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RegisterTag: Doug Ford
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.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford blamed the pandemic when he broke his election promise and increased per-vote subsidies for political parties. It was wrong then. Now that Ford has presented a path to reopen the economy, it’s definitely time for him to shut the door on political welfare.
When he was running for office during the 2018 provincial election, Ford rightly promised to scrap per-vote party subsidies.
“I do not believe the government should be taking money from hard working taxpayers and giving it to political parties,” said Ford.
Ford was voicing his objections to the political welfare regime the Wynne Liberals introduced in 2014.
Under the Liberal plan, political parties received an annual 55-cent payment for every vote they received in the most recent provincial election. Wynne’s Liberals cashed in on over $4 million from taxpayers between 2014 and 2018.
Ford promised things would be different.
“Everyone in the province is frustrated,” said Ford. “The party is over with taxpayers’ money.”
Yet in Ford’s first two years in office, his Progressive Conservative government failed to scrap the political welfare scheme.
Then, in February, after Ontarians had endured nearly a year of the pandemic and the economic hardship that accompanied it, Attorney General Doug Downey announced that, rather than keeping Ford’s promise by eliminating political welfare, the government would break the promise and expand the political subsidy.
Downey’s legislation increased the per-vote subsidy by another eight cents.
With Ford’s PCs having garnered over 2.3 million votes in the 2018 election, the enhanced subsidy means that the governing party is entitled to over $1.46 million between now and the next election.
Downey attempted to justify the Ford government’s about face by claiming that political parties needed help amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“COVID came along, and we want to make sure that we have good, vigorous debate here in Ontario,” said Downey.
There’s 800,000 unemployed Ontarians laying awake worrying about their finances. How many taxpayers do you think are currently worried about politicians not having enough money to fund their political attack ads and lawn signs?
Downey also insinuated that “vigorous” debate could only occur in the province if taxpayers are forced to hand over millions of dollars to political parties.
But party fundraising data shows that Ontario’s political parties are doing just fine.
The PCs raised over $4.5 million in 2020. That’s just 10 per cent less than pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, the provincial Liberals tripled their fundraising last year. How many businesses wish their revenues only declined by 10 per cent? How many have achieved a 300 per cent increase?
If Ford’s PCs want to make sure Ontario has a “vigorous” pre-election political debate, $4.5 million will pay for more than enough campaign ads.
Further, political parties also benefit from extremely generous donor tax credits, even before they rake in their per-vote subsidies.
For instance, a voter who donates $1,000 to an Ontario political party receives a $607 tax credit. If that voter donates $1,000 to the Red Cross, the provincial tax credit is $99.
Does Ford truly believe political attacks ads are six times more valuable than the Red Cross?
On top of all of that, politicians get 20 per cent of their campaign expenses refunded by the government, meaning they’re paid for by you, the taxpayer.
Given the government used the pandemic to justify breaking its promise to scrap per-vote subsidies, it’s time for the province to unveil a new plank of Ontario’s reopening plan: scrapping political welfare.
With the election less than a year away, it’s time for Ford to take his first baby step towards getting off the gravy train and scrap the political welfare.
Jay Goldberg is the Interim Ontario Director at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Photo Credit: The Canadian Press
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.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has less than a year to make good on the affordability agenda he promised voters while on the campaign trail.
“We have a very simple theory,” said Ford. “Put money back into the taxpayers’ pocket instead of the government’s pocket, because we believe that the taxpayers are a lot smarter at spending their money than the government.”
Ford’s message hit home with hardworking taxpayers after fifteen years of tax hikes.
The Progressive Conservatives’ platform laid out several promises on tax relief, but three were emphasized throughout the campaign: refundable tax credits for child care, lower gas prices and a middle-class income tax cut.
Three years in, Ford’s record of keeping promises is mixed at best.
On the positive side, Ford kept his commitment to make child care more affordable.
Rather than pursuing top-down, government-run child-care program, Ford introduced a flexible refundable tax credit to let parents recoup more of their tax dollars. This program covers many different kinds of child-care costs so that parents, not bureaucrats, can decide what is best for their children.
Ford also kept part of his promise to reduce gas taxes by 4.4 cents per litre through scrapping cap-and-trade carbon tax and 5.6 cents per litre through lowering the gas excise tax.
Ford immediately repealed the provincial carbon tax. Ottawa offset that tax cut by imposing the federal carbon tax, but Ford deserves credit for fighting the feds tooth and nail.
But Ontarians are still waiting for part two of the plan to reduce gas prices, the 5.6 cents per litre excise tax cut.
Ontario drivers are paying 48 cents per litre in taxes when they fill up their gas tanks, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s 2021 Gas Tax Honest Day report.
Had Ford fully implemented his gas tax promise on day one, a typical family filling up their minivan once a week would have already saved about $655 at the pumps.
While Ford has helped reduce child-care costs and done some good work on gas prices, taxpayers are still waiting for the promised middle-class tax cut.
Had the Ford government fulfilled its income tax cut promise on day one, taxpayers could have saved up to $2,300 over the past three years.
There are those that will argue that Ontario’s budget deficit should stop Ford from implementing his affordability agenda.
After years of overspending, the Ford government can easily find the necessary savings to return more money to taxpayers without inflating the deficit.
Ford’s promised gas and income tax relief would return a little more than $3 billion into taxpayers’ pockets every year.
To find savings, the best place to start would be to ask government bureaucrats to live in the real world like the rest of us.
Government employees in Ontario are paid roughly 10 per cent more than their counterparts outside of government. And while many outside of government have taken pay cuts or lost their jobs, the list of provincial bureaucrats that make more than $100,000 has increased by 23 per cent.
Reducing bureaucrat salaries by five per cent would save $3.6 billion every year, more than enough to offset the impact of Ford’s promised tax cuts.
Ford should also save money by ending corporate welfare, which was another campaign promise that the government has yet to live up to.
“Corporate welfare is wrong,” said Ford in 2018.
Yet, in the first three years in office, this government has handed over tens of millions of dollars to wealthy corporations like the Ford Motor Company and Maple Leaf Foods.
That money should stay in taxpayers’ wallets, instead of being siphoned off into the bank accounts of corporations.
The bottom line is that Ford has plenty of options to allow him to implement his affordability agenda without growing the deficit.
With less than a year until the next election, taxpayers expect Ford to live up to the promises that got him elected in the first place and provide much needed relief.
The clock is ticking.
Photo Credit: The Canadian Press
Jay Goldberg is a syndicated columnist and the Interim Ontario Director at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
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.
This content is restricted to subscribers
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.
This content is restricted to subscribers
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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A month or so ago, I wrote in these pages that, “McKenna is laying a lot of track for what a Liberal version of ‘build back better’ would look like”, referring to what I then called “bevy of announcements focused on transport infrastructure – from active transportation, to increasing the gas-tax transfer to municipalities and a new focus on rural transit” from federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna.
That “bevy of announcements” continued this week, with a nearly daily joint announcement between McKenna and Ontario Transportation Minister (and my local MPP) Caroline Mulroney.
It seems both the federal Liberals and the provincial Tories are metaphorically (and soon literally) laying track on major infrastructure plans that will be central not only to our economic recovery, but also to their reoffering offers in a federal election that could come this fall and an Ontario election that will be underway this time next year.
It shows a strategy articulated in Finance Minister Chyrstia Freeland’s budget to get the pandemic under control, and then like Ross from Friends “pivot” to stimulating economic growth through infrastructure.
What is intriguing to note is that the Ford Tories are undertaking much the same approach as their federal Liberal counterparts, of course with subtle differences.
Speaking of matching strategies, another interesting piece of Ontario provincial politics has emerged this week through the focus the Ontario Liberals under Steven Del Duca are taking to tie themselves to the Trudeau Liberals on childcare. Del Duca announced in front of a Zoom of mothers and babies (many of the former who are also MPP candidates) that he would match the Trudeau plan to deliver $10-a-day childcare.
It is no secret, and he has conceded it himself, that Del Duca has struggled to define himself, being elected mere days before the lockdown last March. With his childcare announcement, he seems to be banking on the strong brand equity of the federal Liberals having a reciprocal or halo effect on the provincial party.
With our politicians all on similar pages in terms of their economic thinking coming out of the pandemic, I’m reminded of comments former President Barack Obama used to make about epochal intellectual movements in public society – from the New Deal and Great Society liberalism, to Reaganomics and Thatcherism, followed by the centrism of Blair/Clinton/Chretien, we are now seemingly in an era where big government is back in vogue.
Look at President Joe Biden’s massive spending plans to remake American infrastructure, childcare and healthcare as the leading example, and the Trudeau Liberals’ plan as its Canadian equivalent (smaller in comparison largely because unlike the US, we have a fifty year head start on social programmes).
I suppose that means we’re all Keynesians, at least for now.
That leaves the federal Tories struggling for an intellectual foundation. What is their offering? Are they deficit hawks, despite the public appetite for government support? Or is there a way to retool Conservative playbooks to offer people support and social solidarity, but in a more small government kind of way?
Erin O’Toole has yet to answer this question, though he hints that he wants to. The problem he faces is that his party doesn’t yet have its marching orders, so they vacillate between austerity and attempts at appealing to blue-collar workers, depending on which MP is speaking.
And with the Ford Tories embracing a populist version of “build back better”, and their provincial Liberal rivals looking to one-up them on particular offerings such as childcare, it leaves O’Toole in a tough spot that looks a lot like the odd man out in the Confederation’s surprising intellectual and policy alignment these days.
To torture the metaphor, if there are no atheists in foxholes, it seems there are no libertarians or deficit hawks in pandemics.
Photo Credit: The Conversation
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.
