NDP strategy targets voters in urban areas
Daycare, transit, housing among platform promises aimed at city residents
After losing three Toronto seats in the last provincial election, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath is betting on a new urban strategy to revive the party’s GTHA fortunes in the June 7 vote.
Promising cheaper daycare, more affordable housing, improved public transit, a 15-per- cent cut on auto-insurance rates, better protection for tenants and money to fix crumbling schools, Horwath is taking a different tack than in her 2014 campaign.
“Our platform ... really does speak to the issues that are of concern to people living in Toronto,” Horwath said Tuesday at the Dovercourt Boys and Girls Club in the west-end riding of Davenport, which was wrested from the NDP by Liberal MPP Cristina Martins in the last election.
“There are many pieces to the puzzle to make this city a livable city and a great place to work and to raise a family.” Defeated Toronto MPPs blamed their 2014 losses on the party’s lack of preparedness after toppling Premier Kathleen Wynne’s minority Liberals on a budget vote, and on Horwath’s pledge to be a better custodian of public finances, which was seen by some as a tack to the right.
“Having ‘respect for taxpayers’ was a message to many people in the Annex and Seaton Village that reminded them of Mike Harris,” former TrinitySpadina MPP Rosario Marchese, who lost the riding to Liberal Han Dong, told the Star at the time. An NDP platform did not come until the third week of that campaign, while in this spring’s effort, a 97-page volume was unveiled two weeks ago, with GTA and Hamilton promises — a nod to Horwath’s hometown — broken out in a separate booklet Tuesday.
“We need to elect a lot of people in Toronto,” veteran New Democrat MPP Peter Tabuns (Toronto-Danforth) said after Horwath’s campaign-style appearance at the boys and girls club, where she spoke for 25 minutes to a small crowd on a variety of urban issues.
“The Toronto platform is much more tuned to what people are concerned about,” Tabuns added, noting the NDP’s main competition is the Liber- als in the city and the Progressive Conservatives in the suburbs.
Tabuns is the lone New Democrat MPP in Toronto, after the retirement of Cheri DiNovo in Parkdale-High Park. Other New Democrat MPPs in the GTHA are Jennifer French (Oshawa), Paul Miller (Hamilton East—Stoney Creek) and Monique Taylor (Hamilton Mountain).
At Tuesday’s event, Horwath tried to portray herself as the only alternative for progressive voters tired of 15 years of Liberal rule.
“People have already decided the premier has got to go,” she said. “You don’t have to choose between Kathleen Wynne and Doug Ford.”