Vote-buying gets shameless
There was a time when vote-buying was done with a modest degree of nuance. The government of the day might pledge a tax cut or a baby bonus or a subsidy you could get if you filled in the right form. No longer: now they just stick a cheque in the mail and fire it off to the population at large. Vote for us and you get money! No questions asked.
Justin Trudeau sent out $300$500 to 6.7 million seniors — tax free and no need to apply — while preparing his bid for a majority government. Quebec is sending $500 to every Quebecer earning less than $100,000 as Premier François Legault heads to an October election. Ontarians have lately been receiving government cheques for hundreds of dollars just weeks before Premier Doug Ford’s government goes to the polls.
Shame must be a diminishing quality in political circles, not that it ever existed in much abundance. Or perhaps electees figured voters have become so inured to the usual levels of flim-flam they had to step it up a notch.
In Ontario’s case, the cheques are styled as a rebate on the $120 annual charge for licence plate tags, which henceforth will be free. The more vehicles you own, the more you get. No one is fooled by the exercise. It’s been categorized as a blatant attempt at vote-buying, which of course it is. It is also being condemned as a betrayal of Ford’s original political agenda, the one he championed when first elected four years ago, to get a handle on government spending and halt the cynical outpouring of goodies that helped the Liberals stay in power for 15 years, during which they amassed a frightening level of debt.
The impending election notwithstanding, the timing would also seem questionable. Ontario has yet to fully exit the COVID pandemic, a period that made clear the great gaping holes in any number of programs critical to Ontarians’ sense of safety and security: health care, elder care, housing, mental health facilities, shortages of doctors and nurses ... all of which will need big gobs of public cash to remedy the weaknesses made so evident. And there’s the ongoing ugly reality of Ontario’s electricity costs, which are so high none of the parties has the nerve to suggest consumers should actually be required to pay them, and for which annual subsidies now total about $7 billion.
So is this the time to write off $1 billion in revenue, the estimated cost of the rebate program?
As a giveaway, it’s less costly than Trudeau’s gift to seniors. That came in at about $2.5 billion, but of course Ottawa has a bigger pot to pay from. It’s also quite a bit less than the $3.2 billion Quebec’s finance minister calculates his government’s handout will cost. Both the federal and Quebec payouts were labelled as efforts to help against rising costs. It’s a lousy justification: Any economist, and anyone with a slight bit of experience in the issue, will tell you that giving people more money to spend is a terrible way of fighting inflation. All it does is feed the forces pushing up prices in the first place.
Quebec has less than two-thirds Ontario’s population, yet will be devoting three times as much to its free-money program. Since Legault appears in no danger of losing the upcoming election, it would also seem particularly unnecessary. In a byelection just last week Legault’s party seized a longtime Parti Québécois stronghold, pushing the separatists to second place and the Liberals to fifth. The win was so startling Legault felt the need to warn his troops not to get swollen heads. “It’s important to remain humble ... so no arrogance,” he told supporters in the wake of the win.
Ford also seems relatively sure of victory. Every recent poll puts his Progressive Conservatives ahead, with a Leger survey in late March placing them 14 points up on the Liberals and New Democrats, who are in a virtual tie for second place.
There are differences between the Ontario rebate plan and the giveaways from Ottawa and Quebec. While those programs simply raided the treasury to finance their cheques, Ford is eliminating a government program and returning the money people had already paid. Ontario vehicle owners are getting their own money back, not a bribe financed from someone else’s pocket. Licence tags are pretty much a money-grab anyway, since there’s no particular service provided in return, and motorists have already paid for their plates and licence. In Quebec the cheques are going out indiscriminately, to anyone below the income cap, which is set pretty high. The federal plan was directed specifically at seniors, many of whom don’t need the money and are members of a generation that spent much of its life feathering a pretty comfortable nest for itself at a cost of more than $1 trillion in debt, leaving the bill to future generations to pay.
Still, Ford is heading down a path he specifically pledged to avoid. When the pandemic hit, his government was in the midst of a much-heralded line-by-line examination of the provincial books, in search of savings his Tories claimed were essential to escape a financial crisis the Liberals had left behind. Not much progress has been made on that front: Ontario’s net debt has risen by almost $60 billion under Ford’s watch and now costs almost $13 billion a year in interest payments, $1 billion more than in 2018.
Much of that can be blamed on the pandemic. But those extra expenditures only increase the need for careful management of provincial finances as the crisis fades, especially given all the additional spending requirements it made obvious. As it happens, a bit of fortune has come Ontario’s way, as the economy booms in a POSTCOVID surge, sending billions more dollars in tax revenue the government’s way.
They can use it wisely or blow it on handouts. The riddle is why there would be any question about which option to choose. Why throw away a windfall on a shortlived blowout when it could be used more productively on longer-term issues?
The answer is that they’re politicians. Even when they can win without expensive freebies, they can’t seem to help themselves. One day of headlines, a big announcement and a bit of personal glory is something they just can’t resist, no matter the folly.
ONTARIO VEHICLE OWNERS ARE GETTING THEIR OWN MONEY BACK.