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Month: June 2018

There will be immediate tax relief. The size and scope of government will decrease. The CEO of Hydro One will be fired

Ontarians have been ready for a while to turf out Premier Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals, after 15 years of ineffective political rule and economic mismanagement.  The only uncertainty was whether they would choose Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford or New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath to lead the province in a new direction.

After an election campaign full of wicked highs and lows, the voters ultimately sided with the party of small government, lower taxes, economic liberty and fiscal responsibility.

Ford and the PCs won 76 out of 124 seats, ahead of the NDP (40 seats), Liberals (seven seats) and Greens (one seat).  The PCs won 40.5 per cent of the popular vote, followed by the NDP (33.56 per cent), Liberals (19.59 per cent) and Greens (4.6 per cent).

Some people immediately questioned how the PCs could have earned a 13-seat majority when nearly 60 per cent of the province voted against them.  But the first-past-the-post electoral system only rewards the party winning the largest number of seats.  Popular support serves as a potential indicator, not the determining factor.

Wynne certainly knows this.  Her party won 58 out of 107 seats in the 2014 election, which moved the minority Liberal government back into majority status.  Yet this was accomplished with only 38.65 per cent of the popular vote.

Regardless, Ford won a majority under the current electoral system and will become the province's 26th premier on June 29.

What will Ford's Ontario look like?

That's a tough question to answer.  The PCs have to take their election platform, Plan For The People, which isn't full costed, and determine how much of it can be implemented in the current economic climate.

Nevertheless, it's possible to predict some basic political ideas and financial concepts that the incoming government will consider.

There will be immediate tax relief for Ontarians.  Personal income tax rates will be reduced and the corporate tax rate will drop from 11.5 per cent to 10.5 per cent.  There will also be a reduction to the small business tax rate.  This will help reduce the overall provincial tax burden, give people more take-home pay and encourage more spending to keep the economic engine chugging along.

The size and scope of government will gradually decrease.  This will lead to trimming the fat in the bureaucracy, more streamlined services, greater efficiencies in the public sector and a significant reduction in government interference.  For those who have been furious that big government existed in Ontario under the Liberals, things are going to change.

Private sector involvement will be heavily encouraged.  Tax credits for new and existing businesses will surely be considered, as well as rolling out the welcome mat for international investment.  Innovation will be rewarded, as well as financial models that reinvigorate Ontario's shattered economic status.  This will hopefully result in many new job and financial opportunities.

Public spending will be more prudent.  An extra $5 billion has been earmarked for transit.  There will be rebates for child care services, more money for public education and additional funding for autism services.  These spending measures, and others, will help Ontario families and their children feel more secure that their tax dollars are being spent wisely and efficiently.

Meanwhile, Ford's "buck a beer" plan will reduce the minimum price floor, make the cost more affordable and increase competition.

The carbon tax will be challenged in Ontario, and Ford can hopefully work with other provinces like Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta (depending on next year's provincial election) to oppose the federal Liberal government's strategy.

The sex curriculum will be repealed and rewritten down the road.

As well, the chief executive officer of Hydro One, along with its board members, will be fired as quickly as possible.

If Ford tackles most of these issues in his first 100 days in office, he'll be well on his way to political success in Ontario.  Let's see what happens.

Troy Media columnist and political commentator Michael Taube is also a Washington Times contributor, Canadian Jewish News columnist, and radio and TV pundit.  He was also a speechwriter for former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.

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Oh, come on.  You thought it was over?  You thought that removing the Liberals was going to usher in a period of quiet, where Ford's seasoned team subtly guides him away from Trumpian excesses and the NDP continues to try and build on the gains they made?  Sorry to disappoint, but we're not through with the crazy by a long shot.

You can already see the storm clouds gathering, even as  Tabatha Southey dismissing the more moderate elements of the PC Party as Ford enablers.  Stephen Maher channeling the ghost of electoral reform.  Calls for Ford to deny the Liberals official party status.

Of course, Team PC is trying to put their best foot forward, by standing with Jason Kenney and Trudeau against Trump (he can't BE Trump if he OPPOSES Trump, right? right??????), by speaking out against anti-Israel rhetoric on al-Quds day, and by getting down to work with those high-profile, resume-strong MPP-elects in his new caucus.  All meant to calm the waters after a tumultuous election, and also to help the electorate forget all about those slow-boiling Ford scandals and lawsuits that cropped up during the campaign.

Unfortunately, these cooler heads within the PC fold overestimate their ability to prevail.  How soon they forget the Harper years, where everything the man did to advance his agenda was loudly opposed, and how soon they forget their own excesses of rhetoric during the 15 years of Liberal rule a learned habit which will be harder to break than they think despite being on the other side of the aisle.  Add to that Ford's learning curve if a curve is even possible with him and the likelihood that the PC's will do something, intentionally or otherwise, to make the anti-Ford forces rise up in full witch-hunt mode becomes higher and higher.

And even if Ford somehow pulls off the unlikely feat of out-Bill Davis-ing Bill Davis, those campaign scandals will no doubt be vigorously prosecuted by the new Opposition with the intent, or certainly the effect, of creating our very own Canadian knockoff of the Mueller investigation.

We'd all love to hope otherwise, but there is absolutely no chance the NDP will take the high road of quietly organizing, or working for the benefit of the province.  Instead, Ontarians will get all scandal-mongering, all the time.  Remember that, after a whole campaign spent trying to appear Ready To Lead, Andrea Horwath finally dropped the pretence and waded into the muck in the dying days of the campaign, commenting  to no discernable benefit and a possible loss on Renata Ford's lawsuit against Premier-to-be Doug.

Why?  For the same reason the commentariat is pulling at straws to find an explanation for how we got here.  The temptation to take partisan advantage proved too great.  The barely concealed hatred for Ford justified as it may be bled through.  And to be quite honest, it's better in the long run for the NDP to own their hatred of Doug Ford and the Ontari-archy he represents.

The PC's, whether they want to admit it or not, won because they owned what they were.  Whatever the PC Party of Ontario was in 1985, it is Doug Ford and Ford Nation now, for better or for worse.  And, perhaps it was Ford Nation, or whatever passed for Ford Nation, back in 1985, rather than the moderate paragon that nostalgia has made it out to be.  None remain who know, or will tell.

And the NDP, who in last week's election elected the woman who called a Toronto Police Chief a filthy, racist epithet, the Leap Manifesto endorser, the guy who held up the "F**k the Police" sign, and the woman who openly published stuff on her Tumbr that isn't too far away from the language used at Al-Quds Day, are much closer than they were before the writ dropped to being the NDP that they have always really been underneath their mask.

The province of Ontario has been ill-served in the past few decades by pretending it's something that it isn't.  Before it can dig itself out of the ditch, it needs to take a good, long, honest look in the mirror.  The longer spent delaying, the more times we'll lurch back from calm into chaos.

Written by Josh Lieblein

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.

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It was almost like clockwork.  The moment that Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives won Thursday night's election, the tweets and thinkpieces started fast and furious about how this was once again proof that our electoral system is "broken" and that we need electoral reform to ensure that a party that got 40 percent of the vote gets 100 percent of the power.  It is, of course, patently ridiculous and smacks entirely of sore loserism, but it's worth unpacking some of these arguments a little.

First off, the notion that you want electoral reform to keep certain parties out of power is blatantly undemocratic.  These kinds of arguments are always absurd on their face, but they're usually accompanied by some undemocratic undercurrents in other subtle ways.  The argument, usually put forward by left-leaning parties and their supporters, is that these parties would get together and form nice leftist coalitions that would do great, progressive things, and there will be harmony across the land, and solar panels on everyone's home, and most of all, there will be no "policy swings" that will undo the work of previous governments because you have more parties involved in making those policies in the first place.  While ignoring the current situation in Europe where nice leftist coalitions aren't forming governments, the notion about "policy swings" is somewhat undemocratic because it assumes that there is only one direction that policy should ever travel in, and it also gives the assumption that there is no value to be placed on the ability to hold a government to account for its policy direction and actions.  As I am so fond of pointing out, one of the most important things that we need to remember is that elections are not only about choosing new representatives, but it's also about holding them to account, and there was very much a sense of that when it came to the Ontario Liberals.

With this suspicion about motives on the table, let's look at the construction of their arguments.  First of all, they will throw around the popular vote share that a party that gets 40 percent of the vote gets to form a majority government.  That 40 percent figure, however, is a logical fallacy.  It can't exist because a general election is not a single event it was 124 separate elections in Ontario last Thursday (and 338 separate elections federally).  Each election has a different number of candidates and local factors, and to mash them all together into a single figure is intellectually dishonest, and to that end, it's abused by proportional-representation campaigners explicitly to demonstrate the supposed "unfairness" of the current system.  In other words, they are using a made-up number in order to justify their sore loser feelings.  That's not only a falsehood, but it fundamentally misrepresents how the system works, or how it should work.  Now, you can have all kinds of arguments about whether or not each particular riding election is "legitimate" when it is won on a plurality rather than a simple majority, but it is worth bearing in mind that the plurality figure should be instructive to the winner of the race.  Did they get more than 50 percent with multiple candidates on the ballot?  Great!  Did they get far less?  Then it means they can't take their win for granted, and they need to reach out to all sides and do a better job in the next election of brining more people onside.  That should mean something.

As for the argument that any party gets "100 percent of the power," and that would be different under a PR system, it's ridiculous on its face.  In existing PR systems, Cabinets are not composed of members from all parties on a proportional basis.  Not only that, but the head of government position, be it premier or prime minister, does not rotate between parties on a proportionate basis either.  In fact, it would have the exercise of giving outsized influence to small coalition members kind of like how BC is twisting itself into constitutional knots right now over the Trans Mountain pipeline to appease three Green MPs propping up the government, and they're not even in Cabinet.  The coalition governments of Israel that have to appease the right-wing hardliner minority players in order to carry on is another example of how these parties can have outsized, not "proportional," influence.  Of course, that's why parties like the Greens are so invested in PR because they feel it will give them the outsized influence that their inability to win more seats would otherwise.  The other lesson here is that power is not easily divisible and speaking in terms that implies that it is should make any rational person shake their heads.

When I make these points in (frequent) debates, I am usually confronted with the retort that the notion of separate elections is antiquated because everything is about party leaders these days, so we might as well just accept it.  And I will firmly and flatly reject that notion for the very reason that just because the pendulum is swinging in a particularly troubling direction right now, it doesn't mean that we need to reform our entire system to accommodate that.  Our system as it exists ensures that there are lines of accountability throughout, from the ability of a riding association to choose its representative, to members of a caucus holding their leaders to account (most of the time), to the members of the legislature, be it Queen's Park or Parliament ensuring that they can withdraw the confidence in a government when necessary.  Yes, we need to restore the caucus selection and removal of leaders to restore some of these lines of accountability, but you can't underestimate the ability of a few disgruntled MPs or MPPs can have on a leader's decision to stay on or resign.  And just because we don't often see demonstrations by these members to remove confidence in their leaders or the government, it doesn't mean that the power should be taken away just like our constitutional "fire extinguishers" in the GG or the Queen.  They're important to have, which is why the logic of taking them away to appease the false sentiment of "every vote should count" based on the logical fallacy of the popular vote, or the bizarre notion that the only ballot that counts is one that elects your chosen team, is absent.  The system works as it's supposed to and upending it because someone you don't like won is an insult to democracy.

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As leftists in the chattering classes continue to hyperventilate over Premier-designate Doug Ford and the PCs' resounding victory from last Thursday, cooler heads in Ontario are breathing a sigh of relief that we did not elect a radical NDP or Liberal government that would've plummeted us back into the Stone Age with crippling debt, if we aren't already irrevocably headed there.

Typical for them, left-wingers turned logic on its head and have declared Ford an unmitigated disaster for Ontario before he's even stepped into office.

First came the desperate attempts to delegitimize his win.  Before all the votes had been tabulated, many political observers from the left were saying the voter turnout was at an all-time low, even though the turnout number was still increasing as the votes were tabulated.  Eventually the final number showed the best turnout since 1999 at 58 per cent voter turnout.

Then came the calls for electoral reform because Ford and the PCs only managed to get 40.5 per cent of the popular vote, despite those same people cheering when Trudeau, Wynne and McGuinty won with slimmer margins. They also shrugged their shoulders when Trudeau decided to back out of his promise to change the first-past-the-post electoral system.

As hypocritical and nonsensical as those arguments were, the most convoluted argument coming from left-wing circles is that Ontario can't afford four years of Ford.  Sure, Ford didn't put out a fully costed platform, but neither, in reality, did the other two main parties.  The Liberals, after presenting a phony surplus budget last year, broke their promise to deliver a balanced budget come election time.  Currently the fourth highest budget expense is paying $12 billion in annual interest payments on our whopping $312 billion provincial debt.  They proposed running deficits for the next several years, ignoring the outrageous debt level we're currently in, instead suggesting we dig the hole even deeper.

The NDP were no better.  They put out a platform that had a $1.4 billion gap in it hiding in plain sight.  Their math was just as spotty in their proposal to buy back Hydro One, downplaying the true cost of buying back a ship that has long sailed.  Also, to make such an enormous purchase when the province is already up to its eyeballs in debt doesn't make any practical sense.  Then there were all the ways the NDP wanted to expand an already bloated government.

That being said, Ford likely over-promised as well.  His promises to cut taxes for the lower and middle classes, redistribute the province's $300 million Hydro One annual dividend to ratepayers instead of using it as a revenue stream, axe the carbon tax and cut business taxes all while maintaining balanced budgets, spending more on health care, giving childcare rebates, paying off the debt, investing in mental health and pouring billions into infrastructure projects sounds like a pipe dream.  Especially since the actual severity of Ontario's financial situation is likely much worse once Ford and his team get a chance to look at the books and bring it to light.

Nevertheless, Ford has been clear that he will find savings in government spending.  As he told me in an interview a couple short months ago, back when he was running for the PC leadership, he will find four cents on the dollar in savings.  What he hasn't been clear on is what what exactly are the inefficiencies he plans to weed out.  He's only said it won't involve government layoffs.

National Post columnist Andrew Coyne has pointed out in his previous columns that simply putting a hiring freeze in a growing province with growing annual revenue streams can actually be effective in helping balance budgets.  This, and salary freezes for public sector workers that make significantly more on average than the average private sector worker.  Then there are the many overpriced government contracts Ford can opt not to renew or get out of where possible.

The past few weeks many pundits, even on the right of the political aisle, have been reminiscing on how strong and well-versed Kathleen Wynne has been as Ontario's premier.  Part of the reason for this is that the Liberal government spent an excessive amount of money on making itself look good.  A Toronto Star column by former NDP strategist Robin Sears pointed out that Wynne's government had an excessive "578 tax-paid, politically exempt staff members at the time if its defeat."  Sears pointed out that a lot of these staff members were barely out of school and were better tasked for coming out with great talking points than coming up with well-researched policy plans.  Much of this former Liberal government was about style, not substance, nor getting down to brass tacks.

The following day after Wynne's defeat she addressed reporters one by one before giving a press conference.  She has always been good at working a room.

But Ontario doesn't need a premier that is easy to get along with and is good at giving a speech and memorizing talking points on different files.

No, this province needs someone not worried to take on the unions and other special interest groups that have for too long gotten their way and run roughshod over the overall financial well-being of Ontario.  Ford has shown he has no problem making adversaries and has pledged to clean up the province's books.  If he balances the books, knocks down the debt and gives Ontarians tax relief, the odd broken promise will just be water the bridge.  He has a daunting four years ahead of him.

Written by Graeme C. Gorodn

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While contemplating the electoral wreckage of the Ontario Liberal Party, one can't help but draw parallels to the Roman Empire.

Just as Rome once dominated its world, so too did Ontario Liberals once dominate provincial politics; just as Rome ultimately collapsed, so too did the Ontario Liberals; just as there are lots of theories explaining Rome's fall, so too do theories abound explaining the recent Liberal apocalypse.

For instance, one such theory currently popular with Canada's ruling class elites, suggests the Liberal Party's demise wasn't its fault at all; it was the fault of voters.

According to this view, Ontario voters were too stupid, too ungrateful, too sexist and too homophobic to appreciate the brilliant leadership of Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne.

In other words, just like Rome, the Ontario Liberal Party fell to barbarians.

And there are lots of other theories out there to explain the decline and fall of the Liberal Party: voter fatigue with the Liberal brand; residual anger over hydro rate increases; Wynne's own personal unpopularity.

But none explain why the Liberals were so badly wiped out on Election Night, why they went from holding 55 seats in the Ontario legislature, to a mere seven, the worst drubbing since General Custer took on the Sioux.

So I'd like to add my own theory to the mix, one which explains why the Liberals not only lost, but why they nearly suffered a total annihilation.

Here it is: the Liberals faced an enemy they simply couldn't defeat.

What do I mean by that?

Well, the Liberal Party's fighting doctrine, its basic tactics and its overall strategy were all geared toward combatting what I'd call a "classic conservative" opponent.

In other words, the Liberals knew how to battle and beat conservatives like Stephen Harper, or Tim Hudak, or Patrick Brown, all men who more or less fit the traditional "Tory" mold.

But, as we all know, in the Ontario election they ended up facing a different sort of conservative — Doug Ford, who espoused populism, a political ideology not seen before in these parts.

And at first, facing such an unknown enemy probably didn't seem like too much of a problem for Wynne's strategic planners.

After all, Ford was an amateur and his ragtag hordes of "Ford Nation", with their unsophisticated populist notions, were surely no match for the Liberal party's vaunted Election War Machine.

All they needed to do was compare Ford to US president Donald Trump, and the race would be over.

And that's what they tried but it didn't work.

In fact, nothing in the Liberal arsenal worked.

Everything they threw at Ford bounced off him like a tennis ball.

So by the end of the campaign, the once mighty and proud (some might say "arrogant") Liberal Party was reduced to basically begging for votes.

What all this shows, in my view anyway, is that when it comes to battling populism, the Liberals have no clue.

By the way, they're not alone in that regard.  All over the world, centre-left, "progressive" political parties, like the Ontario Liberals, have been unable to stem the ever-rising populist tide.

And this does not bode well for the Ontario Liberal Party's future.

In fact, I'd even argue the Liberals are now trapped in a political dead-end.

Think about it: if going forward the starring actors on Ontario's political stage are a populist right and a socialist left, where does that leave the middle of the road, pro-establishment, Liberals?

On the one hand, the Liberals can't "out left" the "left", (its Bay Street donors won't allow it) on the other, as the recent election proved, they haven't yet figured out how to combat right-wing populism.

So yeah, things look bleak for the Liberals.

Oh well, as the ancient Romans could tell you, no empire lasts forever.

Photo Credit: Jeff Burney, Loonie Politics

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As the end of the spring sitting of Parliament draws near, and the final vote on the bill to legalize recreational cannabis is now over with some 46 amendments being sent back to the House of Commons, it's time to start fretting about the "ping-pong" of bills between the two chambers.  And we've seen instances of this before, both with the budget implementation bill last June, and just a few weeks ago with Bill C-49, the omnibus transport bill.

One of the defining changes we've seen in the new "independent" Senate is the fact that there are a lot more amendments coming from the institution than there have been in the past decade.  While several commentators have tried to equate this with the greater number of Independent senators that are in the chamber in the past, it's a bit of a specious comparison because it largely ignores the fact that the current government has signalled its openness to amendments whereas the previous government did not.  And once the Conservatives made up the majority in the Senate and were able to carry out the government's wishes largely unopposed, it was up to opposition senators to find new ways of expressing their caution about bills, which wound up being largely by way of Observations appended to bills rather than amendments that were going to be shot down.

This having been established, a pattern has been emerging when it comes to the way in which amendments are treated by this government.  On the one hand, prime minister Justin Trudeau has made a big deal about valuing the now "independent" Senate, and he makes all kinds of encouraging noises about letting them do their work and respecting what they have to say.  And he has been far more hands-off with the Senate in many (but not all) respects, it's true.  On the other hand, however, oftentimes when amendments come back to the House of Commons, the government finds ways to diminish them.  Last June's clapback about amending a budget implementation bill as being somehow improper, with Trudeau himself saying that the Senate can't amend money bills was false.  Constitutionally, the Senate can't initiate money bills, and he seemed to very deliberately confusing the two in order to get his way.

What was especially interesting there is that when the Senate's amendments were went back from the Commons, none of them accepted, it was under the rubric that it somehow infringed on the rights and privileges of the Commons.  No explanation was given for what that meant, even when Senators asked Government House Leader Bardish Chagger that very question when she appeared before them in ministerial Senate Question Period.  To this day, nobody has an answer for just what rights or privileges the Senate allegedly has been impacting on.  You may recall that, despite the fact that they passed the bill rather than insist on the amendments again, senators did send a message back to the Commons to remind them that yes, they absolutely can amend any bill they please, and that the Government Leader in the Senate err, "government representative," Senator Peter Harder's desire to play the hero had him sign off on this message despite the fact that it put him in a conflict with the very government he is there to represent.  So that was fun.

What is important to remember from that particular exercise is that Senators felt that the lack of a substantive response that they got from the government was a slap in the face and it was a substantial concern that they had because it had to do with the escalator clause on alcohol taxes, and there was a matter of principle that any tax increase should go before parliament before it's enacted.  For the government to shrug it off with what was essentially boilerplate language was not only a bit of an insult but was certainly indicative of the ham-fisted way in which Chagger has tended to manage the Order Paper (though I will admit that she's gotten a bit better in the past year).

In the time since, we've seen the Senate become a little more assertive when it comes to insisting on amendments, and the fact that they sent back two amendments to the Commons that were first rejected on the transport bill was instructive.  Why?  Because they wanted a substantive reason as to why the Commons would reject these amendments, which they considered to be important matters particularly for the Maritimes, in that particular case, given that one of the Senate's primary roles is to be a voice for the regions, and they felt these changes disadvantaged rail users in those provinces.  What they got from the government was a message saying that they "respectfully disagreed," and that was it.  There was no substantive reason, and no debate on the issue in the Commons.  Just a whipped vote, and back it went.

I bring this up because of the 46 amendments to the cannabis bill that passed.  While twenty-nine of them were technical amendments that came from the government itself, and will be adopted with little problem, some of the other amendments may be trickier, and I know for a fact that there are many senators who will want substantive reasons from the government as to why they're rejecting those amendments (and we can pretty much guarantee that some of them will be rejected) because of the amount of time and energy that was spent on this whole process in the Senate.  And if the government says "thanks but no thanks," or "we respectfully disagree," you can pretty much guarantee that senators are going to send at least some of those amendments back.  And the government can avoid this ping-pong between the chambers, on this bill or any others, by actually showing respect to the work of the Senate and having the debate in the Commons on the amendments like they're supposed to, or by sending a message with some actual reasons.  It's not hard, and it has the virtue of putting money behind where Trudeau's mouth is when it comes to his respect for the work of the "independent" Senate.  Otherwise it's inviting more back-and-forth between the chambers, and more unnecessary drama.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.

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Would you look at that, Premier Doug Ford.

It still has a bit of that unreal quality to it, as though by seeming like it shouldn't have happened, the mind decides it cannot have happened.  Alas, it is real.

Ford will be premier, and it is all the fault of the Liberal Party.

By the end of their 15 years in power, the people of the province were fed up with the party and ready to give their votes to basically anyone running un the Progressive Conservative banner.  A sentient sack of potatoes could have won.  The proof of this is Ford will be premier.

There was a moment in one of the debates where Ford asked Wynne where she lost her way.  In that moment, it seemed like a silly question to me.  She was able to dance around it, and talk about how good her party was.

But, looking back, I think it's fair to say it was right on the money.  Because people sensed, in a sort of in-their-bones kind of way, that somewhere along the line something changed for Wynne.  The obvious turning point, the one that did it for me, was the sell off of Hydro One.  It was a ploy for quick cash, and so transparently so.

Their campaign was just as bad.  The last ditch attempt to hang onto a few seats, by Wynne declaring she would not be premier, and that only a handful of Liberals could hold a Ford government to account was absurd hair-splitting.  Asking voters to vote their opponents into a minority government is at best wishful thinking.  This was not the best outcome, though.  Instead, by keeping negative focus on the NDP, the Liberals almost certainly guaranteed a PC victory.

It's easy to imagine the boost the NDP would have received if Wynne had said not only was she not going to be premier, but Ontarians should vote for a progressive party that can win.  Of curse, this is imaginary, because that's not the world we live in.  Instead we got a final week of warnings the NDP would be bad for York University students because they'd let a strike continue.

But this is the problem at the heart of the Liberal rot.  As a party, they would always find a way to make things about holding power.  For all the good the party did — and it did do quite a bit of good — there was always some element in their policy building that left the stench of power thirst.  Whether it was fights with the auditor general, or giving hydro discounts right out of the provincial treasury, at the end of the day everything was done to benefit the party in some way.

And it's too bad.  Wynne showed through this campaign that she would have made a fine candidate in different circumstances.  She was well-spoken and knew what she was talking about.  She showed flashes of a real and authentic spirit of public service.  You do have to feel for Wynne watching her speech on election night stepping down as leader.  This loss clearly hurt.  As a last speech, it made for a graceful exit.

Finally freed from the burden of winning votes, there were no more half measures.  And when she finally got around to announcing she was leaving as leader, she nearly broke down and cried.  It was moving.

But when it was over, cold reality remained.  Ford was still going to be premier.  She was a Liberal.  And because of this, because of the baggage train following the Liberal Party around, Doug Ford became inevitable.

It didn't matter that Ford didn't know what he was talking about.  It didn't matter that his promises couldn't add up.  It didn't matter he was being sued by his saintly dead brother's widow.  It didn't matter he was obviously over his head.  He wasn't a Liberal, and that was enough.

The next four years are unlikely to be fun.  Ford's brand of bull-headed lunacy will make for a spectacle, but it won't make for good governance.  Those days are gone for now in Ontario.  And for that, you can thank the Liberals.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.

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The federal Auditor General's latest report speaks of "incomprehensible failures" in Canada's government, specifically the Phoenix pay system and "the federal government to influence better conditions for Indigenous people in Canada".  They're certainly massive and appalling.  But if they're really "incomprehensible" we're in a heap of trouble because then we'd have no idea how to fix them.  And indeed to hear politicians talk, the only way government could possibly fail is if we elected their opponents.

In fact governments are currently failing in so many ways that to begin to list them would try your patience and my fingers.  I cited a few in a recent piece for Farmer's Forum, from provincially approved drivers' courses that result in more crashes to a collapsed program to create Canadian food for astronauts to the inability to scrap a ship.  These examples have an undeniable "Yes Minister" quality to them.  But they're just minor comic instances of tragic failures on a massive scale on things like the aboriginal file and budget deficits.

I realize government has never worked perfectly and never will.  For starters, no human contrivance can escape the various faults of intelligence and will inherent in the human condition.  But government failings have a special quality and particular causes that we must understand if we are to push back and make improvements.

Hence this casual reference to them as "inexplicable" is worrying.  The Auditor-General, after all, did not just fall off a turnip truck.  He has held his present post since November 2011, and before that various senior jobs in the New Brunswick government including deputy minister of finance.  Surely he has some theory about government failure.

I use the term in its technical sense here.  For years economists spoke of "market failure", meaning not dumb decisions by individual consumers or business executives due to inattention, arrogance, intoxication or ineptitude but specific factors that prevented the normal efficiency of markets from operating in some particular area like, say, national defence.  They were generally put under three headings: "free riders", "holdouts" and "transaction costs" and it was believed that only government intervention could correct them.

After decades of making this valid point, and watching governments expand dramatically, at least some economists began to recognize that governments have failures of their own.  Far from being omniscient, they are less able to process huge amounts of information than private markets because they lack prices that summarize in one simple public number all the factors that go into producing something.  Far from being disinterested, politicians and bureaucrats are just as self-interested as merchants and customers.  And finally, where companies are constrained in their tendency toward selfishness by the need to keep customers happy, governments generally forbid competition and thus deny citizens the fabled "exit option" of shopping somewhere else that requires them to keep costs down and quality up.

None of these are themselves "government failure".  Rather, they are necessary aspects of government.  The failures that result are self-serving conduct from excessive compensation to slow unfriendly service to paralyzing risk aversion.  As a result, even when government must do something, like defence or policing, it does it in characteristically unsatisfactory ways.  (Where's the private equivalent of health care waiting lists?)

Now some readers may object that all this analysis is old news.  And by now it is.  Except to those, it seems, in public life.  When is the last time you heard a politician speak as if they knew about these problems, or saw one act as if they did?

Even someone like Kathleen Wynne, with long experience wielding executive power, does not appear to realize that government is inherently fallible.  Andrea Horwath speaks of expanding the health system to cover dental care without an apparent inkling that anything beyond lack of money has created the waiting lists and other distressing flaws in socialized medicine.  And Doug Ford breezily promises "efficiencies" as though government were not demonstrably highly efficiency-resistant for structural reasons.

Perhaps they are bluffing on the campaign trail.  But even the federal Auditor General, who spends his life studying government failure, apparently regards its recurring patterns as a great mystery.

I'm not suggesting that fixing Phoenix would be easy if you did get this branch of economics off-puttingly named "public choice theory", let alone improving the lives of Canada's aboriginals.  But you might at least grasp that the latter suffer, and have long suffered, from too much government, not too little.  You might be more cautious about what you undertook and how you undertook it.  You might watch Yes Minister not for comic relief but for valuable instruction.  Yet even the Auditor General stumbles in his reports over example after example of standard government failure, and seems surprised and baffled as well as frustrated by each of them.

Which truly is inexplicable.

Photo Credit: The Chronicle-Herald

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Premier Kathleen Wynne's Liberals are finished. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath proposes a host of nightmarish left-wing changes

With two days to go in the Ontario election, there's only one certainty for election night and that's uncertainty.

Most political analysts, pundits and columnists believe Premier Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals will be defeated on June 7.  The question is by how much.  Some believe they'll be crushed and others think Wynne's decision to concede the election a last-ditch attempt to save party status might protect a few seats.

There's also a possibility that Mike Schreiner, leader of the Green Party of Ontario, could win his seat in Guelph, while Trillium Party MPP Jack MacLaren holds on to his Carleton-Mississippi Mills riding. The former is more likely than the latter.  Whether both win, one wins or neither wins will be determined shortly.

The biggest remaining wild card is whether Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives, or Andrea Horwath and the New Democrats form the next government.

The polls have been all over the map.  Both parties have had large leads, small leads and been in a dead heat in popular support.  Current polls have the PCs with a 38-37 lead in Forum (June 2) and Pollara (June 3), while EKOS shows a 38.6-34.9 edge (May 31). The NDP lead 37-33 with Abacus (June 2) and 37.1-36.1 with CBC (June 3).

Who's ahead right now?  Your guess is as good as mine.

In terms of potential seat projections, which most polling firms have stopped doing, the CBC suggests the PCs will win 69 out of 124 seats, the NDP 32 and the Liberals three.  This means 20 seats are in the range of too close to call.  The probability of a PC majority is at a whopping 79.3 per cent.

As CBC poll analyst Éric Grenier wrote on June 3, "Andrea Horwath's NDP has a narrow lead over Doug Ford's PCs, but despite the close race in the popular vote the PCs have a better regional distribution of that vote and so are favoured to win more seats."

This is unusual territory for a Canadian election.

The party leading in popular support tends to win the most seats in a first-past-the-post electoral system.  That's not always the case, as evidenced in some federal elections: 1926 (Tories won the popular vote but lost the seat count to the Liberals), 1957 (Liberals won the popular vote but lost the seat count to the Tories) and 1979 (same as 1957 result).  Several provinces, including Saskatchewan (1986, 1999), B.C. (1996), Quebec (1998) and New Brunswick (2006) have experienced this split, too.

Ontario could join the list this week.

Who's the best choice to form the next government?

The NDP would be a nightmarish left-wing replacement for the already left-wing Liberals.  Horwath wants to spend $1.2 billion on a universal pharmacare.  She's proposed a child care plan that would surely cost a pretty penny.  She wants to increase corporate taxes on businesses and hike personal income taxes for high earners.  She's also refused to support back-to-work legislation for public employees such as teachers.

Meanwhile, she has candidates who aren't fit enough to go to the washroom without raising their hands, let alone hold elected office.  Some have spoken out against poppies, veterans, the second amendment and holding down regular work, while one candidate may (or may not) have sent out a Hitler meme on social media.

Hence, the better choice would be the PCs.

Yes, they've had a few pitfalls during the campaign, including the 407 ETR data breach, the long wait for a fiscal plan and controversial candidate statements.  Nevertheless, Ford is, by far, the best choice to reduce government, decrease taxes, fix the Hydro One mess, support more free enterprise and transit funding, and open up the province for business again.

That's why I voted for Ford to become Ontario's next premier.  Will others follow suit?  Stay tuned.

Troy Media columnist and political commentator Michael Taube is also a Washington Times contributor, Canadian Jewish News columnist, and radio and TV pundit.  He was also a speechwriter for former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.

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Neither the Toronto Star nor Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne can figure out why voters dislike Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.  The Star says she does not deserve the disdain of voters, who have consistently made her the most unpopular premier in Canada and have forced her to admit that she cannot continue as Liberal leader.  "Wynne's reward for all this?  A big slap in the face from voters," sniffed the Star after rattling off a list of her accomplishments, including pension reform (cancelled), pharmacare (incomplete), childcare (announced only), and infrastructure (poorly implemented).

Wynne herself has acknowledged her likability deficit, in a way that shows she has zero understanding of what's behind it.  Reactions to her now-infamous "sorry not sorry" ad, many using permutations of the word "smug," have left her at a complete loss.  "It's hard to answer questions day after day about why people don't like you," she told Vice Canada.  "That's not a comfortable thing, so I don't know where the idea of smugness comes in."

Why don't people like her?  Well, if you believe commentator John Barber, also in the Star, "She failed because she was too ambitious, she failed because she never resorted to easy deceptions.  She failed because she's a woman, and because she's gay.  She failed because she's Ontarian, at the mercy of Ontarians, and we're as ugly as anyone."

Indeed, there are plenty of voters who recoil at an activist government.  And let's not be so bold as to assume there are no voters who have a deep-seated problem with a woman and/or homosexual at the helm.  But a laser focus on Wynne's sex and/or sexuality is a defense mechanism employed by those who find the real problems too difficult to discuss, or can't be bothered to find them at all.  However many sexists and homophobes are on the voter rolls, there are many more who would happily vote for an activist-minded lesbian if they supported her agenda, or viewed her as trustworthy, or, yes, liked her.

Policy disagreements are inevitable, so let's focus on the latter two conditions.  As a former cabinet minister to Premier Dalton McGuinty, Wynne is largely viewed as a continuation of the government that gave us eHealth, ORNGE, and the gas plant cancellations.  Under her premiership, we got Benjamin Levin, bribery accusations, and highly questionable payments to teachers' unions.  Few parties can survive that many high-profile scandals, least of all parties that have been in power for five successive terms.  Any successor to McGuinty would have been saddled with this image, especially one who came from his cabinet, as Wynne and six of her current ministers did.  The Liberals needed a housecleaning, and none of the ex-ministers running for leadership in 2013 were lemony fresh.

But even if Wynne herself had been ethically spotless, the hardest stain of all to remove has been her attitude toward the electorate.  If McGuinty was Premier Dad, Wynne is Premier Middle School Assistant Principal Who Needs Your Parents to Sign This Letter and Return It to Her.  When contending with negative reactions to her efforts, she consistently demonstrates that she views voters as children who need a good smack upside the head.  Do you share the Auditor General's concerns about the true state of provincial finances?  Too bad.  Want to know how the teachers' unions spent your $2.5 million?  Don't worry about it.  Not saving enough for retirement?  The government will save for you, whether you like it or not.  Want to buy beer at the corner store?  You can't handle it.  Don't ask why, you just can't.  Worried about hydro bills?  Well, okay, maybe they could have done something differently.  What kind of something?  Do a better job selling the policies that made your bills go up.

In this way, if in no other, Wynne truly is the opposite of Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford.  Where he capitulates to public opinion too fast, she ignores it until the last minute.  Where he is driven to win elections, she is driven to push agendas.  Neither has proven to find a balance.  But voters have five years of experience with Wynne as premier, with not much to show for it except higher hydro bills.  As she may finally have realized, nothing matters more to an everyday citizen than what's on their own kitchen table.

That may be the one regret she'll admit publicly.  She should regret thinking she could exhibit such evident, potent disdain for the public and emerge from public service unscathed.

Photo Credit: Jeff Burney, Loonie Politics

Written by Jess Morgan

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