The
Globe and Mail's editorial board has made its choice, and it may surprise some. The
editorial says, in part:
"... in a perfect world, we’d be urging Ontarians to vote for the non-existent Liberal Progressive Conservative Party: a party that believes in fiscal responsibility as the foundation of government, but not its point; a party that understands
the necessity of government to build a better society, but also government’s limitations; a party that puts the free market at the centre of its thinking, while acknowledging its imperfections; a party that chooses policies based on evidence,
not dogma; a party powered by ideas, but still able to feel the pain of real people; a party that favours amelioration over revolution; a party that if entrusted with the stewardship of the once healthy but now mildly ill patient known as Ontario,
could credibly promise to leave her in better shape. '
There are three major parties in this contest, and none of them entirely fits the bill. We do not live in that perfect world. That is not a statement of despair or a call to apathy. Democracy has always been messy and imperfect.
Elections are hardly ever about choosing between polar opposites, or self-evidently right and unmistakably wrong options, as far apart as noon and midnight. At election time, all choices are relative. At election time, all parties
are graded on the curve."
And
"And then there are Tim Hudak’s Tories. Are they the ideal alternative? No, far from it. Are they a viable alternative? Yes, barely.
They deserve praise for taking a hard line with public servants, calling for an across-the-board wage freeze. Union attacks on Mr. Hudak, and support for Ms. Wynne, leave a reasonable apprehension that the Liberals won’t be firm
in future contract talks. And absent a willingness to stand up to its own supporters, a Liberal government will miss its budget targets. Mr. Hudak also has the right idea on business subsidies: Get rid of them. His impulse runs counter to
the Liberal tendency, which has been to move ever more deeply into the game of subsidizing businesses in an attempt to protect or create jobs. Several Liberal financial miscues, notably Green Energy, grew out of a mistaken belief that
government has to get into industrial strategy. The game has long been powered by lobbying and fraught with muck, and the Tories are right to want to find a way out of it.
But Mr. Hudak is also running on a platform of simplistic slogans. The Million Jobs Plan has been rightly mocked for failures of basic arithmetic. The promise to cut 100,000 government workers contains some reasonable ideas borrowed
from Don Drummond’s Liberal-commissioned report on right-sizing government, but the rest is just about offering a nice round number for campaign purposes. The pledge to cut red tape by one-third is similarly just a slogan, not a plan to govern.
The Tory platform is about signalling to the electorate that they are erasing the “progressive” from Progressive Conservative. To govern that way would be misguided, because governing best is not merely about figuring out how to govern less.
There is much immaturity in the Conservative plan.
In a perfect world, Ontario voters would have (at least) two excellent alternatives to choose from. They instead have two imperfect choices: a tired Liberal Party that has yet to learn enough from its mistakes, and an untested
Progressive Conservative Party that needs to moderate and mature. The only way it will do so is if it is given the chance to govern. As for the Liberals, spending some time in the wilderness will allow them to rethink and recover themselves.
On balance, in our imperfect world, we choose the Progressive Conservative Party – but kept on the short leash of a minority government. In two years’ time, if all goes well for the maturing of the Tories and the rebuilding of the Liberals,
Ontarians could find themselves returning to the polls, facing what the province desperately needs: two much stronger choices."
I agree, broadly, with the
Good Grey Globe,
but not on holding the PCs to minority status. Minority government is bad government. There is nothing, ever, to argue in favour of a minority. Minorities cannot do what they were elected to do - for good or ill. All we ever get, in all of recorded history, from minority governments in Canada is destructive compromise - and don't for the love of heaven tell me about
medicare, that is, still, a nonsensical policy that, almost exactly, explains what is wrong with minorities. Minorities are for stupid people that's why they are so popular amongst so many Canadians.
Edited to add:
My, personal dilemma is that I an absolutely certain that:
1. Ontario needs a new, better government, NOW! The Liberals must be replaced. (Readers might want to note that I am a card carrying Conservative at both the federal and provincial (ON) levels.)
2. The NDP is not a credible government in waiting.
3. Tim Hudak is neither
right nor
ready to be premier of Ontario.
I'm going to vote Conservative on Thursday because
imperative 1 and judgment 2 outweigh consideration 3. We've had weak, bad premiers before and Ontario has proven to be resilient.
