What Happened

Martin Regg Cohn has an interesting post mortem of the Ontario election. He concludes that, because the Liberals pulled their bacon out of the fire a couple of times, their fall was destined to be a hard one:

Had the Liberals not risen from the grave in the three previous elections, there would have been far less accumulated animus. Had they lost in 2014, as everyone expected, they likely would have easily retained at least two or three dozen seats, not the historic low of 7 seats.

By surviving previous elections, they postponed the inevitable reckoning — setting the stage for a far harder fall in 2018.

It's important to remember how the Liberal benefited from past Conservative  and NDP mistakes:

In 2007, under an embattled Dalton McGuinty, the Liberals were rescued by the faith-based school funding proposed by then-Progressive Conservative leader John Tory — a political leap of faith voters wouldn’t take. In 2011, an unpopular new PC leader, Tim Hudak, could only reduce the tired Liberals to a minority.

After McGuinty bailed out, Wynne’s ascension allowed the Liberals to fight under the banner of “change” in the 2014 election — promising pension reform and a new kind of politics by the province’s first woman premier. Let’s not forget, however, that Wynne didn’t so much win the election as the Tories lost it under Hudak, while the New Democrats lost their way under Andrea Horwath.

Knowing that Wynne was unpopular, the Liberals concentrated on policy: "promising a $15 minimum wage, Pharmacare for young and old adults, free tuition, and free child care for pre-schoolers."

But the animus against Wynne and the Liberals was simply too strong to overcome:

Voters were beyond buying what Wynne was selling. It mattered little if the experts noted the Liberals had a better child-care proposal than the NDP, because Ontarians tuned them out (or perhaps we’ve learned that most voters aren’t moved by the issue, unless they happen to be on a waiting list for daycare). Even if Wynne had a winning performance in the main televised debate, she was no longer on the scorecard of most voters.

For the Liberals, the election was unwinable. But the truly sad part of the story is that the so called Progressive Conservatives -- under Doug Ford -- won.

Image: Toronto Star

Short-Termism

Susan Delacourt writes that Ontario's election highlights how short voters' attention spans have become. After all, ghosts haunted each of the party leaders:

The ironic part of the past Ontario campaign, as several commentators pointed out, is that all the leaders were contending with ghosts: Kathleen Wynne with the memory of her predecessor, Dalton McGuinty; NDP Leader Andrea Horwath with the old Bob Rae government; and Doug Ford, the new premier-to-be, with memories of the old Mike Harris Conservative years at Queen’s Park.

Attacks along these lines presumed a lot about the long-term memory of voters in the era of short-termism. When last week is a distant memory, who votes based on what happened a couple of decades ago in Ontario?

In years past, those ghosts could have sunk any one of the three leaders. But, in the fifteen years the Liberals assumed in power, many things have changed:

Consider this: the last time that a non-Liberal government was in charge at Queen’s Park, there was no such thing as Facebook (launched in 2004); YouTube (2005); Twitter (2006) or even, yes, iPhones, first unveiled by Steve Jobs in 2007.

In the fall of 2003, when Liberals first took power in Ontario, Stephen Harper hadn’t yet united the right-wing federal parties in Canada and Donald Trump, a New York real-estate magnate, was still months away from the debut of a reality-TV show called The Apprentice.

Trump, in particular, knows how to play on the public's short memory:

In just under 600 days in office, Trump has brazened on through multiple, major scandals and controversy; any one of which might have toppled a predecessor.

Trump gambles, often correctly, that no one will remember what he said previously, so he doesn’t bother much with explanations about when he changes his mind or states the opposite position later.

It’s called populism, as Trump practises it, but it often hinges on a dim view of the populace — particularly with regard to the public attention span. The better description for this brand of politics might be “short-termism.”

Short-termism puts an end to history. And, as George Santayana noted, those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Image: Redbubble

Dark Nights -- And Days -- Ahead

It was a dark night. You could see it coming. But that didn't make digesting the outcome any easier. H.L. Mencken didn't have any respect for the folks Doug Ford calls "the people." Mencken called them "the booboisee." Last night, the people elected a card carrying member of the booboisee. There will be consequences. Michael Harris writes:

Ford’s campaign has been a well-oiled hot mess, despite the machinations on Facebook of the right-wing activist group Ontario Proud. From being on the receiving end of complaints of violating Ontario’s campaign finance rules to appointing candidates rather than holding contested nominations, Ford has shown himself to have all the instincts of his deceased brother — and a few of Donald Trump’s.

Ford also made wild promises to wipe out Ontario’s deficit coupled with enormous tax cuts. How do you pay down the deficit with less revenue? How do you pay for the tax cuts themselves, unless by the tried and true way of cutting services?

Ford’s costings for his promises are about as reliable as a five-year-old’s first go at an abacus.

We've handed the car keys over to a child, who will undoubtedly cause chaos on the province's highways.

Anger is what fuelled Ford's SUV. And when anger pummels reason, we court disaster.

Image: Global News

One Big, Happy Family

The Ontario election took yet another weird turn yesterday, when Renata Ford -- Rob Ford's widow -- sued her two brothers-in-laws for 16.5 million dollars. Kevin Donovan writes in The Toronto Star:

The widow and children of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford are suing his brother Doug Ford, alleging he has deprived them of millions of dollars, including shares in the family business and a life insurance policy left behind to support his family.

In a $16.5-million lawsuit filed Friday in Superior Court, Renata Ford also alleges that former brother-in-law Doug Ford is a “negligent” business manager whose decisions have led to a steady decrease in the value of the Ford company, Deco Labels. Despite setting his sights on a political career, Doug has continued to receive “extravagant compensation,” even though Deco is losing money, Renata claims in her court filings.

Renata Ford alleges that:

when Rob died, she was left with Rob’s shares in Deco. Renata said soon after, brother Doug approached her and suggested they settle the estate without involving lawyers.

“Let’s get rid of the lawyers and settle this on our own,” Renata quotes Doug in her statement of claim. “They will only steal your money. You’re going to lose everything in your savings.”

Renata states in her court filing that she did not follow Doug’s suggestions, nor did she agree to his suggestion that she sell her late husband’s shares to Doug. She says she tried many times to get an accounting of Rob’s estate, but she remains in the dark.

[She claims] that she recently learned that Doug sold Randy Rob’s shares in Deco for a nominal cost of $1. She said she was then provided (the suit does not say who provided it) with a “third party valuation” of the shares and was told they had a “fair market value of zero.”

[She also claims] that when their father ran it, the company was extremely successful, with a market value of $10 million and an “investment portfolio” between $15 million and $20 million.

She alleges that the company has steadily lost value under Doug and Randy, who have been the top officers and directors of Deco since their father died.

“They have so negligently and improperly mismanaged (the business affairs of Deco) as to destroy their value,” she alleges.

According to the statement of claim, financial statements of Deco show Deco Toronto has experienced total losses of about $5 million between 2010 and 2017. Prior to Doug and Randy taking over it was profitable, she said.

Doug's claim to fame is that he knows how to carefully shepherd an economy -- and that, under his leadership, Ontarians will be one big, happy family.

Wanna bet?

Image: Carlos Osorio/Toronto Star

Now, That Was Unexpected

Yesterday, Kathleen Wynne dropped a bombshell. She announced that she knew her party could not win the election; and she asked Ontario voters to give her party a place in a coalition government. Things are looking grim for the Liberals. Some projections have the party winning as few as two seats. They have to win at least eight to retain official status in the legislature.

It's really hard to decipher how things will turn out -- mainly because Ontario's ridings have been redrawn. Robert Drummond writes that there are several possible scenarios:

It’s clear the Liberals can’t recover enough to win a majority of the legislature’s seats, and given the concentration of the NDP vote in particular areas, it would also be surprising as well if the New Democrats won a majority. (Of course, we were surprised in 1990 when the NDP captured a solid majority with under 39 per cent of the popular vote.) If there is a majority government, it seems most likely it will be Conservative.

The possibilities for minority government are much more numerous. Suppose the PCs win a plurality of seats, but not a majority. They would then have a legitimate claim that Ontario’s lieutenant governor should invite Ford to form a government.

Wynne will still be premier until a new government is sworn in. If her party was to make a late surge and hold on to some of its seats, she could ask that the legislature be called into session and could attempt to make an agreement with the NDP (or less likely, the PCs) to hold onto office.

If she winds up in third place in terms of seats however, her claim to continued power would be significantly weaker. The closest (though not perfect) analogy is found after the election of 1985 when the PCs, having lost a majority, asked for the legislature’s confidence in the hopes of continuing to govern.

They had managed minority governments from 1975 to 1981, and might have hoped to do so again. However, David Peterson’s Liberals and Bob Rae’s NDP agreed to withhold confidence from the PC government.

They settled on an accord by which the NDP would agree not to cast non-confidence votes against the Liberal government, headed by Peterson, for two years in return for the Liberals’ agreeing to pursue an agenda on which the two parties could agree.

The problem is that the Dippers remember how that agreement ended. Mr. Peterson called an election, the Dippers were cast aside, and got no credit for the policies they helped shepherd through the legislature.

With that history in mind, "NDP Leader Andrea Horwath has expressly ruled out a coalition with the Liberals, though that position makes sense if you think you can get a majority, but less sense if it means Ford would consequently become premier."

Politics makes strange bedfellows. Stay tuned.

Image: 680 News

The Third Round

Yesterday, Ontarians watched the third and final debate. It was the best of the three encounters. Martin Regg Cohn's observations are pretty accurate:

First, despite the attempts by both the Tories and Liberals to paint the NDP as dangerously radical, Horwath held her own. She not only gave no ground, she gave up precious little air time to Ford and Wynne any time they attacked — interrupting, denying or making her point by laughing out loud.

Second, Ford often looked and sounded ill at ease at times. He seemed short of breath during his opening statement, reverted to frozen smiles under attack, and lapsed into verbal clumsiness at times. But for all the anticipation that he would implode on live TV, he committed no blunders and never lost his cool despite coming under attack from both sides.

Third, Wynne made no breakthroughs in a debate where she needed a miracle to recover lost ground. She had an easier time of it, as the other two leaders went at each other. But she may have made some progress in re-introducing herself to voters who have given up on her these last few years.

Frankly, I thought that Wynne did a pretty good job of defending her record. I suspect that -- in ten years -- that record will look pretty good. But it's clear that her time has passed and the real battle is between Horvath and Ford.

Horvath was not intimidated by Ford, who was simply over the top:

Ford kept proclaiming “My friends” with evangelistic ardour as he looked into the camera and promised “a new day will dawn” when “the people” have their say. And, he warned, “God forbid the NDP takes power,” for the province will “be 10 times worse under the NDP” — a phrase he repeated perhaps 10 times.

Ford is -- politically, at least -- a simpleton who is out of his depth. But, if the present seat projections are correct, he could win a majority by a couple of seats. Which puts Mike Shriner, the leader of the Green Party of Ontario, into the mix. He was not on the stage last night. But he seems to be polling pretty well in Guelph, where he is running. If the count is close, Shriner could be the queen maker.

Stay tuned.

Image: Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press

On The Rise

Andrea Horvath's political stock is on the rise. Tom Walkom writes:

A funny thing happened on the way to the June 7 election. The voters discovered in New Democratic Party leader Andrea Horwath another alternative to Wynne.

What’s more, to so-called progressive voters, Horwath seemed to offer the best of both worlds.

Her party’s platform, with its commitment to pharmacare, child care and denticare was similar to that of Wynne. But Horwath herself was not a member of the discredited governing party.

In effect, she offered voters Liberalism without the Liberals.

Ontarians are tired of the Liberals. Their numbers aren't moving anywhere. But, while Horvath's numbers are rising, Doug Ford's numbers are falling -- because he avoids talking costs:

His broad economic plans, such as they are, reflect the standard Conservative trinity of tax cuts, spending cuts and deregulation.

He has fleshed out his proposed tax moves, which include a 1.5 percentage point cut in the corporate tax rate, a marginal cut in the small business tax rate, a cut in the personal income tax rate for middle and upper income earners and a reduction in gasoline taxes. 

But he has not revealed how he plans to cut $5.6 billion in government spending without affecting jobs.

Ford is haunted by the ghost of Tim Hudak, who, the last time around, made a basic arithmetic error when projecting job growth. So Ford isn't talking job growth -- or job losses -- at all.

Having been conned once, Ontarians refuse to be conned again. And Ford knows it.

There are still two weeks to go. But Ontario may soon be the third province with an NDP government.

Image: The Ontario Federation Of Labour

Math Challenged

Over the weekend, it emerged that Ontario's NDP had made an error when costing the party's platform. Adam Radwanski writes:

As Ontarians were settling into their long weekends, perhaps discussing among themselves whether they should for once consider voting for an NDP government on June 7, news came of a very basic math error in the party’s platform – one that meant it had accidentally low-balled its deficit projections by $1.4-billion annually.

Doug Ford has been announcing all kinds of tax cuts. But he has refused to release a costed platform:

The Tories have been more quiet than one might expect of a party with a reputation for fiscal hawkishness. Possibly that has something to do with Mr. Ford declining to present a costed platform, nor even to detail a single cost-saving proposal while promising many billions of dollars in new expenditures and tax cuts. 

And  Kathleen Wynne is at odds with the auditor general, who claims the Liberals have significantly underestimated their projected deficit:

Enter Ms. Wynne’s Liberals, who have made a more concerted effort to highlight the NDP’s bad arithmetic. The governing party, now running third, is in a continuing battle with the province’s Auditor-General, who accuses it of low-balling deficit projections by about $5-billion. That may be more a dispute over accounting practices than a math mistake, but it makes for an easy NDP rebuttal when the Liberals go after them – as does a general sense that the Liberals have managed finances in recent years more to meet political imperatives than out of any great responsibility to the bottom line.

It would appear that all three parties are math challenged. The numbers are supposed to tell the story. But whose numbers do you believe?

Image: kidsarithmatic.com

A Fact Full Election?

Last week, Bob Rae told a crowd of distinguished dignitaries, "Facts matter. Our politics needs to understand and respect this." Robin Sears wonders if Ontarians do understand this:

Like travelling medicine shows and revival preachers of old, their caravan booms noise and angry rhetoric but leaves little behind as it heads for the next town. A fact-free campaign of glaring contradiction can work for an established front runner with deep party roots and a following wind. That is not Doug Ford, nor this campaign. So far, he has promised nearly $30 billion in slashed taxes and expenditures – and, unacknowledged, thousands of job cuts as a result. Not even remotely clear is how this snake oil will work. Facts, apparently, do not matter.

It is, indeed, a strange election:

To some political veterans, 2018 feels like 1985 trending to 1990. For the ’85 campaign, the Tories made an unwise leadership selection to defend their 42-year governing record, opening the door to David Peterson and Rae. Then Peterson, spooked for no good reason other than his fear of a tanking economy, called an early election in 1990. Voters were not amused. As much as his own victory, Rae’s triumph was a rejection of the Tories and irritation with Peterson’s presumption.

Today, it appears the Tories would have won safely under either of the two women candidates they rejected in favour of vacuous populism. Having chosen the angry option, they have given credence to the Horwath taunt, “You don’t need to choose between bad and worse, there’s an alternative.” The NDP slate is the most gender-balanced but also the least experienced. Success outside the party’s areas of traditional strength will be almost entirely on Horwath’s coattails.

But leadership coat tails delivered all of the big election victories from Peterson through Rae, Harris and Wynne. The May 27 debate will be pivotal as grumpy voters, deciding what kind of change they really want, will get their last chance to see the leaders do battle. On the strength of the first two debates — one amateurish show in the first week and then the Northern debate — the Ford debate team should be working overtime.

And everything will hinge on turnout.

Image: City News Toronto

Horvath May Be The Next Premier

Andrea Horvath is on a roll. Martin Regg Cohn writes:

This time, unlike last time, the New Democrats are putting forward voter-friendly policies such as partial pharmacare and cheaper child care. While their platform has echoes of the Liberal program — with the notable exception of an NDP promise of dental benefits for all — the pitch is backed by a far more popular salesperson.

Like the late federal NDP leader Jack Layton, Horwath is casting herself as a happy warrior pitching hope, not fear or anger. But the prerequisite for the NDP’s high hopes is that the Liberals be seen as having no hope, that instead of a three-way race it’s strictly a two-way contest pitting New Democrats against Tories — with the Liberals disqualified from the start.

The Ford campaign stands accused of buying the stolen identities harvested from a hack of the company which manages Highway 407, the private toll road the last Conservative government sold off to reduce the province's deficit. Apparently, the party was planning to pay international students to vote under the stolen identities.

Kathleen Wynne is running in third place. Nevertheless, Horwath has her problems:

After nine years as leader, she is comfortable with reporters and practiced at the role of opposition leader, but can be less forthcoming under questioning — whether it’s her vague child-care plan, an impossible promise to magically buy back Hydro One, or how she’d balance labour disputes against the public interest.

Horwath remains mindful of keeping her union base happy. On the eve of the campaign, the NDP blocked a Liberal government attempt to legislate an end to a two-month strike at York University, as recommended by an outside labour investigator who concluded it was hopelessly deadlocked and required arbitration.

Asked at a campaign event whether an NDP government would ever legislate the striking York teaching staff back to work, Horwath changes the subject to government funding. Asked again about how to resolve the labour dispute that affected 50,000 students, she still won’t say. Asked a third time, Horwath insists she has answered the question, though of course she hasn’t.

How it will all shake out is unclear. The campaign began with Doug Ford looking unbeatable. Now it's beginning to look like the premier might be a woman -- who leads either a majority or a minority government.

Stay tuned.

Image: FRANK GUNN / THE CANADIAN PRESS

A Very Select Few

The Conservative Party of Ontario prefers cult to policy. That's increasingly obvious in the Ontario election. Martin Regg Cohn writes:

At a Doug Ford rally, the leader is always late, leaving extra time for his populist anthem to penetrate your being. A throbbing earworm that burrows deep inside your consciousness.

“Bring us hope, bring us change,” the theme song exhorts.

The crowd is warmed up to overheating as the anthem choruses, “For the people! Hey!”

That's Ford's pitch. He's a man of the people:

Ford fires up the crowd with stirring rhetoric about hydro rip-offs, a promise to rip up Ontario’s sex education curriculum, a pledge to axe any carbon tax, and a vow to cut taxes for the people.

For Ford Nation, the words are music to the ear. Not to mention that earworm.

Amid the mesmerizing messaging, however, there are clues that this is not a traditional Progressive Conservative campaign rally. Listen closely, and look at the telltale signs, for this is emphatically a Doug Ford election event.

“It’s bigger than one party,” the leader stresses, repeating the phrase for emphasis. “This is about the people.”

The people, not the party. Another clue comes from the signage at the podium, which makes no mention of the Tories.

Instead, a blue, red and white sign at the lectern says it all — all that needs to be said — in big bold letters: “Doug Ford for the people.”

There is nary a PC placard to be found, no true-blue Tories in their official colours. The old Progressive Conservative Party, whose leadership Ford captured in an upset victory last March, has been subsumed and consumed by Ford Nation.

In Ontario, populism is running amok. What will "the people" do when they discover that the people in Doug Ford's world are a very select few?

Image: The Toronto Sun

He's A Fraud

Efficiencies. That's the word Doug Ford is using instead of "cuts." That's because he -- or his party -- have learned something from the last time around. Linda McQuaig writes:

Former Conservative leader Tim Hudak went into the last Ontario election humming the familiar right-wing refrain about government waste and inefficiency. But he made things specific: he said he'd eliminate 100,000 public sector jobs, thereby cutting government spending by $2 billion, allowing him to lower corporate taxes.

The private sector, brimming with confidence, would then create one million jobs, Hudak claimed. Wherever he spoke, he stood in front of a billboard proclaiming his "Million Jobs Plan."

But as the economist Jim Stanford soon pointed out, Hudak had made some math errors, including multiplying by eight when he shouldn't have multiplied at all.

Ford claims he will not eliminate one public sector job. But, when you plan to reduce spending by $6 billion, it's obvious that people who work in healthcare and education will lose jobs. And the folks on welfare will also get less money. Mike Harris showed Ontarians how that was done:

It's worth recalling that Harris took a meat cleaver to welfare benefits -- cutting them by 21.6 per cent in 1995.

The Liberals, who've held power for 15 years, initially restored a small amount of what Harris took away, but have allowed inflation to eat that. (They've promised to do more, if re-elected.)

But today, a single Torontonian on welfare receives $721 a month -- enough to live a marginal, near-homeless existence. Indeed, as social policy analyst John Stapleton notes, today's welfare rate, in real dollars, is actually lower than the incredibly low rate put in place by Mike Harris.

Doug claims he stands like a rock with the little guy. But, if you're on welfare, he doesn't have your back. He's got a target on it.

However, if you're a corporation -- corporations seem to be people these days -- Ford will cut your taxes. He's  all about Orwellian language, avoiding the press and avoiding the numbers.

Because the numbers prove he's a fraud.

Image: Canada.com

The Old Paradigm

In Ontario, the conventional wisdom dictates that elections are won in the middle. That wisdom goes all the way back to the 1940's, when the Progressive Conservatives won 12 consecutive elections. Steve Paikin writes:

In 1943, the Tories had a 49-year-old war veteran named George Drew (born 124 years ago today) as their leader. He was the first politician to speak of a “Big Blue Machine,” one that would fan out across the province, capturing constituency after constituency. And for the next 42 years, that’s pretty much what happened. The Tories occupied the broad middle of the political spectrum. To their left was the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation — the party that in the early 1960s would morph into the NDP. The Liberals were, despite their name, a more rural, conservative party.

As long as the Tories could hang on to the middle, thereby splitting the votes of their critics between the other two parties, they could continue to win elections. And that’s what they did, on 12 consecutive occasions between 1943 and 1985.

When the Tories moved right and aped Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, David Peterson -- with the help of Bob Rae -- moved into the middle. Mike Harris campaigned like a centrist and replaced Peterson. But his policies moved Ontario starkly to the right. Then Dalton McGuinty moved into the middle and replaced Harris.

But these days, the middle seems to have disappeared:

One of the things that makes this 2018 election campaign so interesting is that none of the major political parties today seems at all interested in seizing the middle. Both the Liberals and the New Democrats are vying to be the more left-wing party, each trying to offer a more interventionist platform than the other. And curiously, the PCs under Doug Ford seem content to define their conservatism in more right-wing, populist terms — consistent with the new leader’s “Ford Nation” branding.

Ironically, this opens up a large gap in the middle where pollsters tell us elections are usually won. Former PC leader Patrick Brown understood this: he tried to coax his fellow Tories away from the fringes and more toward the centre of the political spectrum. He was mostly successful at doing so, although the hold-outs (social conservatives, anti-carbon-tax types, etc.) certainly made lots of noise.

Andrea Horwath also understood that in 2014, when she tried to move her party toward the middle by offering tax cuts to small businesses and promising to find $600 million in spending cuts — two very un-NDP-like planks in the platform. Her problem was, she couldn’t bring her troops along with her. Too many NDP grassroots members don’t care about winning but about staying true to their socialist principles. That’s perfectly fine, except that the disconnect was apparent for all to see — and it hurt Horwath’s chances of winning.

In fairness, Ford is in some senses trying to have it both ways. He wants to stay true to his populist, right-wing roots, while at the same time flirting with more moderate Ontarians. That’s surely why he backtracked on his pledge to allow development in the Greenbelt and has tried to assure people that if he wins, there will be no massive downsizing of the public sector — something that former PC leader Tim Hudak pledged to do during the 2014 campaign.

Nevertheless, Ford’s core message of tax cuts, taking a step back on fighting climate change, and finding billions of dollars in so-called efficiencies has left many in the centre at best suspicious and at worst alarmed.

To be sure, some will vote for the Green Party, which has tried to advance some centrist policies — but the Greens have neither the money nor the megaphone to cut through. 

So where does that leave us? In uncharted territory. The old paradigm seems to be broken.

Image: TVO

An I.Q. Test

Michael Harris writes that the Ontario election is an I.Q. test for voters. And the question is, "What will voters do with a tired government that has been around for 15 years and wants another term?"

There is no doubt that the Liberals are getting long in the tooth. But the cure  can be worse than the disease. Harris reviews recent history:

Revulsion at corruption in the latter years of Jean Chrétien’s government after the AdScam affair earned the Liberals the boot. Paul Martin paid for Chrétien’s sins — and the country got Stephen Harper for nine long years of authoritarian democracy-bashing, lies, war, and assault on the environment.

In the U.S., there are two germane examples. Bill Clinton couldn’t keep his zipper up and then lied his brains out about the women he used to pleasure himself.

The spectacle of this privileged Pinocchio of the left pretending on national television that little lambkins didn’t know what sex was became a laughingstock. Al Gore paid for the peccadilloes of the president and the U.S. got George W. Bush — wars, torture, and all — for eight long years.

And, most recently, there has been the ascension of Donald Trump -- a man who is all ego and no brain.

If the polls are accurate, Doug Ford will be Ontario's premier. Again, recent history should be instructive:

With Doug, you are getting the remaining half of the Ford brothers tag team. The one that terrorized and degraded city hall in that brief period when Toronto became known around the world as the metropolis where the mayor smoked crack cocaine when he wasn’t knocking back the booze or knocking down matronly ladies in raucous council meetings.

You are getting a guy who wants to kill Ontario’s carbon tax, which is quite strange since there isn’t one. Cap-and-trade, which does exist, is clearly something he doesn’t understand.

You are getting a politician so thoughtless that he proposed dealing with Ontario’s affordable housing crisis by developing “a big chunk” of Toronto’s Greenbelt. The idea was so stupid that even Ford withdrew it a few days later.

You are getting a guy with a documented past as a drug dealer, as outlined in a major investigative report by the Globe and Mail. That report has never been refuted or the subject of legal action.

Voters have four options. They can elect Ford, or Wynne or Horvath. Or they can elect a minority government -- which should put all three leaders on notice. So the question remains. How smart are Ontario voters?

Image: ipolitics

Youth: The Wild Card

When it comes to elections, a lot has been written about the apathy of the young. Recent polling in Ontario suggests that apathy may no longer be the default position for millennials. Martin Regg Cohn writes:

Among those aged 18 to 24, only one in three (34 per cent) said they bothered to vote back in 2014, according to surveys conducted for the Toronto Star by the polling firm Campaign Research. But as Ontario’s June 7 election looms, there may be something in the air that makes young voters rise up.

A new analysis of the polling data suggests today’s millennials are more mindful of democracy than commonly thought: A remarkable 43 per cent indicated they were “extremely likely” to vote next month, and a further 34 per cent “very likely” this time (a less reliable barometer, but still promising).

Taken together, those numbers suggest far more voters aged 18 to 24 could participate, making them a wild card in the June 7 election, according to online panels totalling 8,065 eligible Ontario voters, with a margin of error of 1.1 per cent.

“Millennials are more global-centric and issues-based,” Campaign Research CEO Eli Yufest told me. “Social issues resonate more with millennials aged 18 to 24.”

Right now, polls are suggesting that Doug Ford will be Ontario's next premier. But my hunch is that the young are not in Ford's camp. Their issues are not Ford's issues:

Education and issues such as sex education, LGBTQ and abortion rights are dramatically more important for young people than other age groups (where they barely register), according to the data. Youth are also more inclined to vote in federal versus provincial elections where they are attracted to global issues, suggesting that concerns over global warming could have an impact in the coming campaign.

Indeed, young people are far more likely than older adults to say they’d be motivated by an “issue, politician or party that I feel strongly about” — which perhaps explains the jump for Justin Trudeau’s cannabis plank, but also suggests susceptibility to a provincial election where carbon pricing is a flashpoint or PC Leader Doug Ford and Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne are lightning rods.

Millennials also appear less cynical than older voters, perhaps a vestige of youthful idealism: Young people are one-third less likely to say they didn’t vote because they “don’t trust politicians,” and are far less inclined to say that politicians are “just in it for themselves.”

I'm not sure if they would vote for Kathleen Wynne or Andrea Horwath. But a youthful wave for either Wynne or Horwath could radically change Ontario's electoral map. If the young don't show up at the polls, there will probably be a Ford in the premier's office. But if the young do turn out, Mr. Ford's path to victory is not so certain.

Image: The Toronto Star

An Empty Barrel

Back in  February, Doug Ford told a a private gathering that he was going to open up the Greenbelt -- which surrounds Toronto -- to housing development. Fortunately, what he said was caught on tape. And it created a firestorm. Edward Keenan writes:

It was a pledge he made privately in February, captured on video and released on Monday. When it first emerged, Ford defended the comments, and his position was initially defended by Progressive Conservative supporters under the impression it must be a carefully considered policy position. By the end of the day, he was pledging unequivocally to be the Greenbelt’s biggest defender. “The people have spoken, we won’t touch the Greenbelt. Very simple. That’s it, the people have spoken. I’m going to listen to them, they don’t want me to touch the Greenbelt. We won’t touch the Greenbelt. Simple as that,” he said.

Keenan has Ford's number:

Doug Ford says things. A lot of things. Often unexpected things.

He says them confidently, and forcefully. He conveys certainty.

This doesn’t mean he has given much, or any, prior thought to these things he says. It doesn’t mean he even knows whether those things he says are true or not. It doesn’t mean the things he says will help him. It doesn’t mean the things he says today will be the same as the things he says tomorrow.

And that's just the point. Ford is one of those empty barrels that makes a lot of noise. And he's been making a lot of noise for a long time:

Many people looking back on the Ford years at city hall will remember a couple of years of drug scandal. But those of us who were paying close attention before that will remember that Rob Ford’s mayoralty had entirely derailed well before any hint of drug abuse was reported. Much of how he’d lost control of the city council and its agenda involved his big brother Doug saying things. Opening his mouth and confidently firing a missile into the hull of Rob’s ship.

The Ferris Wheel on the Port Lands is an obvious example. About six months into Rob’s administration, in a series of media interviews, Doug Ford surprised everyone by unveiling a wild-eyed proposal to scrap decades of development planning for Toronto’s derelict port area and replace it with a developer-led malls-and-attractions scheme. Doug Ford’s salesmanship of the hastily concocted proposal was so successful that it was abandoned entirely by both Ford brothers within weeks, and in the process it managed to mobilize a massive movement against Ford and turn some previous council allies against him.

The libraries episode may be even more on point. The city was, at mayor Ford’s urging (and under the banner of “finding efficiencies”), going over a department-by-department cost-cutting audit. This was contentious enough, sparking widespread defences of things like snowplowing and fluoridating water that were suddenly up for discussion.

What wasn’t really up for serious discussion, at that point, was the library system, among the most-used and most beloved city services. The possibility of cutting its budget and closing branches was mentioned in a report alongside other unlikely possibilities like selling the zoo and Exhibition Place. But it wasn’t something the mayor was proposing.

Enter Doug Ford’s mouth: he started saying that there were more libraries in his ward than Tim Horton’s franchises (that this wasn’t true is likely beside the point) and that he’d close a bunch of libraries in “a heartbeat.” Most of us remember what happened after that. An insult contest with Margaret Atwood. All-night meetings featuring long lines of people begging that no libraries be shut and most other services spared. A city council rebellion after that during which many of Ford’s proposed budget cuts were scrapped and he started routinely losing major votes. There’s a straight line from there to city council overruling the Ford transit plan.

If Ford becomes premier of Ontario, you can expect more of the same.

Image: The Toronto Star

Ford's Definition Of Change

Doug Ford became the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party by forming an alliance with Tanya Granic Allen. Martin Regg Cohn writes:

Homophobia. Islamophobia. Anti-abortion hysteria and harassment. Demonizing gay marriage.

Lord knows, and Ford knows, the camp of Granic Allen — an anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-Muslim, burka-baiting candidate — put him over the top in last month’s leadership vote. No Tanya, no Tory leadership triumph.

When Tanya speaks, Doug listens — as he did during the party’s leadership debates by enthusiastically endorsing her demands to “repeal” the sex-ed curriculum (and embracing her vows to rip out all wind turbines in the province).

When the kingmaker demands a seat at the table, the king makes way — allowing her to seek the party nomination in Mississauga Centre, then sending warm good wishes after her victory last weekend. Far from barring her as an outlier, Ford blessed his comrade in arms and partner in populism.

Who is Granic Allen?

She told Sun News in 2013, a decade after Ontario legalized same-sex marriage, that it was the “demise of society.” And yet society has survived.

She speaks of an “abortion holocaust,” comparing the founder of Planned Parenthood to the fomenter of the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler, according to the National Post.

In 2014, she retweeted an image of mayoral candidate Olivia Chow caricatured as the founder of Communist China, Mao Zedong, with a caption referring to socialist “parasites.”

In a 2013 blog, she mused, “The niqab and burka … are masks which cover the face. I don’t believe people should dress like ninjas … bank robbers.”

They both deal in vulgarities:

To be clear, Ford hasn’t publicly uttered all the words spoken by Granic Allen, notwithstanding his record of vulgarisms when denigrating people who annoyed or challenged him (calling a female reporter a “little bitch,” or complaining a home for autistic teens had “ruined” the community). The so-called straight shooter has played a double game of first embracing Granic Allen, and only later distancing himself — but never denouncing her hateful words.

Ford says she's going to bring change to Ontario. It's pretty clear -- to anyone who is only half concious -- what kind of change that will be.

Image: The Toronto Star

We Don't Need No Education

That's the title of Paul Krugman's column in this morning's New York Times. This spring, in several states, teachers strikes are springing up like dandelions. Krugman explains what's been happening:

So what happens when hard-line conservatives take over a state, as they did in much of the country after the 2010 Tea Party wave? They almost invariably push through big tax cuts. Usually these tax cuts are sold with the promise that lower taxes will provide a huge boost to the state economy.

This promise is, however, never — and I mean never — fulfilled; the right’s continuing belief in the magical payoff from tax cuts represents the triumph of ideology over overwhelming negative evidence.

For a great majority of states are required by law to balance their budgets. This means that when tax receipts plunge, the conservatives running many states can’t do what Trump and his allies in Congress are doing at the federal level — simply let the budget deficit balloon. Instead, they have to cut spending.

How, after all, can governments save money on education? They can reduce the number of teachers, but that means larger class sizes, which will outrage parents. They can and have cut programs for students with special needs, but cruelty aside, that can only save a bit of money at the margin. The same is true of cost-saving measures like neglecting school maintenance and scrimping on school supplies to the point that many teachers end up supplementing inadequate school budgets out of their own pockets.

At the national level, earnings of public-school teachers have fallen behind inflation since the mid-1990s, and have fallen even more behind the earnings of comparable workers. At this point, teachers earn 23 percent less than other college graduates. But this national average is a bit deceptive: Teacher pay is actually up in some big states like New York and California, but it’s way down in a number of right-leaning states.

Ontario, during the Mike Harris years, lived through the same phenomena. My family and I lived through two strikes. Harris was himself a failed teacher and his Minister of Education was a high school drop out. I suspect that, if Doug Ford is elected premier, history will repeat itself. Mr. Ford and his brother Rob are and were not noted for their stellar educations.

I have an obvious bias on this issue. But it seems clear -- at least to me -- that when the uneducated attain power, education is not a priority.

Image: The Tyee

Ontario And The Rest Of Canada

The Liberals held a convention in Halifax this week. Policy ideas -- like legalizing sex work -- were discussed. But, Susan Delacourt writes, if you want to know what policies the Liberals are considering for the next election, look to the Ontario election on June 7th:

Basic income and pharmacare were big topics on Parliament Hill this week, not because the Halifax convention is looming, but because those ideas are being tested right now by Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government at Queen’s Park.

The parliamentary budget officer issued his price tag for an Ontario-style basic income all over Canada ($76 billion a year) on Tuesday. The next day, the Commons health committee issued its report on a national pharmacare program (also potentially expensive).

In a matter of weeks, all of Ontario will be plunged into a provincial election in which these pharmacare, basic income and other big policy ideas are going to be an important part of the debate. You can bet that the Ontario election will be a far bigger topic of conversation in the corridors at Halifax than the resolutions on the convention floor.

Chances are, the prime minister and his fellow Liberals are very keen to see how their provincial cousins, and their ideas, are going to fare in the coming Ontario election.

So what happens in  Ontario will find its way onto the national stage. And things are already turning nasty here.

Something to think about.

Image: Liberal Party of Canada

Don't Believe It

California Governor Jerry Brown visited Ontario this week. He's worried that the province will back track on its promise to fight climate change. Tom Walkom writes:

The governor has harnessed his power as a populist-environmentalist to lead the crusade against global warming — by pushing back against the climate-denier-in-chief in the White House. But he fears Donald Trump’s thinking is contaminating Ontario, just as the poison of carbon infects the province.

“It would be a tragedy if Ontario attempts to go backward,” Brown warns in an interview.

There is an obligation to “reduce carbon poison in the economy of Canada and the economy of the world — we’re all in it together,” he tells me, after inviting me to hop in his car for the ride to the legislature where he will meet Lt.-Gov. Elizabeth Dowdeswell (herself an expert on global warming).

“Time is a-wasting.”

That was the message he wanted to deliver to the Ontario Legislature. But he didn't get the chance:

In an unprecedented move, the opposition Progressive Conservatives refused to let Brown address the legislature.

Given that California boasts the world’s sixth largest economy and is a major trading partner at a time of NAFTA upheaval, the snub came as a surprise. Instead of addressing MPPs from all parties, Brown encountered a province poised to vote in a new premier, Doug Ford, who vows to dismantle Ontario’s cap and trade alliance with California and who has suspended his own Progressive Conservative Party’s recent promise of a carbon tax.

Brown knows something about populist politics -- both the good and the bad. Forty years ago he ran for president. He's now in his fourth term as governor of California. In California, they've reached a consensus on climate change:

He wants to get the message out that California is leading the charge against Trump, and that Canadians have joined hands with his state in a linked, market-based cap and trade program to lower greenhouse gas emissions at the lowest possible cost to the private sector. It was a Republican idea, embraced by his predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, as the best way to achieve their bipartisan environmental goals.

Brown understands the existential threat. "“This isn’t for me,” the aging governor likes to say. “I’m going to be dead. It’s for you.”

Doug Ford will tell you that what he's doing, he's doing for you. Don't believe it.

Image: The Toronto Star