Let's Hope They Draw The Right Lessons

Ontario -- and Ontarians -- are lucky. So writes Gerry Caplan:

The Liberals’ luck is also Ontario’s luck. The Conservatives, and a good number of observers, believed Tim Hudak would emerge with the most seats, though not a majority. By parliamentary tradition, the Lieutenant-Governor would have been obliged to ask the last premier to form a government if she could; had Andrea Horwath agreed to support the Liberals – and now we’ll never know – the latter could have formed another minority. Yet as another way of scaring voters away from Mr. Hudak, Ms. Wynne took the dubious gamble of promising to advise the L-G to ask Mr. Hudak to form a government if he got more seats. He would have done so, found an excuse to force yet another election, and very possibly have emerged victorious. The consequences for the province are unthinkable. So lucky Ontario has been saved.

Tim Hudak's fate, however, was not a matter of either good or bad luck:

He was the sole author of his own misfortune. He and his team headed off to Washington, met some of the most extreme Republican politicians and “thinkers,” and returned promising Ontario a full-blown Tea Party platform. It was a corporate fantasy come true and was soon blown out of the water. Rarely in Canadian history have so many independent experts agreed on the dishonesty and distortions of a party’s platform. Still, to be fair, it seemed that Mr. Hudak had managed to persuade the 36 per cent of voters who supported him in 2011 to stick with him again. At least so it seemed to virtually every pollster and every wise guy pundit – until election night. Somehow, fully 5 per cent of those supporters abandoned ship on election day, Mr. Hudak ending up more than 7 per cent behind the Liberals. It was an unequivocal repudiation.

Which is a round about way of saying that Ontarians knew a scam when they saw and heard it. And what about Andrea Horwath -- who Caplan criticized for triggering the election?

Ms. Horwath was mainly inept and a little bit unlucky. She increased the NDP’s vote from 2011 by 1 per cent and might have legitimately expected more seats in return. But it was not to be. Let’s be clear: her intention was honourable. Like Tom Mulcair in Ottawa, she understood that to increase the NDP’s vote, and give it any chance of forming a government, somehow the party’s appeal must be expanded. So far so good. But her execution was sloppy and incoherent. She alienated an important part of her base – always the wrong thing to do – without giving many potential new voters reason to support the party. It was an experiment gone wrong, with many lessons for the future.

I suspect that all three of the parties will be drawing lessons from this election. Let's hope they're the right ones.

His Cheese Is Slipping

Not long ago, Stephen Harper mused about scoring a hat trick in Ontario -- a Tory at Toronto City Hall, a Tory at Queen's Park and himself -- the Big Cheese -- in Ottawa. This morning, Rob Ford is in rehab; Tim Hudak has resigned; and Stephen Harper -- who knows?

The Conservative defeat last night -- and that's what it was -- was a case of a flawed message and a flawed messenger. Voters clearly understood that Tim Hudak's much vaunted one million jobs plan couldn't pass a grade four math class. And Mr. Hudak was a lousy salesman.

Because Ontario's provincial ridings mirror its federal ridings, there are a few lessons Harper should take from last night's results. Tasha Kheiriddin writes:

Fear of cuts trumps fear of corruption. NDP leader Andrea Horwath learned this the hard way. She kicked off the election to kick out a scandal-plagued government, but people were more concerned the Tories would cut services. And they voted Liberal to prevent that from happening.

Ontarians don’t feel overtaxed. No, really. The Tories promised to cut taxes. The Liberals promised to raise them. The NDP promised to do both. And the Liberals got a majority government. Sigh.

Likeability matters. In the corridors, when no one was watching, even stalwart Tories would shake their heads and lament that voters just didn’t like Hudak. Ontarians didn’t love Wynne or Horvath, but they liked them better. Which could explain why …

Harper joked at Jim Flaherty's funeral that even his friends don't like him. And his government has served up both corruption and tax cuts.

There will be two federal by-elections in Ontario at the end of the month. The results should be interesting. It's beginning to look like the province which gave Mr. Harper his majority could well show him the back of its hand in the next federal election. As they say in the American South, "The boy's cheese is slipping off his cracker."

The Worst Choice

Kathleen Wynne gave a less than stellar performance in last night's Ontario Leaders Debate. But, this morning, even John Ivison at the National Post writes:

The PC leader spent the evening moving his arms around, as if he were about to break into Simon Says. He looked slightly swivel-eyed when he rambled with messianic zeal about his “Million Jobs Plan,” which Ms. Horwath pointed out has “a million math mistakes in it.”

And Martin Regg Cohn, over at the Toronto Star, writes:

The three rivals avoided big mistakes, unleashed their attack lines and unfurled their talking points without a dramatic take-down or catastrophic error that destroys a campaign. It rarely turns out that way, and it didn’t Tuesday night — despite the best efforts of Tory leader Tim Hudak and the NDP’s Andrea Horwath to wound Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne.

To these old eyes and ears, the debate was a series of repetitions -- repetitions of pre-rehearsed talking points -- and it all became rather tiresome.

What matters, of course, is who shows up at the polls on June 12th, not who watched the debate. And, frankly, I have no idea who will show up and who will choose to stay home. However, not to choose is to choose -- and past experience tells me that refusing to choose yields the worst choice.

No Sunshine

You would expect that Ontario's Liberals would be defeated in this election. After all, Tom Walkom writes:

The Liberals have been in power for 11 long years. They’ve presided over a host of scandals, ranging from the ORNGE air ambulance fiasco to the gas plant affair. The economy is just limping along.

Usually, a government burdened with this kind of baggage would be guaranteed defeat.

But Kathleen Wynne's party seems to be tied with or ahead of the Hudak Tories. Perhaps voters have looked at Mr. Hudak's plan and come to the conclusion that he is math challenged. Perhaps New Democrats have looked at Andrea Horwath's platform and decided they don't want to go there. For whatever reasons, the Liberals are not in the dog house. And that is why Hudak and Horwath have trained their sights on Wynne and made it personal:

Both Hudak and Horwath know that if they are to succeed, they must do more than attack the Liberal platform. They must brutally and deliberately bring Wynne down.

Expect more negative attacks. There will be no sunshine for the next two weeks.

Therein Lies The Tragedy

Traditional Dippers are bewildered and disillusioned by Andrea Horwath. Yesterday, in the Globe and Mail, Gerry Caplan published an open letter to the leader of Ontario's New Democrats:

Since your decision to defeat the Liberal budget, many of the party’s most loyal supporters have been bewildered, frustrated, and exasperated. Your decision to oppose what just about everyone agrees was the most progressive budget in two decades shocked many. Here was a win-win for the party: Many of those in need – the NDP’s people – would have directly benefited, and the NDP could have taken the credit. It would’ve been an entirely plausible claim, since it was true. The Liberals crafted it expecting your support. I expected it too, as did many others. Our disappointment was compounded when you could offer no sensible rationale for doing the opposite.

Caplan suspects that Horwath has gone corporate:

You offer mere tokens to those whose need is greatest while your real target seems to be business people large and small. Yes, they have their needs too, some of them legitimate. But they also have their parties who cater to those needs. If business want a sympathetic party to support – and they do – you can be sure they don’t need and won’t buy the NDP.

The NDP used to be about policy, not power. They never won a majority government, but they won medicare, pensions and the forty hour work week. Now they are helping Tim Hudak do away with all those things:

While wooing business, you’re busy slamming the Liberal government. In today’s circumstances, that’s just irresponsible. When all progressives are legitimately terrified by what a Hudak government would mean, your campaign attacks the Liberals. I hope your advisers – whoever they might be – haven’t persuaded you that this strategy will tempt progressive voters to support the NDP. Fire those advisers, Andrea.

That won't happen, of course. And, therein lies the tragedy.

They Don't Know What They're Talking About

Yesterday, Tasha Kheiriddin announced that she would not be voting for Tim Hudak:

I have been a life-long small-c conservative. I supported the Common Sense Revolution of Mike Harris. I believe in balanced budgets, low taxes and value for money. I like the PCs’ plans for ending corporate welfare and encouraging job creation.

I am also the parent of a four-year-old child with special needs in Ontario. And that’s why I cannot vote for you, Tim Hudak.

For kindergarten, we were looking at private, and much more expensive, school options, in large part because the public classes in her district school have 30 kids. She can’t handle a class that size. She won’t be able to concentrate or get the assistance she needs to stay focused. And it’s not just her; a lot of neurotypical children her age do better in smaller groups, with less distraction and more attention.

Ms. Kheiriddin wasn't a parent during the Harris years. Perhaps that's why she doesn't remember what Mr. Harris did to education during his time in office. Perhaps she remembers Harris as a former teacher -- who put three years into the profession and then left.  Perhaps she forgets that Harris' first minister of education was John Snoblen -- who dropped out of school in grade 11 and never returned.

Snoblen, however, was a fortunate son. He inherited his father's waste management company. And, when he was appointed Minister of Education, he applied his talent for managing waste to managing education. Snoblen cut programs -- beginning with grade 13 -- and jobs. He proclaimed the way to change education in Ontario was to "create a crisis." And he did just that.

On Hudak's proposed changes to education, Kheiriddin writes:

Thirty children. That is the normal JK and SK class size in the entire region where we live. Have you been in a class with 30 four or five year olds, Mr. Hudak?  How about 32 of them? Some classes already have that.

You propose to increase class sizes by “two or three students.” So you want there to be 33, 34, 35? With your proposed one-to-20 teacher ratio, that means what, 1 ½ teachers per class? How does that work? Do you really think little kids will learn anything in that environment? Do you think they are learning enough now?

The fact is, we've been there before. We got there because, when it came to education, neither Mr. Harris nor Mr. Snoblen knew what they were talking about. After Mr. Hudak received his Master's degree in economics, he worked for Walmart for two years, then was elected to the legislature. That's the extent of his real job experience.

You get the picture. When it comes to policy, the Conservatives don't know what they're talking about.

Who Smells Best

It's not just Andrea Horwath's Dippers who are acting out of character. Tom Walkom writes that, in this election, all of Ontario's political parties are not to be found at their usual addresses. The economy has changed everything:

Ontario has been hit hard by the slump. Weak U.S. demand and, until recently, an unusually high Canadian dollar have crushed manufacturing.

Multinationals are realigning their North American operations at the expense of Ontario branch plants.

The damage isn’t always visible in Toronto. But a trip to London, Windsor, Leamington, Wingham or Smiths Falls can be an eye-opener.

The official jobless rate in the province is 7.4 per cent. When discouraged workers are counted, it rises to about 10 per cent.

That reality has changed the pitch of all of the parties:

Initially, the Liberals hoped that putting a new face on the same content would solve their problems.

While charming, Wynne held fast to the key elements of McGuinty’s economic plan, including fiscal restraint.

The hope was that she could woo voters just by appearing to be nicer.

That didn’t work. So the Liberals veered left, raising the minimum wage, promising pension reform and crafting a stimulus budget that they thought could win them a majority government.

It was a budget that put them to the left of the NDP.

If the budget put the Liberals to the left of the NDP, the Dippers are now trying to occupy the real estate once claimed by the Liberals:

Yet, under Andrea Horwath, the New Democrats were already shifting rightward. In part, they were following the trend of social democratic parties worldwide, from Britain’s Labour under Tony Blair to France’s Socialists under François Hollande.

In part, they were mimicking the realpolitik of the federal New Democrats led by Jack Layton and Tom Mulcair.

But they were also responding to their own history. The Ontario NDP had formed government under centrist leader Bob Rae but done poorly when his successor, Howard Hampton, took them back to the left. Maybe they’d fare better by again deking right.

And Tim Hudak really deked right. His strategy is to present a stark alternative to the Liberals who, he believes, are stale and tired.  So he offers the Common Sense Revolution 2. But he seems to have forgotten that old saw about common sense: It's like deodorant. Those who need it most don't use it.

In the end, it will be up to Ontarians to decide which party smells best.

In League With The Elite

Carol Goar believes that the NDP has forsaken its traditional role as the champion of the poor. That is the case with Tom Mulcair's federal party. And it certainly is the case with Andrea Horwath's provincial party. Goar writes:

Horwath is following a well-worn path as Star columnist Rick Salutin pointed out last week. Like Tony Blair’s “new” Labour Party, François Hollande’s Socialist Party and Thomas Mulcair’s centrist federal NDP, she is seeking to transform her party into a mainstream alternative. She is not interested in being the conscience of the legislature or the standard-bearer for the principles of J.S. Woodsworth, Tommy Douglas and Stephen Lewis. 

Those who hoped that Horwath would push Kathleen Wynne to move further left have been bitterly disappointed:

So far, the NDP leader has promised to reduce government spending by $600 million a year; cut Ontario’s small business tax to 3 per cent (it is now 4.5 per cent); downsize the provincial cabinet by a third; remove the provincial portion of the HST from hydro bills and hand out $100 per household rebates; stabilize the child care system with a one-time infusion of $100 million; offer companies wage subsidies of up to $5,000 to hire a new worker; raise the minimum wage by 50 cents a year until 2016; increase Ontario’s corporate tax rate by an unspecified amount and balance the budget by 2017-18.

And Horwath rejected a budget that moved Ontario as far to the left as it has been in decades:

She triggered the election by rejecting the most progressive provincial budget in decades, one that would have raised the minimum wage, increased the Ontario Child Benefit, improved welfare rates, and provided more support to people with disabilities. She parted ways with the Ontario Federation of Labour and Unifor, the province’s largest private-sector union.

In its quest for power, any political party has to get close to the big money. The NDP is now firmly aligned with the financial elite.

Hudak's Hallucinations

Tim Hudak has been traveling around Ontario, pledging to create a million jobs by cutting taxes. Linda McQuaig writes that the problem is that Hudak's plan is an hallucination:

But what makes Hudak’s plan veer beyond nutty to insidious is the fact that it’s coupled with a plan to cut 100,000 public sector jobs. (That’s how he plans to pay for the tax cuts that, allegedly, would create the jobs.)

Unlike the imaginary ones, these public sector jobs — mostly in education, health care and social services — are real jobs held by real workers providing real services to real people. This will all go, Hudak pledges boldly.

So Hudak’s job creation plan begins by eliminating 100,000 jobs, leaving him obliged to create even more new jobs — 1.1 million. Since they’re imaginary, this turns out to be easy.

Hudak claims that the Conference Board of Canada has approved his plan. That, too, is an hallucination:

Yes, the PCs did pay the Conference Board to do an analysis. But Pedro Antunes, deputy chief economist at the Conference Board, told me in an interview that the Conference Board is not endorsing the Million Jobs plan — nor did it even see the plan.

Antunes also acknowledged that data produced by the federal Finance department shows that far more jobs are created by government spending than by corporate tax reductions.

For instance, a 2009 Finance department chart estimates that if Ottawa spent $1 billion on support for unemployed and low-income individuals, it would generate 18,755 jobs. The same chart shows that if

Ottawa gave up $1 billion in revenue in corporate income tax reductions, this would create only 3,310 jobs.

In other words, the federal Finance department — not known for progressive economics, particularly in the Harper era — concluded that government spending on the poor and unemployed creates substantially more jobs than cutting corporate taxes.

When I asked Antunes if the same pattern would be true in Ontario, he replied: “You’re absolutely right. There are economic levers that could be bigger than corporate tax cuts.”

It's being kind to call Hudak's plan an hallucination. Some might call it a lie.

Things To Come

The Ontario election is a preview of coming attractions. Tim Harper writes:

It may appear Stephen Harper is being dragged into the Ontario election campaign by responding to goading by Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne.

But Harper was on full combat footing when it came to Wynne’s made-in-Ontario pension plan even before NDP Leader Andrea Horwath forced this campaign on provincial voters.

It is an issue on which Harper had to engage. And one on which he is all too eager to engage.

The cornerstone of Harper's philosophy is you're on your own. He believes that it should be Canadians individual responsibility to save for retirement. Thus, the only commitments you make are to yourself. Wynne's pension plan rests on the basic assumption that we are all in this together. Thus, we not only make commitments to ourselves, we make them to each other.  Unions no longer have the membership or the clout to demand pensions. That responsibility has now become a government responsibility. 

The fight between Wynne and Harper is all about what government should and should not do. That debate will be carried forward to the next election. Harper wants to stage a preemptive strike in Ontario. If he has that province in his pocket, he figures that the next election will go his way.

We shall see.

Rob's Ghost

Rob Ford, we're told, is somewhere in rehab. But his ghost haunts the Ontario Election. John Barber writes that his absence may, for the time being, be a blessing:

Would NDP Leader Andrea Horwath have had the nerve to bring down Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals had Rob Ford not been whisked into guaranteed oblivion mere hours before the budget came down? Attention to any provincial theatrical would have been divided at best as long as Rob Ford remained lurching in the wings, threatening at any moment to swing across the stage scattering cluster bombs of scandal. They are lucky to have it to themselves for the brief period it will take Ford to forgive himself. 

But Ford won't be gone for long. The betting is that he'll be back after thirty days to cause headaches for all the contenders:

Exhibit A would be the nasty grilling poor Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak underwent on budget day, a few hours after he cringed through the infamous audio recording of a blotto Ford damning him for daring to tolerate “the ga-ays.” Unfortunately it all happened behind closed doors, during the budget lock-up, so Ontarians will be spared a full airing of the bizarre half-hour scrum in which Hudak persistently refused to condemn Ford for his hating — and reporters persistently refused to pay the slightest attention to the opposition leader’s views on the biggest story out of Queen’s Park in some time.

Likewise, Andrea Horwath wants to steer clear of Ford:

Andrea Horwath has not only declined to condemn the mayor’s many “missteps,” she alone among provincial leaders stood up for Ford when Premier Wynne refused to meet with him after council stripped his powers. When Ford exploded like a beached whale last Wednesday, Horwath tweeted her best wishes. “Taking a break to deal with his health issues takes courage,” she said.

It was only after a mini-storm of protest by progressive voters, who noted that racism, sexism and homophobia are not “health issues,” that Horwath found the nerve to criticize Ford’s “offensive and hurtful” comments.

And the Fords have made no secret of their contempt for Kathleen Wynne. Ford is the bad smell in the back of every meeting room and every press scrum. Ford is the rot hidden in the cellar. The stench he leaves behind refuses to go away.

Things Could Get Very Nasty

Kathleen Wynne has three opponents in Ontario's election -- Tim Hudak, Andrea Horwath and Stephen Harper. Her budget represents everything that Harper abhors -- government spending to stimulate the economy, an expanded pension plan and higher taxes on the wealthy.

Mr. Harper immediately dismissed the Ontario Pension Plan. And, yesterday, Joe Oliver told Evan Solomon that Wynne's budget  was "the route to economic decline, not the route to economic growth or job creation."

Wynne is a threat to Harper because Ontario's provincial and federal ridings are congruent. Mike Harris engineered that bit of business to, he said, save money. If Wynne  returns as premier, she threatens the very beachhead that Harper worked so hard to establish. That beachhead gave him his majority.

Wynne, for her part, has said that Harper appears to be "taking over the Conservative voice in the Ontario election." If that happens -- and Tim Hudak is seen as Harper's stalking horse -- there could be a wave of revulsion among Ontario voters. Ottawa traditionally has stayed out of provincial elections. The prime minister had nothing to do with the recent Quebec election.

But Stephen Harper has little regard for tradition. And he has a history of smearing those he sees as his enemies. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court it only the latest target of Harper's paranoia. Moreover, Dalton McGuinty left the Prime Minister's Office lots of material to spin.

Before voters go to the polls on June 12th, things could get very nasty.