By James Phieffer - also published in the August 13th, 2011 Intelligencer
Okay, Tim.
You've had your laugh. We're all LOL'ing at your wicked impression of Dalton McGuinty. It's time to quit kidding around, and start acting like a conservative again.
I was looking at the PC's “changebook”, and I at first thought I'd gone to the NDP site. Come on, really – the best you can do is a deficit in 2015-16 that is only $600 million less than the Liberal plan? How is this a truly conservative budget?
Sure, there's the planned $3 billion cut in taxes – a good start. But where are the meaningful cuts in provincial government spending that's increased over 90% since the 2003 election? Where's the plan to cut government down to a more manageable size, to stabilize healthcare spending by implementing new funding models and experimenting with the provision of some services by the private sector, with OHIP simply paying the bill, as most insurance plans do.
Where's the determination to cut spending by a certain amount – say 5-10% total - or to implement a salary freeze for government employees (subject to contracts coming up for renegotiation).
Where is the intent to break free of the failing welfare state model, and rebuild the government to meet the needs of the 21st century? We saw the Liberal concept of this, which involved closing privately run licence bureaus in Belleville and elsewhere, replacing them with longer lines at the local Service Ontario office – combined here with a dearth of parking. How this helped anything is beyond me, but it did help increase costs and lower the level of service.
Tim, you have a chance to chart a course back to fiscal sanity and governmental competence. You can be the man who sets the agenda, forcing the Liberals to fight a battle of ideas – and that's an area where the left tends to bring knives to gunfights.
And consider too what happened to the last two PC leaders who tried the “Liberal Lite” approach. Ernie Eves, after a decent performance in his short time as Premier (including during the 2003 blackout), bought into the media's anti-Harris narrative, and tried to appease that with a platform which bore no small resemblance to that of the Liberals. That election was soundly lost.
The leader of the PCs at the time of the next election, John Tory, was more of a “Red Tory” by nature. He sought to gain the support of more conservatively minded voters with the suggestion of government funding for religious schools, but aside from that the platform was hardly distinguishable from that of the incumbent Liberals. The school issue then blew up in his face, and Ontario voted for the “devil they knew”.
Quite clearly, if Ontario is given a choice between two milquetoast party platforms, the Liberals have the advantage. Right now, there is nothing to get the conservative vote excited, except the idea of ditching Dalton. But will that motivate those same voters to get to the polls in October? Will a mishmash of spending promises without a solid plan for limiting and then shrinking government spending be enough to cause uncommitted voters to seriously consider the PCs?
Tim, it's time to put forward a plan that rouses conservatives, that clearly distinguishes the PCs as the party of the centre-right. It's time to design a platform that lives up to that of the last conservative government in Ontario. Tim, it's time to quite playing Dalton, and give conservatives a reason to vote for you (and not just against the Liberals) this fall.
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