Policy vs. personality in Ontario

The campaign for Ontario’s June 7 election is unofficially underway. Details to come.

But why wait? If the result is preordained — premier-in-waiting Doug Ford perched handsomely in the on-deck circle, swinging for the fences as he soars in the polls — does the fine print of policy even matter anymore?

In which case, never mind Monday’s noontime speech from the throne proclaiming Liberal government promises for care of every kind — expanded dental care, pharmacare, home care, child care, elder care, mental health care and hospital care — with full costing coming in next week’s budget.

And no need to parse promises first thing Monday morning from the NDP for an ambitious new denticare program to fill in the gaps between our teeth. Will voters even bite?

No matter the competing pledges from Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals and Andrea Horwath’s New Democrats. Ford has the best idea of all — no new ideas.

Which explains why our newly minted leader of the Opposition Progressive Conservatives was a noshow at Queen’s Park for the throne speech, where Wynne and Horwath staked their ground. Ford had a better idea — a Tory unity rally at a suburban convention centre where he could have the last word while safely promising everything and nothing.

Details to come. And go.

Ford put out the call personally on Sunday afternoon — OK, it was a robocall — inviting me to hear “directly” from him at the rally, rather than in the fancy halls of the legislative assembly.

That’s where, he explained helpfully, the Liberal elites are getting rich off the poor people of Ontario.

Ford has a way with words, which is why he is such a persuasive bumper sticker politician. He makes his mark with slogans rather than having an impact with serious policies.

That’s how he led the charge in the Progressive Conservative leadership race, persuading his rivals to renounce a carefully constructed campaign platform — the People’s Guarantee — approved last November by the party’s policy convention. Now, the People’s Guarantee is gone, unwanted and unwarranted, replaced by Ford’s anti-tax, anti-environment, anti-sex-ed, antediluvian politics.

The campaign is assuredly underway, but it will be unlike any other since … Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency. We are immersed in a peculiar pre-election phoney war pitting policy against personality, a matchup between progressivism and populism.

As much as Ford might seem unsuitable, he’s unbeatable, according to the polls. The more the media critique him, the more popular he becomes, profiting from his own celebrity amid Wynne’s notoriety.

The more proposals the Liberals and New Democrats put forward — on easing the burden of post-secondary tuition, dental care, pharmacare and hospital care — the more popular Ford becomes. Which raises the question: are people interested in progressive policy or are they intent on regressive populism?

It goes without saying that polling is ephemeral, that attitudes harden and soften, that campaigns matter, that policies have a purpose. But it bears repeating that Ford’s Tories are at stratospheric levels because many more voters are buying what he’s selling. We will hear more about the competing content from Liberals and New Democrats in the final countdown to the campaign, we will see more bumper stickers from the Progressive Conservatives, and we will read far more about the Ford-Wynne-Horwath horse race — what I call compulsive “horseracism.”

Wynne told me Monday she will fight Ford’s fiery rhetoric by firing up voters with “tangible” ideas about elder care and pharmacare, about the puffers kids need for asthma and the free tuition students need for college. “We have to deal in detail,” she mused, but if bumper stickers prevail, “that’s the democratic risk, that’s the democratic process — and I believe in the democratic process.”

Horwath, for her part, told reporters that after 15 years in power the throne speech is a “desperate political manoeuvre by a government that’s going down.” Trouble is, the NDP is also down, while the Tories are up, up, up.

There is good news in the Liberal and NDP proposals to modernize denticare and pharmacare a halfcentury after medicare; there is welcome funding for home care, mental health care and hospital care. But the bad news is that Ford will have none of it, nor will his supporters, and it’s probably pointless trying to persuade them otherwise in the battle between more caring and more cutting.

The polls tell us Ford Nation is in the ascendant, in which case none of the progressive policy proposals matter. But elections are only preordained if people give up on politics and policies.

Pay attention — especially to the details. The clock is ticking to June 7.