Mike Harris' Legacy Lives On

Ontario often is the keystone in federal elections. Paul Barber suggests that, in the next election, that may well be the case:

Trying to establish Ontario's place in the Canadian federation's politics presents a paradox.

Critically important, Ontario cast 37 per cent of all votes in 2015, contributing 80 of the Liberals' 184 constituencies. However, having elected a small "l" liberal prime minister that year, the same province proceeded, less than three years later, to select the conservative Doug Ford as premier.

During the governments of Trudeau the Elder, Ontario was governed by Progressive Conservatives:

Ontario was governed by a progressive version of conservatism in the '60s and '70s, when premiers such as John Robarts and Bill Davis, quite compatible with the era of Trudeau the elder, held office.

Take education as an example.

The PCs of that era invested prodigious resources in all levels of education, particularly post-secondary. It would pay off economically. Toronto's current prosperity is directly connected to those investments. As a producer with CBC's The Journal in 1985, I made a short documentary profile of a small high-tech firm in Toronto that had just sold its new design system for cars to GM. Why in Toronto? CEO Stephen Bingham said that the staff's advanced technical skills were attributable to investments by Bill Davis in places like the Universities of Toronto and Waterloo and Sheridan College.

The party retains the name. But it is no longer progressive:

 A new hard-edged conservatism took over in Progressive Conservative Mike Harris' years of the '90s, enthusiastic about cutting education spending, prioritizing tax cuts. Deep cuts to postsecondary were offset to some degree by tuition increases and private sector support, particularly for elite universities such as Toronto and Waterloo.

Those years featured strong economic growth imported from a boom south of the border (dubbed by economist Joseph Stiglitz the "roaring nineties") and aided by a continuously declining Canadian dollar that fell from the moment the PCs took office -- from about 72 cents U.S. to 62.5 cents in January 2002. Conservatives liked to think the growth was about them and Harris' "Common Sense Revolution." It was not.

Doug Ford's government has returned to the Harris template.  But times have changed. And so have the Trudeaus. Many in Ontario's media blame Kathleen Wynne's previous government for Ontario's deficit. But the economy was good during the Wynne years:

Canada's largely conservative print media has misleadingly portrayed Ontario as a high spending, debt-ridden basket case. The truth is that spending and taxes remain low, the latter being a key contributor to debt, itself primarily a product of the financial downturn following the last recession. While, per capita, Ontario's debt is higher than that of most other provinces, it is not the largest in Canada and there is no crisis.  

When it came to taxes, Wynne was not willing to rock the Harris boat. His legacy lives on. And so we are where we are.  All of this history will play into October's election.

Image: Tom O'Connor/twitter