Losing their way

Why is it, that the older a government gets the more it is likely to get balled up in its own cleverness? Why do governments growing long in the tooth abandon their own principles and values for the sake of political expediency? And so easily?

We are seeing evidence of this sickness at both senior levels of government these days. What were once virtues and high-minded principles are now annoying constrictions to action. Ideas that were once important now just get in the way of an agenda. And as the spectre of election day looms larger, governments grow impatient with their own rules. They believe they are better than the other guys because they tell themselves this every day.

So the bend their own rules and ignore their own principles to wriggle out of the box they’ve created for themselves.

At the federal level, the Progressive Conservatives came to power promising to clean up back-room dealing. Now they find themselves trying to explain how they twisted their own accountability rules to cleverly sidestep spending limits in the 2006 election.

This sad story is being played out daily in the national media. Less well publicized and for me more compelling is to observe the provincial government as it tries to reconcile its ‘Father Knows Best’ agenda with a population that has become disenchanted with being treated like children.

In December 2004 the fresh young government of Dalton McGuinty enacted a law banning “self-serving” partisan advertising. In a breathless statement that accompanied the new law, Management Board Chair Gerry Phillips exclaimed the “groundbreaking” legislation would safeguard that “all government advertising must not foster a positive impression of the governing party or a negative impression of a group critical of the government.”

With heads held high and chests puffed up the new McGuinty government was heralding a new day in politics. Seven years on this high-minded zeal has become a straitjacket.

It would love to use taxpayers’ money to tell you that its health care policies are making Ontario families better. Or that the HST is a good thing. Or that its energy policies make sense. That electricity bills would have gone up anyway. Or that intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar will ever be meaningful contributors to the province’s energy supply.

They would love to tell you this in big glossy ads—especially in the months ahead of this fall’s election. Mainly because they worry most Ontario families no longer believe them.

Hospitals, including Prince Edward County Memorial, continue to face cuts. HST has made everything more expensive. And electricity bills are skyrocketing while the wholesale cost of power has remained more or less flat.

The McGuinty government is feeling hamstrung by its own legislation. It would dearly love to tell its side of the story, but it can’t very well turn over its own law.

Perhaps not. But it’s a mistake to underestimate the cleverness of a government staring at defeat.

Instead it has done something rather devious. Aplan worthy of the CIA handbook. Rather than advertise its messages directly—it is paying others to do it.

Since 2004, when it enacted the ban on partisan advertising, the McGuinty government has funded friendly organizations who were already promoting the government’s policies.

We are not talking about trifling amounts. Just on the energy file the McGuinty government has spent at least $3 million to fund organizations extolling partisan messages on its behalf.

The Ontario Sustainable Energy Alliance Association (OSEA) has been the biggest beneficiary, raking in over $1 million of government funds. You will have noticed OSEA advertisements in local papers. Indeed the organization hosted a presentation in Picton in February 2009 to tout the attributes of the Green Energy Act—legislation it continues to promote and defend. You paid for it.

The McGuinty government funnels money into this organization through at least three channels—the Ministries of Agriculture, Energy and Infrastructure and perhaps the most worrisome, the Trillium Foundation.

Most Ontario families believe the Trillium Foundation is used a way for the province to assist volunteers in “building healthy and vibrant communities,” as their literature suggests.

Instead the McGuinty government is subverting its own foundation and ministries to promote its own contentious policies—something it made illegal in its first term of office.

Many, particularly those whose funding requests have been turned down, will now wonder if money that might have gone to good use in their community has instead been diverted to spread the word of the McGuinty government.

Dalton McGuinty needs to explain why he is sidestepping his own rules. Why is he subverting the province’s community funding organization to do things his own law prohibits him from doing?

Everywhere one looks in the McGuinty government’s energy file, one finds the foundation propped up by taxpayers money—rich subsidies, exhorbitant prices, diminished public safeguards and public opinion shaped by government proxies. It is a house of cards that will surely come tumbling down.

The McGuinty government believes it hears support for its policies among the average Ontario family—it must be careful not to confuse it with the hype it has bought and paid for.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca