Ontario voted for sensible, pay-as-you-go social progress
TheStar.com – Business – Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne survived the traditional ‘best before’ date for governments by getting her party elected in the Liberal’s 11th year of rule
Jun 13 2014. By: David Olive, Business
It’s been said more than once that the Grits should not even have been in this race, given the burden of scandals they carry, much less find themselves forming a majority government, in place of their minority rule since 2011.
There’s also an iron-clad rule of politics in democracies that no matter how competent a government might be, a “best before” date kicks in at its 10-year point, give or take a couple of years. Dating from Dalton McGuinty’s first government, back in 2003, the Grits went into this election having ruled for 11 years
Just the same, Ontario voters have decided to keep the Grits in power and strengthen their hand. In doing so, they have made Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne the first woman premier of Ontario to be elected in her own right, Wynne having first assumed the post by winning her party’s leadership when McGuinty stepped down.
And Ontarians have chosen the first openly lesbian individual to lead a major government in North America. That’s a historic milestone — and on the eve of World Pride festivities in Toronto no less. Ontarians and Canadians can be proud that on this part of the planet, we don’t merely pay lip service to our celebration of diversity. We walk the talk and that includes at the ballot box.
Wynne, 61, served ably in McGuinty’s cabinet, but a strike against her was that Ontarians haven’t had much time to get to know her as premier. Then again, Wynne has been sure-footed in important ways that Ontarians took careful note of since Wynne was first sworn in as premier in February of last year.
The first, and most attractive, is that Wynne has repeatedly apologized for the mistakes of the McGuinty government of which she was a leading cabinet officer, and for her own missteps since becoming premier. In the last hours of the campaign, Wynne even apologized, promptly and without being asked, for a lone Grit candidate’s campaign pamphlet that depicted Tory Leader Tim Hudak as a destroyer of hospitals.
Genuine unsolicited contrition is rare in leaders — notably from our prime minister, but it’s scarce in schools, places of work and even our families. We recognize its worth and reward it.
The second is the budget Wynne tabled last month, which the NDP inexplicably refused to support, triggering this unnecessary election. It is a socially progressive yet fiscally responsible budget. It has been the Grits’ policy platform in this five-week campaign, and Wynne has sworn herself to implementing it.
The Wynne budget pledges to balance the books by 2017-18. Earlier, judicious Liberal government cuts in health spending were not reversed despite their vote-getting appeal. Instead, with health care costs soaring and eating up so much of the budget, it’s imperative that they be brought under control.
Even while showing resolve on fiscal probity, Wynne’s budget is also empathetic toward the least advantaged among us. And so the budget calls for wage increases for the working poor in child care and home health care. That should improve the quality of that care by boosting morale and reducing absenteeism and turnover.
Arguably more important, Wynne’s budget would index the minimum wage to inflation. Hundreds of thousands of Ontario workers’ income is tied to the minimum wage, and their only hope of a raise — of an increase in household income — is an increase in the minimum wage. That’s a boost to consumer spending power that will benefit the entire economy.
Back to prudence, though. The budget provides no increase in public-sector wages. And it commits Queen’s Park to a net reduction in overall program spending, even as it introduces all-day kindergarten — a head start on a smarter, more globally competitive workforce.
It’s true that Wynne is committed to a new Ontario pension plan to supplement an insufficiently supportive Canada Pension Plan, and to a surtax on the rich to help meet her budget-balancing goal, in place of Hudak’s proposed layoff of 100,000 civil servants.
Yet social progressives will find Wynne’s agenda, at least thus far, woefully silent on their reasonable demands for, among other necessities, more affordable housing, and other necessary building blocks of a sustained prosperity for Ontarians.
But Wynne’s incremental approach to social progress has tended to be the way among successful Ontario governments, dating from the 43-year-long Tory rule of Ontario ending in 1985. Social progress by all means, but within our ability to pay for it.
The reckless extreme on that spectrum is Greece and other troubled European countries, with their bounty of social assistance programs, but a tax base insufficient to pay for them given rampant non-compliance in paying taxes.
Successful Ontario governments have stuck to a sensible middle ground, a pay-as-you-go approach to social improvement. That’s what Ontarians voted for Thursday and Wynne shows every sign of adhering to that successful governance practice.
< http://www.thestar.com/business/2014/06/13/ontario_voted_for_sensible_payasyougo_social_progress_1.html >
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