To the polls

It is time for an election in Ontario. There comes a time in the life of a governmentwhen the stale, pungent aroma lingering in the hallways of Queen’s Park and on Main Street across the province overwhelms our ability to endure it. The gathering disappointment, deceit and corruption piles up so high it can no longer be avoided—even when the options aren’t particularly appealing.

Kathleen Wynne and the Ontario Liberals would very much like to move past the scandals, the misspent billions, the soaring debt and the growing resentment for her party’s failed interventionist policies in many corners of the province. Andrea Horvath’s NDP know the Liberals need their support to cling to power, so they will lever their position to drive the agenda and extract gains for their constituents. Tim Hudak’s Ontario PCs have sensed, correctly I believe, that the gas plant is one corrupt fiasco too big and too emblematic to move past.

Wynne said this week that unless the other parties agree to co-operate on government business in which they share common ground, she will go to the people to seek a fresh mandate. There are times and circumstances when opposition leaders and their parties should heed such a call for co-operation— particularly in a minority government.

Smart urban writers such as Adam Radwanski of the Globe and Mail and the Star’s Martin Regg Cohn insist the disease that plagues the governing party ought to be overlooked so that Queen’s Park can get back to work solving the pressing business of regulating the tanning bed industry, lowering cell phone rates and establishing a financial accountability officer. (Column writers, like politicians, are acutely skilled at zeroing in on policy failings after the fact.)

The implication of their urging is that the hundreds of millions of dollars burned by Dalton McGuinty to salvage a couple of seats in the greater Toronto area in the gas plant scandal is, in the broader scheme of things, a transgression that, while crass and a grotesque in the bright light of day, is after all the way politics is done. A misdemeanor for which the culprits have been caught and punished. After all McGuinty is gone. So too is his energy minister Chris Bentley. Now they insist we should all just move along.

Well maybe they are right. But we don’t have to accept it. We can insist that our government do better. We can insist they listen to folks outside of the halls of Queen’s Park. An election does this.

When the Liberals came to power in 2003, Ontario owed about $138 billion to debt lenders—equal to about 27 per cent of the value of every good and service sold that year. It was high compared with many other jurisdictions. A decade later, howver, that debt pile has soared to more than $252 billion or 39 per cent of gross domestic product. $114 billion (with a b) more debt.

This mountain of debt, and the deficits that feed it, rob our children of choices, opportunity and services we once took for granted. They will pay the price for this government’s indulgence.

How did this happen? How did we nearly double our debt load during the span of one government?

One very small local example. This summer a new provincially funded courthouse opened in Belleville. The six-floor 138,000 square-foot Quinte Courthouse would have cost less than $75 million to build. It’s a big pile of money—but it is dwarfed by the more than $270 million we will pay financiers to offload the construction, maintenance and liability risk and costs from the province over the next 30 years. A quarter of a billion dollars has been committed on a courthouse in Belleville because the Ontario government has concluded it is politically safer that the private sector construct and manage its buildings.

There are at least five other courthouses being built across the province just like this one. On the up side Belleville reporters tell us the new courthouse offers a great view of the city.

E-Health. Ornge ambulance. Closed and underfunded hospitals. Local health integration networks. The Green Energy Act. Hydro bills. Declining manufacturing sector. Crippling debt.

When a government becomes this cynical and this disoriented by its own patterns of deceit and arrogance, we must show them the door—even it we don’t favour the alternative. This is because the signals we send when we choose to look the other way inform the bureaucrats, staff, ministers and fellow citizens that this is how provincial government operates. This is what we expect. This is normal.

When we shrug our shoulders and wearily conclude that all governments act this way—we become party to their deceit.

Our provincial government has stopped listening— it’s well past time we insist they did. New tanning bed laws can wait.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca