Obligatory Ontario Election Column

Who needs barbeques, cottages, and patios when we have always-riveting provincial politics to keep us occupied?

We know that you're breathlessly counting down the days until Oct. 6, when people across Ontario (and if our traffic analyses are right, that means you, probably) get to exercise their democratic privilege and vote for whatever party they dislike the least. The National Post's Tasha Kheiriddin attempts to figure out why more of her neighbours seem to be talking about the weather than an election in the country's most populous province, concluding that voters are probably disinterested in supposedly hot-button issues as “sneaky eco taxes” and cutting through red tape. “The PCs have yet to find their version of the Ford gravy train,” says Kheiriddin. “Until they do, there remains the alarming possibility that voters will not vote for change, since there isn't that much on offer.” Kheiriddin says, predictably, that the solution is to promise more money in people's wallets (when in doubt, resort to vote buying...), although we're inclined to think apathy this time around has more to do with the utter blandness of all three party leaders and their platforms.

Over in the Toronto Star, Charles Pascal rails against such “gravy train” politics, using former premier Mike Harris' crusade against “fat cat” MPP pensions as an example of how short-sighted sloganeering often leads to bad policy. In 1996, Harris pledged to kill pensions for legislators, calling them “offensive to Ontarians” and other such populist rhetoric aimed at voters' guts and not their brains. But once the pensions were done away with, Pascal says the result was “too many excellent mid-career legislators taking leave to be able to generate enough predictable income to support themselves and their families through the inevitable life transitions ahead.” (Note that a good chunk of top Liberal MPPs and cabinet ministers have decided to not run for re-election.) Pascal calls for an end to “the bumper-sticker approach to political communications that plays to fearful and greedy narrow self-interest,” and we wish him success, even if it ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

And what about that most effective of slogans, the plea for “change” that the PCs are flinging around, albeit with decidedly less charisma than Barack Obama? Warren Kinsella of the Sun chain, using the recent federal election as an example, suspects that “change” carries much less currency when the economy is in turmoil. “Recent events are political gold for any politician seeking re-election,” says Kinsella. “The European debt contagion is spreading; the U.S. government came close to default due to Republican gamesmanship; the markets have been chaos for weeks.” McGuinty's hardly been a compelling or even likable premier, but Ontario is still in much better shape than nearly anywhere in the U.S., and that stability will surely help his electoral chances. It's a modern update of Abraham Lincoln's re-election pitch way back in 1864: “Don't swap horses in the middle of a stream.” That worked like gangbusters for Harper in May (and George W. Bush in 2004). McGuinty had better hope it works for him, too, as there are scant few other reasons that make him – or any of his rivals – seem worthy of a vote.