Do party platforms still have the same influence on voters?

“An election,” Kim Campbell infamously said during the 1993 federal election campaign, “is no time to discuss serious issues.” Her Progressive Conservatives were decimated in the vote that followed — a fact some blame in part on her statement.

But experts are split on whether she was right.

The controversy over the Progressive Conservative platform, released this week, and whether it delivers on PC Leader Doug Ford’s promise of a full fiscal accounting of his promises has raised an old question: just how much do platforms or the policies they contain influence the outcomes of political campaigns?

Former NDP strategist Robin Sears, for instance, said platforms — or the absence thereof — can alter political fortunes. In the current context, he said, the late release of the PC platform is likely to hurt the party in the polls.

First, Ford attracted “jeering” from opponents for not releasing it, Sears said, now he is coming under enormous scrutiny over what’s in it. This late in the game, it won’t be a useful tool of persuasion, argues Sears, now principal of Earnscliffe Strategy Group.

Nelson Wiseman, a University of Toronto political science professor, disagrees. While he says “you cannot generalize about the impact of platforms and their effect in election campaigns,” he expects that in Ontario today the controversy over the PC platform won’t matter.

“Issues aren’t swinging voter intention,” he said. “What’s swinging voter intention is the leaders and strategic voting. Do you want Doug Ford and the conservatives in power, or do you want to stop them?”

But whether or not platforms have much political impact, most experts agree the late release of the Progressive Conservative platform, and its scant details, is undemocratic and disrespectful to Ontarians.

The party’s list of promises and estimates of how much each will cost, posted to its website Wednesday, doesn’t tell voters where the money will come from. “The electorate deserves to know where the party stands and what the tradeoffs might be,” said John Shields, a former political science professor at Ryerson University.

“Otherwise if (the PCs) are elected, it gives them license to do a whole lot of things that weren’t voted on.”

The Liberals, NDP and Green party have all released more detailed platforms, as has been the tradition for the last 25 years.

It’s not surprising, however, that the PCs have changed course, said Myer Siemiatycki, a Ryerson political science professor, who described the PC platform as “skeletal.”

The party’s strategy appears to be to reveal as little as possible, demonstrated by Ford not having a campaign bus for media, for instance, or the number of PC candidates not participating in local debates.

“If the conservatives are behaving this way in the one moment of political life when they are the most courting and wanting to appeal to the public, it raises questions of what a conservative government would be like if elected,” Siemiatycki said.

“How accessible, transparent and accountable will they be?”

Sears said the PCs “have no respect for voters.”

“The fundamental purpose of elections is for people to choose not just bodies, but also what it is they are going to do in government,” Sears said. “They can’t chop one arm off of the democratic process by saying, just vote for me because I’m going to be good.”

Parties began coming out with detailed platforms in the 1990s as the public became increasingly concerned about federal and provincial government spending and budget deficits, Shields said.

Platforms provided parties with a way to make their promises more concrete, and allowed voters to compare core commitments across parties and hold the winner accountable once in office.

In the last week, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath and Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne both decried Ford for not meeting this expectation.

Ford’s decision finally to release a platform seems to have come in response to this criticism, Wiseman said.

But Shields says the platform, as released, doesn’t do the job.

“For voters,” Shields says, “there still isn’t any new fiscal information to make an informed judgment.”

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