Rivers: Coming Ontario provincial election is said to be Brown's to lose.

Rivers 100x100By Ray Rivers

January 1st, 2018

BURLINGTON, ON

 

patrick-brown smiling

Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown is said to be leading in the polls – will that lead hold?

It’s Patrick’s Brown’s election to lose according to the pollsters surveying Ontario’s political landscape in advance of the 2018 vote. Of course the only poll that counts is the one on Election Day but his PC party has been topping the Liberals for the last two years. Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals are mired in second place, tied with the other centre-left party, the NDP, led by veteran Andrea Horwath.

 

Premier Wynne runs a job training course for MAyor and NAME, gYPTECH

Premier Wynne has been to Burlington on numerous occasions. Anyone who will flip racks fo ribs has got to care about what happens in this city. Will this city be part of the province that returns her to office later this year?

Wynne is generally seen as unpopular though it is hard to understand what she has done which might have offended the public. Horwath, on the other hand is more popular though still perceived as an unknown. Even after leading her party since 2009, and with a couple of elections more under her belt than her opponents, she and her party have failed to connect with the voters.

Patrick Brown is a breath of fresh air for a political party that has a history of too often catering to its socially divisive extreme right wing. He flew on that wing himself not so long ago, but obviously has found the other one and put together a balanced platform that, with a couple of exceptions, pretty much looks like what the other two leaders have been promising. The biggest question is whether he really means it.

Paint it any colour you like Ontario is moving smartly on a solid track and that means its Premier, Wynne, has been doing the right things – or at least most thing right. The budget has been balanced, electricity rates have been scaled back, unemployment levels are way down and the economy is booming. Wynne can also take credit for the expansion of the Canada Pension Plan as well as inflation-proofing and increasing Ontario’s minimum wage laws – measures intended to help address the needs of those who are victim to our ever growing income gap.

There is also good news for those eligible for free tuition and Pharma- care. But the electricity file has been a sore point for the Liberals, though in truth it has been that way for governments going back to at least Bob Rae. And thanks to Mike Harris and Dalton McGuinty there has been a huge transition in the province’s energy business including a greater role for the private sector and a revolution in how electricity is generated.

Coal fired generation

Coal-fired electricity is a thing of the past. Few remember just how significant the changes to the provinces electricity supply system have been.

To be sure, none of the parties will be bringing back coal-fired electricity nor resurrecting Ontario Hydro. There is, in fact, little disagreement on the fundamentals. It’s only on the edges that the parties are staking out territory. Brown has promised to somehow re-negotiate the iron-clad energy supply contracts downwards and put a stop to expansion of the electricity system. It’s true that today’s hydro bills include payments for electrons which gets delivered whether they are needed or not.

But the world is changing so fast that within a few years most automakers will finally be producing electric vehicles (EV) in quantities to rival and even exceed the gas guzzlers. And that will mean a rapid increase in electricity demand as gasoline stations start to disappear, becoming as rare as Blockbuster video stores and hen’s teeth. And then charging your EV at home overnight will cost you a lot more if Brown eliminates smart meters as he is also promising to do.

Smart electricity meter

The Smart Meters are apparently not smart enough for Patrick Brown,

Climate change is being caused primarily by the greenhouse gases (GHGs) generated by fossil fuels. Ontario became the first jurisdiction to get rid of its coal-fired energy plants, one of which had been the largest point source of GHGs in Canada. Recently the federal government has mandated carbon pricing, a carbon tax, across the country to shift demand away from fossil fuels.

Ontario and Quebec have decided to meet that mandate through a ‘cap and trade program’ where GHGs would be capped and major players, e.g. oil companies, would have to buy quotas. Some of the costs of those quotas would be passed along to consumers when they fill their tanks, but the total cost of ‘cap and trade’ is generally less for an economy than a carbon tax.

That fine point is lost on Brown who would get rid of cap and trade and apply a flat carbon tax as Alberta and B.C. do. And like B.C. he would make it revenue-neutral, targeting income tax reductions for the middle class, thereby also making it mildly redistributive as well. Yet claims of over 20% in tax cuts will need to be weighed against the much higher prices for home heating and cooking fuels, public transportation and of course what you pay at the pump.

By definition revenue-neutral is like moving money from one pocket to another. But at least a carbon tax is an easier concept to understand and more directly consistent with the federal mandate. Of course to be effective the tax will have to be significant and ever increasing – and it will be. But as carbon use and carbon tax revenue decline, will the tax cuts that it funds also diminish?

Andrea Horwath

Andrea Horwath leader of the New Democratic party – will Burlington have an NDP candidate for 2018? Who?

Horwath has complained about smart meters as well, and has mused about buying back Hydro One shares but has yet to release her full party platform. And if history is any judge the NDP policies will be a twist, a nuance, on the ones the Liberals already have borrowed form the NDP – or stolen as the NDP regularly accuse.

All of this seems to indicate a kind of humdrum, big yawn of an election muddle. It may all depend on how badly people want to change, how bored or unimpressed they are with the Liberals and their leader after a decade and a half, despite the good times. It would be naive to ignore the age and gender of leaders as factors voters consider, though style and campaign performance will probably be the final determinants. And of course the party stalwarts will be voting the party line.

Rivers hand to faceRay Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking.  Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington in 1995.  He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject.     Tweet @rayzrivers

 

Background links:

Forum Poll –   Wynne –    Horwath

Ontario’s Cap and Trade –   Cap and Trade vs Carbon Tax –   Smart Meters

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6 comments to Rivers: Coming Ontario provincial election is said to be Brown’s to lose.

  • Ray Rivers

    Hi Bill – thanks for your comment. It’s true that parties occasionally campaign one way then govern another. Our former Pierre Trudeau fought an election opposing wage and price controls and then implemented that very policy once he got a majority.

    Thanks again Bill.

  • Mike

    Now that I have had time to contemplate a little, let me start with Kathleen Wynne. She is an accomplished and effective politician but a lousy leader. Some of my reasons for saying that is that a leader would have dealt with the gas plant fiasco not protected her predecessor and his team. It was a stupid deal and gross negligence in regards of spending of our hard earned dollars. The green energy plan while on the surface has good merit, was poorly constructed and the only reaction she can come up with is to refinance the payments due to mitigate the costs to ratepayers and have OPG put the debt on their books so she can say the budget is balanced. Again a stupid decision and waste of taxpayer dollars. Her decision to raise the minimum wage didn’t consider what the cost impact was on the government budget – I don’t recall any discussion by her how much more funding will be required, but she will just borrow more. Hospitals alone are asking for an additional $100 million. She has shown time again, her decisions are for the party and getting elected, not for the province and the people. It is a sad state and needs changing.

    Unlike those that have government benefits and pensions, the rest of the population is not doing well. Most have incomes that have stagnated while costs continue to rise. The aforementioned government employees continue to due well as the government is not dealing with the hard issues of cost, efficiencies and value for money, as they just borrow the money to provide the raises. Let’s remove the capability of government to borrow money for program spending and see where the chips fall. They would make for an interesting election.

  • Mike

    Ray, a very Happy New Year. You have left me lots to chew on which I will do over dinner as I need to settle myself down a little before I respond.

  • Luke

    “Paint it any colour you like” indeed Ray, but to paraphrase a former Prime Minister, “There’s no Chump like an old Chump.”

    Unlike yourself Ray, I used to vote liberal Religiously until a certain former Premier not only promised to cut my taxes but indeed delivered on that promise.
    I’m alright now though, I actually utilise critical thinking with respect to voting. I have yet to see clearly where the current regime has improved my life at all in the last 14 years.

    “Wynne is generally seen as unpopular though it is hard to understand what she has done which might have offended the public.” Typical understatement from you Ray. She is the “Most unpopular Premier in Canada,” of course ignoring the Deep thinker that is running PEI – “The town that became a province.”
    Hmmm, “Stretch Goals”, “Revenue tools” Sold OPG to private interests to balance the books at today’s prices but ignores the fact it will skyrocket when fossil fuel autos are changed out?
    That is a textbook demonstration of the total absence of economic and business sense and foresight. Highest sub-sovereign debt in the World?

    I’m guessing that you perhaps are unfamiliar with the foregoing. I have difficulty believing one as educated and bureaucratically experienced as yourself could in fact be ignorant with respect to it though.

    Did you notice the price of Gasoline today? An extra 4 cent jack so that 35 million people will save the more than 7 Billion from their errant ways and their fossil fuel usage. This despite the fact Canada has the 3rd largest Rainforest on the planet. Canada is not the problem.
    Of course we can and should improve, and innovate but at the flip of some switch or imperial fiat?

    I look forward to the division and fear mongering that our Dear Leader will sow this Winter and Spring.

    Happy New Year Ray.

  • Bill Boyd

    As you know I continue my educational journey with respect to how the political game runs in Canada. So, your mention of the parties’ platform unfortunately, although naturally strikes a very raw nerve or two. Platforms down here, I’m pretty sure good old LBJ would’ve labeled worth less than a bucket of warm p**s. Would that be a far assessment of “your” parties’ platforms, Ray?

    Thanks for the continuing education.

    Bill down in Fredericksburg, VA, USA.

  • Brian Jones

    Just don’t get complacent. Keep in front of voters. Make yourself MORE known