Ontario Election Odds and Sods

In which we attempt to comprehend the NDP's platform, witness the demise of the Green Party, and hope election ads would join them.

Despite the fixation on the Liberals' and Progressive Conservatives' missteps during the Ontario election campaign (and what missteps they've been!), we'd be remiss to not devote a few column inches to the trials and travails of their competitors. So, what's up with the NDP? The National Post's John Ivison sits down with leader Andrea Horwath before recoiling in horror, like a good free-market acolyte, over her “economic illiteracy.” Horwath is certainly the least-hateable of the leaders, “a likeable alternative to the two middle-aged males leading the other parties,” and she stands to benefit the most from the prolonged exposure of the debates. But Ivison takes issue with Horwath's desire to raise corporate taxes, the “Buy Ontario” provisions for government contracts, halting nuclear power expansion, the proposal to knock the HST off of gas ... basically everything in her party's platform: “It's all as if the Great Depression never happened - the NDP would have Ontario enveloped in a hermetically sealed economic bubble.” It's unlikely that Horwath will end up as premier, but she could very well hold the balance of power in a minority government. Should that occur, Ivison raises the very pressing question of which NDP demands would need to be fulfilled to have them prop up one of the other parties.

The Toronto Star's Martin Regg Cohn checks up on the Green Party and finds them almost entirely deflated. While the federal equivalent celebrates having its first-ever member elected to Parliament, the provincial Greens are polling beneath the margin of error, meaning for all intents and purposes, they've “pretty much fallen off the scales ... attracting barely one-tenth the support of four years ago.” Cohn figures this is due in part to environmental matters being supplanted by economic concerns, but also to the Liberals remaking themselves as environmental stewards over the past term. Green Leader Mike Schreiner even admits as much, saying they Grits have “adopted” parts of their platform. Along the way, the NDP has abandoned almost any pretence of environmental awareness, while the Liberals have picked up endorsements from nearly every leading environmental group across the country. All this leaves the Greens unfortunately neutered, but if the ruling party has incorporated many of the Greens' ideas into their own policies, then the province's short-lived affair with the Greens won't have been for naught.

And returning to the Star, Bob Hepburn confesses his love of political ads and raises the matter of private groups – notably unions – forking over millions for ads during the campaign. There's the teachers' union ad about “voting against kids,” which is clearly targeted at the PCs even if it never mentions them by name; the Working Families coalition, doing much the same; the owners of the Ambassador Bridge slamming McGuinty for his plans of a parallel “bridge to nowhere.” While Hepburn thinks these are some of the more creative and entertaining political ads out there, he says “it's an area that should be reviewed before the next election in 2015.” Those of us who think political ads are misleading, unnecessary, painfully awkward, and almost uniformly terrible agree wholeheartedly: beyond our unease over unions using their members' money to rail against politicians they don't like, there are scant few laws governing just what these third-party ads can say. There's enough misinformation coming out of the mouths of Ontario's politicians. We don't need anymore coming from special interest groups.