It's been less than two weeks since Doug Ford became leader of the Ontario PCs, but he's already completely upended the political landscape in the province.
Journalists have been non-stop frothing at the mouth ever since he won the leadership race in Markham ten days ago. Last week Ford spent a lot of time doing the media rounds. Reporters repeatedly attempted to catch Doug in gotcha questions; they tried to suggest he was Trump of the North, brought up his alleged hash dealing from the '80s and mentioned how he got upset at a Toronto City Hall meeting when he was defending his now-deceased brother who was battling addiction at the time. If this is the best they can do, it won't leave a scratch on Ford.
Whenever journalists hound Ford about when he will unveil his new election platform built from scratch, and how he plans to balance the budget without cutting public sector jobs, Ford just sticks to his talking points that he will find savings by finding waste of four cents on the dollar via "efficiencies." It's a clever euphemism Ford's team has struck upon. Every time reporters try and get details he can just defer them to the bloated $8 billion deficit budget the Liberals are running this year, the gargantuan $312 billion provincial debt and the wasted billions spent annually servicing the debt.
Of course, this doesn't give journalists or the public answers on how he actually intends to accomplish getting the deficit under control and start tackling the debt, but he doesn't really need to get into specifics before the writ is dropped. Justin Trudeau was secretive about his policy platform until the election was called, and that worked out just fine for him. Ditto not having a whole lot in the way of policy when he finally did unveil his platform.
All that will really matter to the average voter is that Ford is promising to scrap the carbon tax as well as get the budget and debt under control. In a province where debt, deficits, ever bigger government and tax hikes have become the norm, it'll be a welcome change for fiscal conservatives. Especially when his predecessor of the Ontario PC leadership, Patrick Brown, was veering so left as to be indistinguishable from Wynne. The People's Guarantee — "guarantee" jinxed it from the outset — promised a lot of goodies and no real cuts to the government. On top of it, Brown was going to embrace the carbon tax. This, as well as Brown disowning the so-cons, left most of the members of the party alienated by the former leader.
The PC Party has undergone a renewal since Ford took over. This rejuvenation was on full display Monday night in Etobicoke, where Ford held a "Unity Rally" for the party that saw a couple thousand people strong come show their support for the new leader and party. The turnout was higher and the enthusiasm several times higher than last November's PC Party convention, where Brown unveiled his doomed People's Guarantee. All the more impressive was that Ford's rally was announced only last Friday and the convention last year was planned months in advance. The party now has a leader standing firm for its core principles and this has fired up the base.
Monday's rally also showed a stark contrast between Ford and Wynne/Horwath. The throne speech at Queen's Park took place earlier in the day and hinted at the bag of goodies Wynne's government will officially announce in the $8 billion budget next week. Another bribe to voters was announced on Wednesday, in which the Liberal government promised to spend $575 million to make prescriptions completely free for anyone 65 and older. Expect more and more "free" stuff promised from the OLP in the next few months.
The NDP similarly promised voters the world last weekend at a rally. Horwath is making grand promises like giving full dental coverage to all Ontarians and buying back Hydro One. The only problem is where all this additional money will come from when the NDP would take over the Liberals' unsustainable levels of spending. At least for dental, employers are supposed to foot most of the bill. How they'll be able to do that when many businesses are already struggling with high hydro rates and the minimum wage remains a mystery.
At the very least, Ontarians now have a real choice in the upcoming election. Instead of only having varying degrees of increased socialism from all three parties, now Ontarians can choose from two parties advocating for more and more government intervention or they can choose to go with a party promising to reduce it.
As much as journalists want answers on the specifics from Ford now, the large portion of the electorate concerned with crippling government debt and deficit spending won't care — they'll just be relieved someone is finally calling out the elephant in the room.
Written by Graeme C. Gordon
