Speeches the new currency for Ontario’s leaders
Ontario politicians have agreed on a truce so they can get down to work.
They just can’t agree on how to get the rest of the province back on the job.
With unemployment stuck at 7.5 per cent, and economic growth stunted at 1.3 per cent this year, the rival parties keep chorusing that the economy is Job One. But with no common ground over their supposedly shared priority, politicians can only co-operate on non-controversial items — regulating tanning salons and hot water tanks — while talking past each other on the economy.
Now, instead of all talk, it’s all listening. After seven months in power, Premier Kathleen Wynne has been ridiculed for talking up “conversations” while hopscotching to economic round tables across the province. Going forward, “connections” will come ahead of “conversations.”
Wynne shared her high-level thinking with Liberal supporters over the weekend: She wants to “reconnect” so as to hear their thoughts. And, yes, yours.
“We have to stay connected to the people of Ontario, but it’s also really important for us to come together and reconnect with each other. I need to connect with all of you,” she told her fellow Liberals.
Acknowledging that “the economy is top of mind,” Wynne proclaimed herself “ready to put our plan into action.” What’s the plan? “You will see it in our exciting new policy platform tool, which we are launching today, called Common Ground. We are inviting the people of Ontario to get directly involved in politics and in the development of our platform. We want to hear people’s priorities and their ideas.”
One might assume that after 10 years in power, the Liberals have a plan of their own. Rather than a plan to outsource their platform to an online suggestion box.
The trouble with crowd-sourcing is that social media doesn’t always lead to leadership. Late Monday, the most popular topic by far on the Common Ground website was a plea from dog owners to end the ban on pit bulls (more than 200 votes).
One can only hope the Liberal platform doesn’t go to the dogs. But NDP attack dogs pounced on cue, snarling that the yappy Liberals were cowering behind consultations. (Perhaps so, but NDP Leader Andrea Horwath is the leader of the pack on consultations, sniffing every web poll and tapping into every toll-free line when compiling her wish list before — and after — the last provincial budget.) Tory mockery took a different tack. Opposition Leader Tim Hudak invited the government to “steal” his own policy proposals, put forward in a series of so-called “White Papers” over the past 18 months. Hudak is now co-operating with the Liberals on routine bills so as to demonstrate they have no serious economic policies in the pipeline. Clearing the decks of routine legislation will show they have nothing in the on-deck circle. Over time, he argues, people will see that the premier has no serious economic agenda — the empress has no clothes. “They came back to the House empty-handed — there was no new idea on jobs,” he said in an interview. “Are there actually ideas there? Is the cupboard bare?” At a Monday conference, the Tories laid out their complete series of 14 White Papers, where they doubled as political props — building blocks for a future Progressive Conservative government. But these Tea Party polemics, which call for privatizing electrical utilities, emasculating unions and eviscerating taxes, are Potemkin policy papers. These non-binding discussion documents lend an intellectual facade to Tory policies, propping up a campaign platform built on trickle-down economics. For Hudak, they offer the illusion of heft even while bereft of timber. Hudak isn’t alone. Slogans, speeches and social media are the new economic currency for Ontario’s three rival political leaders as they jockey for position. Behind their talk of consultations, conversations and connections there are no serious economic policies to speak of. They tell us they are too busy listening. Martin Regg Cohn’s provincial affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn