Andrea Horwath: Her Smugness Takes A Hit

The other day, while watching some reactions to the Ontario Throne Speech, I couldn't help but note a truculent and smug Andrea Horwath, the leader of an NDP party now diminished by her foolish decision not to support a progressive budget, thereby triggering an election that few wanted. She opined that the now-majority Liberal government will have to make massive cuts in order to balance the budget by 2017-18. Indeed, she called the speech a Trojan Horse plan.

Who knows? She may be right, but the fact that she gambled and lost the leverage her party enjoyed in the legislature thanks to her decision to go for the brass ring of power has weakened considerably both her credibility and stature among voters. Perhaps this helps explain these results published in today's Star:

One third of Ontarians think NDP Leader Andrea Horwath should resign in the wake of her recent provincial election defeat, a new poll has found.

The poll, conducted by Forum Research, found 35 per cent believe Horwath, who triggered the election by announcing her party would no longer prop up the minority Grits, should step down as leader, while 43 per cent felt she should stay on and 21 per cent had no opinion.

In terms of personal approval, Horwath has dropped to 28 per cent compared to 41 per cent for Wynne. Last August, Forum found the NDP leader at 50 per cent and the Liberal premier at 36 per cent.

Lorne Bozinoff, the president of Forum, noted that the party got nothing out of Horwath's ill-considered decision to force the election:

They don’t have any more seats than they had going into the election and they lost control of everything,” the pollster said, referring to the NDP’s loss of the balance of power in a minority legislature.

“She took a real hit with the whole election thing and not supporting the budget. It just didn’t go well and I think she really did alienate some of her own supporters, the progressives”.

The article also notes the mandatory review Horwath faces in November, where tradition demands that she get at least two-thirds support from the delegates.

Will she meet that criterion? The NDP has few bright stars in its stable, and considering the real possibility that the Progressive Conservatives will pick a female leader (Christine Elliot is the early favourite), it is unlikely that the NDP will pick a male replacement. The only viable alternative, it seems to me, would be Cheri DiNovo. Currently the MPP for Toronto's Parkdale-high Park, she is a United Church Minister and much more a traditionalist when it comes to NDP progressive values.

So it would seem that the party has some intensive soul-searching to do leading up to the November review.

Lisa MacLeod Revisited

The other day I wrote a commentary on recently re-elected Nepean-Carlton Ontario Progressive Conservative Lisa MacLeod. In a thinly-disguised job application/op-ed piece for the Star, Ms. MacLeod talked about what is needed for revitalized leadership of her party, brought to electoral ruin by the soon-to-be-departed leader Tim Hudak. Perhaps not surprisingly, MacLeod's prescription for renewal seemed to reflect her 'skillset.'

It is a self-assessment with which not everyone agrees. In today's Toronto Star, two letter-writers point out what the party needs, and their prescriptions do not seem to include Ms. MacLeod:

Re: Ontario Tories need fresh leadership, Opinion June 24

When I read drivel such as this penned by Lisa MacLeod, it is difficult to drum up any optimism about the futures of Ontario, or its Progressive Conservative Party.

The Tories lost the election for one reason: incompetence on a massive scale. Instead of running with a few things that would have resonated with the vast majority of voters (hydro rates, and debt load on our children’s shoulders), true to form they handed their opponents coils of rope and voluntarily built the scaffolds.
It is quite apparent that Lisa MacLeod is positioning herself for a run at the leadership of the party, and I would extend a caution to anyone who might be under the impression that her fresh face is the ticket to party rejuvenation.

I met Ms MacLeod several years ago at a public meeting in rural Ottawa. Her personal brand of politics differs little from the all-too-familiar version: politics is nothing but the acquisition and retention of power — decency and concern be damned.
And the fact that she ran away from a discussion about our declining property rights shows that she really isn’t much different from Mr. Hudak, or the Liberals and the NDP, for that matter.

Jamie MacMaster, North Glengarry

MPP Lisa MacLeod could have saved a lot of ink and space by simply writing: pick me, pick me!

She is already looking to the next election. Listen up Tories: Ontarians don’t like elections. They cost money. Our money.

What we want for the Ontario Tories is a leader with intelligence, integrity, candour, honesty, a social conscience, and especially, the ability to work with all parties, to find the best solutions for Ontarians’ needs. Not your party’s needs.

That pretty much rules out all the old baggage carriers from the Mike Harris years – like Tony Clement and the neocons/Tea Partiers like Lisa Raitt.
Oh, and Lisa MacLeod.

“Red” Tories it’s time to take back the party.

Susan Ruddle, Waterdown

Sometimes You Just Have To Hold Your Nose

It would never occur to me to withhold my vote in any election. Yet the one occurring in Ontario on June 12 is particularly striking in its paucity of real choice. I can't remember a campaign for which I have felt less enthusiasm.

Of course, Tim Hudak's extremism disqualified him as anyone worth considering long ago. His palpable anti-unionism, although muted in this campaign, would surely resurface in full bloom should he ever become premier. Coupled with his contempt of public service, he is a viable candidate only for those with blunt minds, those who take comfort in stark choices and worldviews.

The Liberals come with some terrible baggage and the ennui that inevitably characterizes a regime too long in power. While the gas plant debacle has had the most prominence, there have been many others that call into question their fitness to continue in office. And then there is the latest reminder of their way of doing business, the MaRs planned bailout that is just gaining traction as we move into the final stretch of the campaign.

The third major party, the NDP led by Andrea Horwath, also offers real problems for the conscientious voter. Her failure to support a Liberal budget that had much to offer progressives, on the pretext that she doesn't trust them to keep their word, along with her devolution into populist politics and policies, have led many to abandon any hope for her party. It is hard to escape the notion that power at the expense of principle is the NDP's defining characteristic under her leadership.

Because we are soon going away for a week to visit our kids in Alberta, we will likely vote today in an advance poll. Since I always try to be honest in this blog, I will tell you who we are casting our vote for, in case you are interested. It is Kathleen Wynne's Liberals who, despite the above, seem the least odious of the three major parties on offer.

Hardly a ringing endorsement, I'm sure.

A Timely Reminder of Young Tim Hudak's Faulty Math

While much of the media seem to give young Tim Hudak a free pass on his ludicrouse claim that he will create one million jobs in Ontario over eight years by slashing both jobs and corporate taxes, Paul Boothe at Maclean's is offering a more critical perspective:

A very surprising and, for voters, unfortunate thing became apparent last week in the Ontario election campaign. The Progressive Conservatives’ central campaign proposal, the million jobs plan, collapsed when analysts looked closely at the math. Elementary, but critical arithmetic errors in their calculations resulted in the Progressive Conservatives vastly overestimating the number of jobs their plan would create. These errors demolished the underlying economic rationale the party had put forward for its smaller-government, lower-tax plan.

It seems that a fundamental error occurred in the Tory brain-trust's calculations:

...the planners confused person-years of employment with permanent jobs. This confusion led them to vastly overestimate the effect of their proposed job-creating measures. The result was that the half million jobs the Progressive Conservatives were promising to create with their plan (base-case economic growth was expected to provide the other half-million jobs) was really only about 75,000—fewer than the 100,000 public-sector jobs they were pledging to eliminate.

Or to put it another way, as explained by McMaster economist Mike Vealle,

Mr. Hudak appears to have conflated person years of employment – how many people would be employed for a single year – with permanent jobs. As a result, he counted many projected jobs multiple times.

Tim's predictable response?

“We strongly disagree with that interpretation,” he said while touring a factory on the outskirts of Niagara Falls. “I stand behind our numbers.”

While no one has yet demanded studies to back up Tim's basic premise, that austerity and tax cuts create jobs as discussed in two previous posts, this discovery of error at least represents a good use of journalistic time.

UPDATED: Gerald Caplan's Lament

The NDP exists for a reason: to express certain principles and to represent certain voters. Today it is not easy to say what the Ontario party’s principles are or for whom it speaks.

This lament, which Gerald Caplan places near the beginning of his open letter to Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath, expresses both the sadness and the frustration I suspect many feel. For those of us who still believe that government can be a force for positive social change, Andrea Horwath's direction and leadership as it is emerging during the Ontario campaign has been a profound disappointment. No vision. Just what many call populist policies or 'chequebook issues' that promise a modicum of relief from a few financial burdens, while leaving the fundamental underlying issues untouched and unspoken.

Her rejection of a progressive Liberal budget in the hope, presumably, of pursuing political gain, disappointed many, as Caplan makes plain:

Here was a win-win for the party: Many of those in need – the NDP’s people – would have directly benefited, and the NDP could have taken the credit. It would’ve been an entirely plausible claim, since it was true. The Liberals crafted it expecting your support. I expected it too, as did many others. Our disappointment was compounded when you could offer no sensible rationale for doing the opposite.

Pointedly, he chides her for what is missing in the current incarnation of the NDP:

No coherent theme, no memorable policies, nothing to deal with the great concerns of New Democrats everywhere: increasing inequality, the precarious lives of so many working people, reduced public services, global warming.

Instead, here is where her sights seem to be set:

...your real target seems to be business people large and small. Yes, they have their needs too, some of them legitimate. But they also have their parties who cater to those needs. If business want a sympathetic party to support – and they do – you can be sure they don’t need and won’t buy the NDP.

There are, of course, those die-hard NDP politicos who will be outraged by Caplan's letter. A circling of the wagons seems a natural reaction when attacked by one of your own. But what they need to remember is that he speaks for many who have grown disaffected with a party apparently more interested in pandering than in adhering to principles that provide a voice for those who have none.

For me, he speaks a sad but undeniable truth: the NDP has lost its way.

UPDATE: The discontent expressed by Gerald Caplan is spreading:

You may also like to check out these links here, here and here.

And Speaking Of Tale Tales

Here's a whopper from one of young Tim's chief disciples, Lisa MacLeod:

Political Rhetoric Pierced

Hyperbole is, of course, a mainstay of political campaigns, as those vying for public office offer a blunt message to potential voters. Keep it simple and repetitive seems the overarching strategy, never more apparent than in young Tim Hudak's 1 million jobs plan. Will people be fooled by his claim that with the destruction of 100,000 good-paying jobs that provide much-needed services to Ontarians, Phoenix-like from their ashes will arise more jobs than there are people seeking them?

Judging by these recent letters from Star readers, I suspect he has his job cut out for him:

Re: Hudak’s popularity takes a hit over jobs plan, May 14

So on the one hand, Tim Hudak is going to create 1 million jobs in Ontario. On the other hand he is going to eliminate 100,000 jobs from the civil service. One can only wonder what kind of jobs he’s going to create. Minimum wage? Part time? No benefits? No pensions?

This is war on the working people of Ontario. We’ve seen this kind of politicking before under the inimitable Mike Harris, Hudak’s mentor and go-to boy. One can only hope that the electorate doesn’t buy into this kind of small mindedness.

Stephen Bloom, Toronto

Tim Hudak has revealed his platform, and his great plan for Ontario is to lay off 100,000 civil servants. It is hard to believe the audacity of this man. Not only has he decided to let these people go, he’s inferred that they are just rather worthless employees, living off the fat of the government, and of course, running up the poor taxpayer’s tab.

Mary Pucknell, Whitby

Hudak’s promise of a million jobs is like my 3-year-old telling me that one cookie is not enough, she wants a million. I for one am tired of politicians glibly using terms like unemployment without giving any thought to the underemployment of our precariat class. Let’s not oversimplify a complex and serious problem with meaningless talk and myopic platforms.

Matthew Ferguson, Oakville

Tim Hudak, a trained economist, would have us believe that supply-side economics works despite the evidence in recent years. That we are still in anemic economic growth six years after the Great Recession is sufficient evidence to prove that low corporate taxes in Ontario and Canada will not boost the economy.

Canadian businesses have tens of billions of cash to invest but they are not investing. Why? The opportunity to profit is not there because economic growth is driven by consumption and the ultimate consumer is us. Business investment depends on consumers buying.

Hudak repeats daily that he will create a million jobs by reducing corporate taxes further and eliminating 100,000 public sector jobs. He operates with a blind belief that this would increase profits for business and thus attract them to invest in Ontario.

Where Hudak fails is identifying who is going to buy the stuff and services that business is selling. As more wealth is shifted to the top 20 per cent, leaving 80 per cent of the population with less to spend, overall consumption is going to be stagnant at best if not decline. If consumers are not buying, there is no profit for business to make. Even if corporate tax is reduced to zero, when there is no demand, business will not invest.

Plants of U.S. companies are moving back to the U.S. It is not because we are not competitive. These plants were here because they cater to a sizable Canadian market then as well as the U.S. market. As consumption here decreases due to unemployment and lower incomes, there is no reason for those plants to be here.
Business need us to buy. If we don’t have the means to buy, business won’t have a reason to invest, or to exist. That’s basic economics which right-wing politicians don’t seem to get.

Salmon Lee, Mississauga

You can read more of these well-considered rebuttals to Hudak's fantasies here.

Oops!

But at least young Tim manages to retain his boyish grin during yet another campaign gaffe.

Can I Get Back To You On That?

Maybe I am just angry because a progressive budget was dismissed by an allegedly progressive party.

Maybe I am fearful that an NDP-induced Ontario election could see the ascension to power of young Tim Hudak ('I've got a plan to create one million jobs!'), who clearly will never be ready for prime-time politics, fixated as he is on recreating the disastrous Harris era that he played a key role in.

Or maybe I am a bit contemptuous that even though she is the one responsible for this election, Andrea Horwath is still indulging in a meteorological assessment (aka testing the political winds) before she takes a stand on issues.

Maybe it is all three, but what set me off this morning was an article Richard Benzie, Rob Ferguson and Richard J. Brennan wrote for this morning's Star. Entitled Ontario election campaign shows lack of readiness, it makes sport of the fact that young Tim chose the wrong venue for his first official appearance, MetalWorks sound studio, where the owner, Gil Moore, avowed his support for a Liberal $45-million funding initiative introduced last year to help the music industry. It is an initiative that Tim, opposed to any such government support for industry ('Lower taxes and they will come!' avers the toothy-grinned young man), voted against.

But from my perspective, the most telling aspects of unreadiness that may or may not reflect on the leadership of Ms. Horwath, are the following:

- the New Democrats still have to appoint candidates in 39 ridings,

- they don’t have a bus for reporters covering them, as is standard

- they don’t yet have a fully formed campaign platform.

It is the latter, however, that I find most vexing and also most emblematic of the party's troubled leadership.

While visiting a Brampton convenience store, Horwath was asked the following:

Will she match the Liberals’ pledge to give $4 hourly raises to personal support workers?

Will her party set up a pension plan for the roughly 65 per cent of workers who don’t have one in the workplace?

Her non-answer essentially amounted to, "I'll have to get back to you on those issues." Refusing to answer, she promised that a full list of NDP campaign promises will emerge as the election unfolds.

Ms Horwath is adamant that the Wynne Liberals cannot be trusted with their promises; by refusing to answer direct questions, I guess the NDP leader is making sure the same cannot be said about her.

Who's Sorry Now?

Perhaps NDP leader Andrea Horwath will be, for forcing an unnecessary Ontario election, if the results of a new Forum Research Poll hold throughout the campaign.

The survey of 1,845 people across Ontario, conducted on Friday and Saturday, yielded the following reuslts:

- 48 per cent of respondents approved of the budget. Thirty-two per cent disapproved, and 20 per cent didn’t know.

- 68 per cent approved of the income tax hike for wealthier Ontarians, with just 24 per cent disapproving and 8 per cent with no opinion.

- 39 per cent think Sousa’s spending plan will be bad for the economy while 21 per cent think it will be good, another 21 per cent feel it will have no effect and 19 per cent were unsure.

President Lorne Bozinoff says extrapolating the polling results would see the Liberals winning 49 seats in the 107-member legislature, the Conservatives taking 45, and the NDP holding 13.

Currently, the distribution is 48 Grit MPPs, including Speaker Dave Levac, 37 Tories, 21 New Democrats, and one vacancy.

In other words, the projection gives us another minority government, less seats for the NDP, and an election tab north of $80 million.

Thanks, Andrea, for nothing. Your vanity project does not seem very popular.

Ontario Politics

While I realize that the politics of Ontario is likely not a riveting subject for those living in other jurisdictions, I nonetheless offer this brief post on the election that has been called here for June 12. Given that the Wynne government presented a budget that by anyone's standards would be deemed progressive, the decision of NDP leader Andrea Horwath to 'pull the plug' on this minority government seems wrong and entirely self-serving.

A woman who has proven to be a grave disappointment as her party's leader, Horwath, given to pandering for power at the expense of principle, is voting against a budget that I daresay, based on her performance these past few years, she would be too craven to bring in were she heading the government.

As pointed out by The Star's Thomas Walkom, Wynne has promised to invest heavily in public transit. More important, she has proposed the country’s first serious retirement income scheme since the Canada Pension Plan was brought in almost half a century ago.

Should voters look to the Progressive Conservatives, Tim Hudak has made it clear that if his party wins, he will kill Wynne’s proposed Ontario Retirement Pension Plan, pull back on ambitious infrastructure proposals, and make life miserable for unionized workers.

Like Jack Layton, whose NDP helped bring down the Paul Martin Liberals, thereby paving the way for the Harper regime, will Horwath's decision prove just as fateful for the people of Ontario?

If so, the NDP, if it is to have any possibility of future rehabilitation, will need to find new and principled leadership as soon as possible.