Social Policy in Ontario

Herewith, a pre-election Voter’s Guide. The goal is to help you decide for yourself where the parties stand, and where they duck.

This isn’t an attempt to influence your vote, merely an effort to inform your choice. Make your decision based on your own inclinations, not my insinuations.

The good news: The campaign of 2018 featured bold social policies for pharmacare, dental care and child care, though they may never come to pass.

The bad news: The parties’ plans to pay for their promises don’t quite add up — and in the case of the Progressive Conservatives, were never made public as promised.

The worst news: None of the above may matter, because this election is being fought mostly over personalities, not policies.

For better or for worse, here’s how the major parties rank on five major issues facing the province in this election:

• Energy: The politics of power rates are an election perennial, because Ontarians prefer to pay less than the true cost of generating electricity. Hence the Liberals’ controversial pre-election plan to lower rates by 25 per cent by refinancing the costs through borrowings. Despite criticizing that scheme, the Tories would keep it in place, and then magically drive rates down by a further 12 per cent. The NDP counters that it would cancel the Liberal borrowing scheme (never mind the financial obligations), and then lower rates by an even more remarkable 30 per cent. New Democrats haven’t explained how they would persuade the federal Liberals to remove the HST on hydro.

The partial privatization of Hydro One, Ontario’s transmission utility, has been the Liberals’ Achilles heel. PC Leader Doug Ford has mocked its highly-paid CEO as the “Six Million Dollar Man” and vowed to fire him upon taking power, which requires terminating the entire board and paying out more than $10.7 million in severance. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath claims she’ll buy back all of Hydro One, costing as much as $10 billion, using annual dividends of about $250 million a year — numbers that don’t add up. The Liberals paid a steep political price for privatization, but the PC and NDP plans could cost taxpayers dearly.

• Environment: While this isn’t a vote-determining issue for most, the distinct differences among the parties could have the greatest impact. Under the Liberals, Ontario joined a “cap and trade” market with Quebec and California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by making polluters pay, raising billions of dollars for conservation, including mass transit. The impact at the pump is a mere 4.3 cents a litre (long since overshadowed by increases in foreign oil prices) and adds about $80 a year to natural gas bills.

The NDP largely supported the Liberal plan, but would allocate more to help communities adjust. The Green Party would keep it but remove allowances for large industrial emitters. By contrast, Ford’s Tories would eliminate cap and trade entirely, and have ruled out any form of carbon tax — setting the stage for a legal battle with Ottawa, which mandates carbon pricing by all provinces. This would make Ontario an environmental outlier and outlaw.

• Fiscal and political accountability: If you believe in fiscal prudence, there is no optimal option in this campaign. After finally delivering a balanced budget last year, the Liberal fiscal plan plunges the province back into deficit — more than $6 billion annually for the next three years — to bankroll child care and health care increases. The NDP’s financial plan initially came in lower, until they owned up to an awkward $1.4 billion annual miscalculation that leaves them in roughly the same deficit league as the Liberals.

The biggest surprise is the Tories, who pride themselves on fiscal stewardship. Despite committing to a fully costed plan of his own, Ford hasn’t delivered. He has laid out some $10 billion in new programs and tax cuts, without showing where he’d make up the shortfalls — beyond an implausible plan to cut $6 billion in unidentified “waste.” Independent economists now say Ford’s election plan could harm the provincial balance sheet most. Even the toughest fiscal hawk should be daunted by his lack of fiscal discipline.

• Social programs: Pharmacare is finally here, but the Liberals and NDP have competing formulas for the drug formulary. The NDP proposes a partial pharmacare program covering all ages, but limited to the top 125 drugs. The Liberal program pays for all 4,400 drugs on the formulary, but only for those under 25 or over 65. Both have strengths and weaknesses, but easily beat the PC plan to avoid planning anything.

The NDP would also extend dental benefits to all Ontarians (blended with private coverage), while the Liberals cap it at $400 a person.

On child care, the NDP proposes free coverage for infants and toddlers up to age 2.5 if your family income is below $40,000, with a sliding fee scale beyond that. Sounds good, but almost all experts point out there’s not enough capacity to meet demand in that age group, implying massive wait lists. The Liberal plan focuses instead on free daycare for preschoolers (ages 2.5 to 4), which the system can handle — and there is every indication the NDP would have to switch to this approach. But all bets are off if the PCs win, as they are offering only modest tax breaks to defray the cost of child care — which would remain as unaffordable and unattainable as ever.

• Leadership and accountability: Like Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne, Horwath has granted countless interviews and holds two or three news conferences daily on the campaign trail (and Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner will talk endlessly). By contrast, Ford has declined sit-down interviews with most major media outlets during the campaign, and limits himself to four or five questions once a day before his supporters drown out reporters with applause and cheers.

Horwath’s ideological rigidity on strikes — saying she’d never legislate public sector workers back, no matter how long the disruption for students — is more rhetorical than realistic. Reluctant as she is to antagonize her union supporters in midcampaign, history shows other NDP governments across Canada have passed back-to-work legislation when it’s in the public interest.

As the rookie leader, Ford has flailed in the televised debates, meandering and missing the point. As the veteran leader, with nine years in the job, Horwath showed a command of the issues at the podium. While Wynne probably won the last debate, even she acknowledges it didn’t boost her numbers because viewers had tuned her out.

All that said, seen and heard, take note: For many, the priority isn’t policy but personality. It’s a campaign that is as much about ensuring one party is the loser as it is about electing the winner.

Fair enough. But before you vote strategically, choose substantively.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/06/04/a-voters-guide-to-the-2018-ontario-election.html