Ontario Politics again
Newly elected Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty will be sworn in with his Cabinet on Oct. 23. Things seem to be moving at a stately pace--compared, say, to the transition in California. One difference: Gray Davis is able to sign a bunch of bills, and make appointments; an outgoing Premier in our system is supposed to do only the minimum necessary to keep the government running--even during the campaign.
McGuinty has been briefed on the fiscal situation (bad--the outgoing government projected a deficit of $2 billion last spring unless some assets were sold; very few assets have been sold, and the economy has been hit by SARS and other problems, so the deficit may be $4 billion or more). He cannot divulge the confidential stuff, but he is hinting more strongly that something will have to give--he already said some spending promises will be postponed, and now he seems to be hinting that he is willing to run a deficit.
He has a huge caucus, with a good representation of former ministers from the late 80s, and bright new talent. There are at least a noticeable number of women and people of colour, which is important in the cities, especially Toronto, these days.
The Progressive Conservative caucus, on the other hand, is stereotypically Tory: aging, male, white bread, and rural. I don't have bios in front of me, but I estimate that out of 24 MPPs, a maximum of 8 are under 50, and a minimum of 6 are over 60. There are only two women, and no visible minorities. The Tories were completely shut out of Toronto and the suburbs closest to Toronto, as well as the most urban areas of other "big" cities: Ottawa, London, and Kitchener-Waterloo. The northern cities and Windsor were pretty much gone before.
In a way this was an election that went even worse for the Tories than it appears at first. If they emphasize the surviving caucus members, they will have little to say to the urban and suburban voters they lost. Several promising leadership candidates lost their seats, and may decide to stick with private life for a while.
What continues to interest me the most is the ongoing debate about government services vs. tax cuts. Several high-profile school trustees and/or teacher representatives were elected as Liberals, and there seems to have been a sense among the urban middle class that cuts had gone too far--the schools are hurting. Health care is always an issue, in that no matter how much money is spent, one can point to line-ups somewhere, but I think the Tories were successful in neutralizing that issue in comparison to education and possibly "public health/environment."
The Tory government was, once again, stereotypically Tory in that while talking tough about cutting spending (not necessarily services) and taxes, they kept trying to beef up services in rural and remote areas. They tried to establish equalized per-pupil classroom funding "regardless of where your child lives in the province." If the general fiscal restraint means that cities face real cuts in services, while the areas where "the people aren't" enjoy increases, you are asking for trouble. Toronto tends to have a sense of entitlement--people there often think it is too interesting a place to be in Ontario, or Canada--and they got used to seeing tax revenues that were raised there, spent there. They had little extras for everyone. Now there's less of that, and there are complaints that the city has become a shabbier place.
The soon-to-be-federal Liberal leader, Paul Martin, who supposedly has to wait until February to take over officially, is promising to dedicate some of the gasoline tax to the cities.
McGuinty says he will cap class sizes (the Tories had capped the school board-wide average class size, allowing flexibility as long as big classes were made up by small ones somewhere in the system). The Liberal promise will be expensive, and a lot of work for school boards.
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