NDP and Liberals are vying to be the best anti-Ford option

This year’s Ontario election campaign is weird. It began as a referendum on Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne. It is fast becoming a referendum on Progressive Conservative would-be premier Doug Ford.

In effect, Wynne and New Democratic Party Leader Andrea Horwath are vying with one another as to who can be the best anti-Ford.

Usually, incumbent governments run on their records and opposition parties run against them. But in this campaign, even Wynne is running against much of her own record.

She spent the last four years cutting back the growth in health care spending so her government could balance the province’s books. Now she has effectively admitted that this was a massive mistake and is promising billions in new health care spending and a return to fiscal deficits.

The old Kathleen Wynne privatized Hydro One, in part to reduce the size of government. The new Kathleen Wynne likes nothing better than big government. She has implemented limited pharmacare and is promising limited child care and denticare.

Initially, this was a strategy designed simply to attract left-leaning voters from the NDP. But with polls consistently showing Ford in the lead, it has morphed into a strategy aimed directly at the PC chief.

Wynne has accused Ford of wanting to take a bulldozer to the province.

“This election will come down to the clearest, starkest choice in this province’s history,” she told a business audience late last month. “It’s a choice between care and cuts.”

That sentiment was echoed by Horwath, who warned voters that simply replacing Wynne with Ford would be going “from bad to worse.”

In their efforts to portray themselves as the best alternative, Wynne and Horwath are plowing much of the same ground.

Both promise some form of rudimentary denticare.

The NDP would introduce a limited version of universal pharmacare. The Liberals have already brought in full pharmacare for those under 25 and are promising to eliminate the drug co-payments and user fees now charged to seniors.

The NDP would bring in universal child care paid for, in part, by user fees geared to income. The Liberals, too, have a daycare plan. It would be free, but would cover only those children two and a half years and older — and then only until they reach junior kindergarten.

The Liberals have introduced a plan to lower electricity bills, in part by engaging in a financial sleight of hand. The NDP would eliminate the sleight of hand, but reduce electricity bills, too, through methods that are not entirely explained and, in its just-released platform, not at all costed.

So far, the centrepiece of Ford’s electricity plan is his promise to fire the head of Hydro One, on the grounds that he makes too much money.

Because of contractual obligations, this would cost more than it saved. But unlike the NDP and Liberal hydro plans, it has the virtue of being easily understood.

Indeed, one of the difficulties the anti-Fords face is that the PC leader has been deliberately vague about what he might do. In particular, he has been coy about where his promised $6 billion in spending cuts will come from.

But when he does pronounce, he is clear — as in his promise this week to eliminate the provincial income tax for those making minimum wage.

This particular pledge may not be that meaningful. Once the usual deductions are taken into account, many low-wage workers are already exempt.

But politically, it is an inspired move. It signals that while Ford is opposed to raising the minimum wage, he is not opposed to minimum-wage workers.

It is also brutally simple.

And as his two rivals spar over which detailed and fully-costed party platform is best able to take him on, it may prove disturbingly effective.

Thomas Walkom is a columnist with Torstar.