The sad spectacle of Ontario's race for second place

With the stakes as high as they are, it’s more than a bit disappointing that the Ontario election has become a race for second place. Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie has shifted her campaign to focus on courting NDP voters, appealing to them directly, insisting that the election is absolutely not a race for second place, as she strives to secure second place. 

Forget disappointing — this is an outrage. It’s been seven years of Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservative government in Ontario, and now he’s on his way to locking in at least four more. So far, Ford has failed on healthcare, housing, education, climate, worker rights, the welfare state, and more. His government is dogged by scandal and under criminal investigation for its Greenbelt giveaway. But somehow the election is nevertheless a race for second place – and an uninspiring one at that.

Whatever one thinks of the Liberal, NDP, or Green opposition parties, any of them would be better than Ford, even with their own underwhelming election promises. But at this point, even a random number generator would be better than the PC leader. 

Of all the issues, housing might be the one where the opposition parties are trying to show up. Ford is offering precious little on that file, one of the province’s biggest issues, preferring to tout previous plans and a promise of new money for infrastructure along with a slow-moving effort to cut development charges for new builds.

The NDP, Liberals, and Greens are more ambitious. The New Democrats aim to stand up 300,000 affordable homes, build supportive housing, and leverage public land and grants for new builds. The Liberals are set to spend $3.6 billion to make new builds cheaper and forego provincial and transfer taxes for first-time buyers. They also want to make it easier for municipalities to densify. The Greens are promising two million urban homes over the course of a decade and saying they’ll legalize the building of fourplexes without rezoning, similar to what jurisdictions like B.C. have already done.

The Liberals have tried to make this election about healthcare, a noble but ultimately futile undertaking that is undermined by inadequate promises. Voters routinely cite healthcare as a key concern, but despite emergency rooms closing, low physician availability and procedure wait-times dragging, Ford isn’t being held to account on his record. 

Everyone wants to hire more doctors and connect them with families in need. Ahead of the election, Ford promised to spend $1.8 billion to provide  Ontarians with a doctor — easy, peasy! — and create more than 300 family care teams, which is a fine idea but no panacea. This plan accompanies Ford’s move to grow privately delivered surgeries in the province, a move that risks installing two-tier healthcare in Ontario. 

The Liberals want to lure family doctors to Ontario from abroad (including from the United States), and reduce the paperwork and other administrative burdens that make running a family practice unappealing. They’re offering a living wage to nurses and personal support workers, a sound strategy given that workers do prefer to earn a living that allows them to survive. The NDP plan is similar, as is the Green plan. I doubt anybody believes any of this is going to be enough.

The Ontario Disability Support Program is a good measure of how much parties at least pretend to care about those struggling to make it through the day. The NDP, Liberals, and Greens have all promised to double ODSP rates, which sounds like a lot, but still won’t be quite enough to get by given the current rate of about $1,400 a month. The PCs won’t break the bank, or even open it a crack — promising to merely increase payments at the rate of inflation, which will leave recipients in their current state of legislated poverty.

During the leaders’ debate last week, each candidate was given 30 seconds to reply to the primary question on what they would do to fight climate change. Yes, half a minute. The debate spent more time talking about what the leaders would cook one another for dinner and where they would like to visit in the province when they have a weekend off. Seriously. In short, the debate ignored the climate crisis, as Abdul Matin Sarfraz reported, with no leader wanting to go anywhere near carbon pricing and, indeed, jockeying over who is most keen to run from it.

The PCs are promising an expansion of nuclear and hydro power, which is at least something, but insufficient given the scale of the climate crisis. The Liberals have little to say on climate, the NDP a bit more with its promise of EV and heat pump rebates. The Greens are in on heat pumps, too, pledging free units to those earning less than $100,000 a year while also guaranteeing to phase out electricity generated by fossil fuel by 2035. Grim stuff.

On balance, of all parties, the Greens seem most ambitious, but they can afford to be, in a world where they’re polling in the single-digits. It’s hard to look at any party or leader and expect they’ll solve Ontario’s debilitating structural problems. It’s even harder to imagine any leader being worse than Ford. But of the two parties most likely to replace Ford, the Liberals and NDP, the extent of their ambition seems to be pallid platforms and second place, which is a shame, because Ontarians deserve better.