Election platform in budget wrap
There are many ways to describe the provincial budget unveiled by Doug Ford’s Tories this week, but only one hits the mark. Some will call it the biggest provincial government spending spree in Ontario history, one that would burn through $198.6 billion in the next year. Others will fancy it as the post-pandemic rebuild blueprint. And more than a few critics will complain it’s a fiscal wish-list tangled up in a string of needless deficits, starting with one estimated at $19.9 billion for this year.
However true these observations, what Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy handed Ontarians was first and foremost his party’s election platform. It’s how Premier Ford’s Progressive Conservatives intend to punch their ticket to another majority government on June 2. And whatever their political inclinations, Ontarians would be wise to see it this way. In this platform, inserted between the covers of the “2022 Ontario Budget,” the Tories hope to offer enough to hold on to their base of supporters, win over voters in the political centre and limit the openings for opposition attacks. And so their platform/budget seeks to mean as many things as possible to as many people as possible.
To be sure, it is not by any stretch of the imagination a prescription for austerity bearing the talon marks of fiscal hawks. The government’s own numbers show rising provincial revenues could allow it to balance its budgets in relatively short order. The PCs chose a different course and plan to spend those increased revenues, plus more. The need for bigger, more interventionist government that many people felt in the pandemic years has not disappeared. The PCs know it.
So there are reams of new spending on hospitals, home care and long-term care, much of it previously announced. Those investments are necessary, even though they fall short of the structural and inspection changes needed in the broad, health-care sector. Assuming this is the budget the Conservatives would pass if re-elected, it has other, largely positive features. The support for Ontario’s auto sector should strengthen an industry vital to the province’s economy in an era of uncertainty. The tax break for workers who earn $50,000 a year or less is welcome and will help some people who truly need it in inflationary times. Likewise the income tax credit to help offset the cost of some medical expenses for seniors would be meaningful both for individuals and a society rapidly growing greyer.
Other budgetary measures the public has also already been told about seem more obviously tailored to curry public favour. These would include the vehicular licence renewal-fee rebate, an end to highway tolls and a temporary gasoline-tax reduction. While everyone likes a little more cash, perceptive voters might consider such savings as chump change coming from a government that has reneged on previous promises of broad-based tax cuts.
The pledge to pour $25.1 billion over 10 years into repairing, expanding and creating highways, roads and bridges across the province, however, will prove far more controversial. Are new highways really the best priority for Ontario in this era of climate change, with all its impacts? Environmentalists and many urbanites will say no. Suburban commuters sick of highway gridlock, in contrast, may cheer the highway expenditures, along with the budget’s subtitle — “Ontario’s Plan to Build.” And Ford is counting on those voters.
After all, the Progressive Conservatives have a record they will extol but must also defend. Their upcoming election campaign is not just about Ontario’s future; from the PCs’ perspective, it’s also about their own. Unless they win a majority of the seats at Queen’s Park they can say goodbye to being the government. The Liberal and New Democratic parties have already said they’d refuse to support a Tory minority government. So Ford is straddling the political centre to eke out the legislative majority he needs.
Whether he wins those seats is now in the hands of Ontario voters. In the weeks ahead they will certainly have to pass judgment on this budget. But whether they approve of this fiscal plan, it will be hard to view it in isolation from this government’s four years in office and what it intends for the years ahead. Taken together, it's a shrewd strategy and a brash power play on Ford’s part. Whether it’s good for Ontario or not it’s all up to you to decide.