed credit for Ford’s economic stewardship:
“In just a few short months, the PC government has enacted legislation and policy changes in an effort to create and protect jobs in Ontario,” he chirped brightly. “Those efforts are evident in today’s release of the Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey, which shows significant growth in Ontario’s labour force with 36,100 new jobs.”
Fair enough. Anyone who has studied labour economics understands the seasonal ups and downs of Statistics Canada’s numbers, and that it is possible for new jobs to be created even as more jobless people are looking for work.
But one month before, rather than finding a glimmer of good news, Wilson found grounds to excoriate expremier Kathleen Wynne for a similar increase in the unemployment rate (0.3 percentage points in the August gloom, versus 0.2 points in September’s glory):
“The latest job numbers are a reminder of the Wynne Liberals’ 15year legacy of scandal, waste and mismanagement,” he scowled, linking elections to economics with remarkable alacrity.
Setting aside Wilson’s statistical games, consider his political gamesmanship in the wake of the high stakes NAFTA negotiations. Where once Wilson promised to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with Ottawa in dodging bullets from Donald Trump, he started firing blanks at the federal government as soon as the ink was dry on a deal.
Wilson mischievously claimed that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals had thrown Ontario’s dairy farmers “under the bus.” Yet for all his references to roadkill, Wilson appeared to be suffering from political amnesia, given that the former Conservative government of Stephen Harper had already paved the way with similar concessions for the Trans Pacific Partnership with Asian countries.
Perhaps the most disheartening and heartless of Wilson’s word games relate to the minimum wage earners he keeps throwing under the bus while Ontario takes a U-turn from the
$15 hourly pay that was to take effect next Jan. 1 under current law. Thanks to the “change” election that brought the Tories to power, the minimum wage has been frozen at $14 an hour, which Wilson argues is an economic necessity to spare the province further joblessness.
That claim ignores the steady decline in Ontario’s unemployment rate in the months since the hourly minimum jumped from $11.60 to $14 last January. Wilson appears oblivious to the scholarship from labour economists who cite empirical evidence that higher wages for low-paid people have emphatically not led to greater joblessness (unemployment rates are more sensitive to outside factors, such as overall consumer demand).
Neither economic realities nor trade negotiations have curbed Wilson’s political spin, for we live in an age of ideological beliefs, not economic facts. Talking points, not statistical data. Many Ontarians were hoping for greater rigour from a more robust Progressive Conservative cabinet. But rather than ministers restraining the premier, he is constraining their ministries.
Far from decentralizing decisionmaking, Ford is centralizing authority in the premier’s office. And homogenizing the sloganeering.