Chris Selley: Fantasy election platforms are still essential documents

Article content

Thursday was a special day in the life of any Canadian election campaign: the day advance polls open without any of the major parties having released a platform, costed or otherwise. (Green Party leader Mike Schreiner unveiled his last week.)

Article content

Article content

Mike Harris’s “Common Sense Revolution” policy document landed in mid-August 1994; the next election wasn’t until June of 1995. Dalton McGuinty started putting economic policy out there in February 2003, nine months before the election. Friday saw the New Democrats and then the Liberals release their platforms. At time of writing, the incumbent Progressive Conservatives had not followed suit. They won in 2018 never having released one, so maybe why bother?

Article content

For those who roll their eyes and say these documents aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on … well, first of all they’re largely right, especially nowadays, when balancing budgets remains a sort of fringe issue — despite a period of interest rates higher than my generation can really remember.

Doug Ford can put a number next to his tunnel under 401 if he likes — he says he’s willing to spend up to $60 billion — but it wouldn’t really mean anything. There is presumably a dollar-figure estimate that would convince him to abandon the project — $150 billion? $750 billion? — but short of that, assuming the tunnel is even technically feasible, it’s mostly just a matter of will, or lack thereof, to keep forging ahead. Ontario voters don’t evince any conspicuous desire for fiscal probity when it comes to universally acknowledged priorities like infrastructure, education and health care.

But platforms, or the lack thereof, can still tell you a lot about a party.

Several times during this campaign, I have heard it said that it’s difficult to nail down a costed platform during such a brief election campaign. If elections were once-in-a-lifetime events, that would make sense. But they’re very predictable! The Tories have been in power for seven years. Marit Stiles has been leader of the NDP for two years. Bonnie Crombie has been leader of the Liberals for three months longer.

Article content

Article content

If they don’t have a policy book ready to go on a moment’s notice, that suggests either bone-idleness, or that their policies are chosen more to compete for votes with the other parties’ policies than out of any belief in their value and essentialness. Good to know.

The numbers in the “costing” sections of platforms may be fantasies built on delusions, but it’s still informative when they screw it up. During the 2018 campaign Stiles’ predecessor, Andrea Horwath, was forced to admit her campaign had misclassified $700 million in reserve funds as revenue rather than expense.

The numbers in the “costing” sections of platforms may be fantasies built on delusions, but it’s still informative when they screw it up

It didn’t seem to cost her: The party won the second-most seats in the party’s history and official-opposition status. But it was still good to know. When Stiles’ platform dropped Friday, two line items were very conspicuous in their absence: Paying half the TTC’s annual operating expenses (roughly $700 million) and buying back Highway 407, then eliminating tolls on it (which would also presumably be an expense). But it was still revealing.

The Liberals’ costing, meanwhile, is just a few lines long — which perhaps indicates a different sort of problem. They propose a “saving annually through value and efficiency” program — the acronym is SAVE, get it? — that would cut 2.5 per cent of government spending per year. They say increased government revenues thanks to a strong economy under Crombie’s watch will pay for increased spending.

Article content

I am far from the only person to notice that both significant “efficiencies” and “money doesn’t matter because the economy will be gangbusters” are exactly what Ford always promises, and is promising again — even as Donald Trump threatens to shoot a harpoon into Canada’s economic thorax.

The NDP traffics in some Ford-ian promises as well. During the Ford brothers’ tenure at City Hall, you would often hear them say they would save money by not wasting money that the previous administration had already wasted — notably on new subway cars, for which Toronto idiotically paid over the odds in order to preserve jobs a 16-hour drive away in Thunder Bay.

The NDP, this year, promise to “save taxpayers $100 billion by not breaking ground on the 401 Fantasy Tunnel,” and $733 million from cancelling the spa-cum-waterpark plan at Ontario Place.

It’s the sort of argument a teenager might make to their parents: You didn’t buy me the iPhone 16 Pro, so now you have $1,500 to send me to Aruba for Spring Break! Running a treasury isn’t the same thing as running a household, but fantasy money is fantasy money. This sort of basic accounting is the least voters should demand from their would-be leaders — and sooner than just a few days before the vote.

National Post
cselley@postmedia.com

Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here.

Article content