Let the Games Begin

The Tax Man, the Chain Ganger and the Bike Lane Lady wrap up their pre-election campaigns as the rest of us head to the patio one last time.

We know there's nothing more you'd rather do this beautiful long weekend than get up to speed on the ever-titillating Ontario provincial election that's just around the corner (...), so, lucky for you, we've spent the last hour or so condensing the musings of the Ontario politeratti for your perusal. First up, CBC's Robert Fisher sets the stage before the long weekend, looking at where all three major parties are (the Progressive Conservatives still leading, the Liberals nipping at their heels, and the NDP not far behind them) and deciding that it's basically a toss-up at this point. Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty is looking to nab his third-straight majority, a rarity for any political leader, and one aspect helping him out is his campaign experience, says Fisher, noting that both Andrea Horwath and Tim Hudak have only ever run as candidates and not as leaders, while this will be McGuinty's fourth kick at the can. “I’ve covered 10 Ontario election campaigns and every party leader I've talked with has, without exception, told me how difficult it was in that first campaign,” says Fisher. “Running as a candidate in a riding is one thing; being responsible for all 107 ridings is quite another.” McGuinty is a proven campaigner, but he'll have his hands full coping with attacks from both a born-again NDP and a PC party determined to score a conservative hat trick in Ontario.

The Sun chain's Brian MacLeod figures that Hudak's inability to maintain a double-digit lead over the Liberals is because his platform just isn't conservative enough. “He's fallen into centrist politics, while tossing a few scraps to the new conservative right with hardline approaches to prisoners (chain gangs) and going after welfare fraud (lifetime bans),” says MacLeod. The rest of the PC platform is loaded with ideas taken from the NDP (no HST on heating) and toeing the Liberal line (no changes to education or healthcare, knocking down the deficit), a far cry from Mike Harris' Common Sense Revolution back in the 1990s. MacLeod's is a good point: beyond getting a new face to run Queen's Park, Hudak has yet to really make a compelling case that his party is at all different from McGuinty's Liberals. And why would voters cast a ballot for a party full of rookies when they'd get much the same, policy-wise at least, from a party with nearly a decade more of experience governing?

And what about the Liberal platform? The Globe and Mail's Adam Radwanski wonders what surprises they might include when the document is released this weekend, and whether they'll live up to Hudak's “Tax Man” nickname for the premier. “The Tories, with their platform, lent some plausibility to the Liberals’ scare-mongering,” says Radwanski. “This weekend, we'll find out if the reverse also holds true.” Given that the deficit more or less hamstrings any massive spending projects, Radwanksi imagines the Liberals are going to focus on what they do best: education and healthcare. So far, they've already rolled out proposals to extend teacher's college to two years, which “wouldn't cost anything” and to start summer school for failing elementary students (at $9 million, a drop in the pond). Granted, these aren't sexy or even vote-winning proposals, but they are at least fiscally prudent and don't really follow the “Tax Man” theme Hudak's pinning his whole campaign on. If the rest of the platform is as boring, heck, McGuinty might just have a winner on his hands.