One More Reason to Loath End of Summer - Editorial

Jeff Green | Aug 11, 2011

We are now well into the Dog Days of summer. The weather is still hot, and we really don’t want to have to think about the cold weather to come.

But deep inside we know summer will end. So even if we don’t act right away we are starting to think about preparing for winter. Thoughts like “Is there enough wood in the pile?” and “Should I start cutting a bit on cooler days?” or “Should I call to get the furnace looked at before too long?” are popping into our brains as we sit on the porch at the end of another hot summer day.

There is something else we are faced with this year, and it will come about before any of the really cold weather hits.

On October 6, there will be a provincial election, the third election in less than one calendar year. Many of us are feeling election fatigue. We already have voted in new municipal councils and given the federal Conservative party a majority.

But we need to pay attention to the provincial election, because, if anything, it will have a greater impact on our daily lives than either of the others we have suffered through recently.

It is the decisions the provincial government and its vast bureaucratic framework make that determine how the hospitals and clinics, schools and roads are managed and paid for.

And the province gets a whole lot of our money. Not only do they collect provincial sales and income taxes directly; much of the money we pay in federal income taxes and municipal property taxes ends up being spent by Queen’s Park.

The provincial election campaign, which is basically waiting in the wings until after Labour Day weekend, will be a one-month affair dominated by attacks against the incumbent Liberals for their tax policies and for a series of scandals and failures that inevitably crop up after eight years in power.

As voters we will be facing a bit of a dilemma because we may not have a palatable option in front of us.

Ideological preferences aside, the Liberals have been in power eight years and after eight years it is usually time to 'throw the bums out'. All things considered that might be what Ontarians want to do this time around, and it is hard to believe Premier McGuinty’s claim that Liberals are going to be coming forward with a “series of exciting policy proposals” during the campaign.

But the 'Tim Hudak' Conservatives have not offered any concrete alternatives either, except to say they will cut the HST from Hydro bills and will “cut job-killing red tape” and “get tough on crime.”

What we do know is that the previous Conservative government created a whole set of problems and transferred a lot of the tax burden to municipal taxes. They kept provincial taxes and forced property taxes up. We pay for a portion of policing and ambulance and education as part of our municipal property tax bill. The Liberals did not change all of this, but they did moderate it a little bit through transfers.

This makes it even more of a concern that Tim Hudak is not really saying what he plans to do.

Andrea Horwath and the NDP are still claiming that cutting tax loopholes for rich people and taxing corporations more heavily will enable us to increase spending on health and education without raising taxes.

Essentially none of what has been proposed thus far by any of the parties really amounts to a reason to support any of them.

In the case of our own LFL&A riding there will be relevance to the local race this time around. The margin of victory last time out was less than 1,000 votes for Randy Hillier over the Liberal candidate Ian Wilson, making it a potential swing riding, although even Liberals do not expect to gain many, if any, seats this time around. But they would dearly love to unseat Randy Hillier and may put some extra resources into LFL&A.

Conservative incumbent Randy Hillier's political career started when he railed against the bureaucrats that run provincial ministries and against urban bias in government. He ran for his party’s leadership and finished last, but threw his support to Tim Hudak, making him a force in the party. This has already been demonstrated when Hudak did not intervene when the longest-sitting member of the party, Norm Sterling, was supplanted by a Hillier ally in a neighbouring riding.

Against him, the Liberals have former Central Frontenac mayor, Bill MacDonald, who will be talking about bringing provincial dollars into the riding; about how much the Liberals have brought in and how much more can be brought in if he is elected and the Liberals are returned to power.

Most elections are determined by the way the leaders handle themselves and react to the media and the public. This often supplants both the underlying policy questions and the campaigns at the riding level.

So even though at this point the Liberals are trailing in the polls, it will only be in the heat of September’s campaign that we will have any real indication of what will happen.

It will be interesting to see if the local campaign takes off.

Until then, as we sit on the porch at the end of another hot summer day, just like the woodpile and the furnace, we might think about politics a little but we will then turn away to look at the sunset or get another beer from the fridge.

September will be here soon enough.