Ontario voters are facing stark choices in coming vote

Heads up voters — the 2018 Ontario provincial election campaign has unofficially begun.

As warbling robins herald the start of spring, so Monday’s Liberal speech from the throne, the NDP’s weekend promises of new social programs and the daily cries for spending cuts coming from newly-minted Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford are undeniable signs the race is on.

Sure the legislature is still sitting and not every candidate has been chosen for the June 7 vote.

But the major parties aren’t just revving up at the starting line, they’re off and running.

And while they’re providing voters with clear and distinct choices, it appears that in this era of growing polarization the middle ground in Ontario has shrunk as fast as February’s snowdrifts.

Far from being a political necessity, the government’s latest throne speech sounded more like the first draft of the Liberal platform presented in a way to guarantee the party maximum exposure.

Summed up in two words, it’s “new spending.” But it’s also new spending with some appeal.

There will be more cash for prescription drugs and dental coverage for more Ontarians — promises that, by no coincidence, parallel what’s in the New Democrats’ playbook.

Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals also pledge new money for more child care and more home care for the elderly.

The bill for these ambitious offerings will be more obvious after the Liberals unveil their 2018-19 budget next week. But they’ve already indicated next year’s deficit could reach $8 billion.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath is also entirely comfortable with deficit spending. Her party’s top priorities include full dental coverage for all Ontarians, a universal pharmacare program to provide prescription drugs and funding to convert the provincial portion of post-secondary student loans into nonrepayable grants. To help pay for all this, Horwath envisions a corporate-tax hike.

The political outlier in an election campaign already brimming with baskets of goodies is the PC’s Doug Ford. His main pledge to date is cutting four per cent from provincial government spending, which would mean deleting $5.6 billion from the province’s $141 billion annual budget. Ford also opposes carbon taxes and would scrap Ontario’s sex education curriculum. Of course, these are just the initial, most visible planks of the major parties’ platforms.

So far, voters are dealing with first impressions the way they’d try to make out the appearance of three ships emerging from a fog.

What we do know is that Ontarians face dramatically different options. Moreover, each option is imperfect, as it stands.

Ontario may well be rich enough to afford enhanced, even universal social programs.

As we head full-throttle into uncertain economic times in a world buffeted by shifting technological and political winds, there’s a compelling moral argument that everyone should be properly cared for.

But it’s also reasonable to worry that running multibillion-dollar deficits and piling up debt in good times as well as bad will lead to economic hardship when, inevitably, the next economic recession hits.

Can we not elect a caring government that embraces fiscal rectitude?

Ontario deserves that option, too.

Can we not elect a caring government that embraces fiscal rectitude? Ontario deserves that option, too.