National Post (National Edition)
What Ontario's party leaders need to do
Political futures are on the line in June election
It's 30 days to destiny for Doug Ford, Andrea Horwath and Steven Del Duca. If any of them fails to meet expectations in the election that will be called Wednesday, it could cost them the leadership. Ford and Horwath both need an election win. Del Duca needs to not come third.
All three parties have a certain degree of overlap as they vie for the support of “everyday people,” as we now call voters. The PCs at least distinguish themselves from the Liberals and NDP by preferring that you get a job rather than a new government program.
Here's what to expect as the parties compete for your vote June 2.
Under Ford, the PCs have had an epiphany that shapes everything in their election plan. Back when PCs used to run on ending deficits, it left them at a competitive disadvantage. A party running on fiscal responsibility will always have less money to promise than parties that are unconcerned with such matters. No more. The PCs' pre-election budget promised a $19.9 billion deficit and a strong focus on jobs, the economy and building things like transit, highways and hospitals.
If jobs and building stuff isn't your thing, the PCs also offer a buffet of small changes to make life a bit more affordable. More important, they have an aggressive plan to tackle the province's health-care shortage.
The PCs used the two months before the election call to sell their plan in a flood of announcements across the province. It has given them an extended period of time to familiarize the public with their message, even though the platform itself has not been released. Don't expect many surprises.
The PCs do have vulnerabilities. Their platform is heavy on facts and figures, light on hope and emotion. Ford will be under daily scrutiny and he can say the wrong thing when not reading from a prepared text.
Horwath is offering the widest conceivable range of NDP-type policies in an extensive platform that touches on just about everything. It's the sort of document that a party produces when it has been long out of power and is itching to fix the world in four years. In fact, they actually call their platform They Broke it, We'll Fix it.
The slogan is apt in that “they broke it” captures a familiar refrain from Horwath, who has spent four years promoting the idea that Ford is a cruel man who acts only in the interests of his billionaire buddies. She also attributes much of the breaking to the Liberals, which is perfectly fair and would be a better point if Horwath hadn't propped up a Liberal minority under then-premier Kathleen Wynne.
The second part of the slogan is a bit more problematic. Part of the challenge for a party that has not been in power in this century is to convince the public that they are competent.
Even if people think things need fixing, is Horwath the one to do it?
The NDP needs to narrow its focus. Fixing everything is a little broad.
Unlike the NDP, Liberal Del Duca has decided to dole out his policy proposals, hoping for maximum impact. Only in the last few days has he started to define what his party would do. Like the others, the Liberals are offering voters a range of possible priorities, to see what resonates.
So far, we know that buying out private owners of long-term care homes is a priority worth billions of tax dollars. Another big one is Del Duca's “buck-a-ride” plan, which would cut all transit fares across the province to $1, at a cost to the public of $1.8 billion over two years. The premise is that everyone is dying to use transit, but it's just too expensive.
The transit promise is part of a much larger climate change plan. Both the Liberals and the NDP seem to hope that climate will be a key issue in the election, with the NDP promising a return to the complex cap-and-trade system. One would have thought the federal takeover of carbon policy in Ontario would preclude a provincial climate election. The PCs certainly hope so.
Del Duca's biggest problem is that his party holds only seven seats. He could triple that number and still finish third. Del Duca won't be helped by the party's election slogan, “The Choice is Yours.” It's a little limp, only a modest improvement on “Vote for us, or not, whatever.”
In this election, voters won't be able to say that the parties lack ideas. It's up to Ontarians to decide what's really important. As they say, the choice is yours.
THE PREMISE IS THAT EVERYONE IS DYING TO USE TRANSIT.