By Stephen Vance, Editor
I’m having a difficult time rounding up any enthusiasm for the upcoming provincial election, which is odd for me as I have always been somewhat of a political junkie.
I felt much the same the last time we were heading to the polls to elect our provincial government in 2011. A boring election campaign, with a lack of a galvanizing issue, and a lot of fingerpointing and accusations flying around on all sides, with little in the way of constructive, productive discussion – yup, that’s fun.
Sadly, our provincial and federal election campaigns have more and more resembled American–style campaigns in recent years. Lots of glitz, all of the requisite staged photos of party leaders driving tractors or donning white lab coats to tour a manufacturing facility of one sort or another. As phony and transparent as those kinds of election campaign activities are, I’m not particularly bothered by them.
What does irritate me is the climate of nastiness that has been allowed to slowly foster in Canadian elections.
Just like our neighbours to the south, attack ads and negative campaigning have become part of our political landscape, and the only benefit of such an approach seems to be to simply sweep real issues under the rug.
So while party leaders take jabs at each other on television and radio in the coming weeks over gas plants and other scandals – real, perceived, or otherwise – the real issues become lost in the huge cauldron of silliness that is constantly being stirred by one party or another.
PC Leader Tim Hudak says that he and his party will create one million jobs in eight years. And job creation is so important to Hudak and his Conservatives that before he creates those one million jobs, he pledges to send 100,000 public sector employees to the unemployment line.
With Ontario’s rapidly declining manufacturing sector providing fewer and fewer well-paid jobs for Ontarians, this is the type of thing party leaders should be focusing on, not whether Premier Wynne is obligated to carry the burden of the gas plant fiasco – an issue that falls at the feet of former Premier Dalton McGuinty.
Instead, I suspect that the Conservatives will continue to hound Wynne and the Liberals over the gas plant issue, just as Republicans south of the border will revert to Benghazi whenever they are at a loss for something constructive and honest to say.
Yup, the Liberals screwed up with the gas plant issue. And yup, no doubt somewhere in the neighbourhood of a billion dollars was lost by the government in the process. And yup, it is fun to throw the “billion dollar” phrase around, but let’s keep things in perspective.
One billion dollars amounts to roughly $75 per Ontarian. The Conservatives sure are making a lot of hay out of an issue that cost Ontario taxpayers the equivalent of less than one percent of the province’s annual budget of roughly $130 billion. But that’s American–style politics for you.
Yes, jobs are being talked about. The Liberals have a plan to spend $2.5 billion to attract new business to Ontario, while the NDP has concocted a tax credit scheme aimed at job creation. But the discussion gets lost in the silly stuff.
Is it just me, or have important issues become little more than props in the political machine that lend credibility to all of the hogwash that follows?
If I am to be enthusiastic about a provincial election, I want the party leaders to set aside the showmanship, and instead talk to us about how we are going to ensure food stability in Ontario in the face of uncertain climate trends. I want party leaders to talk about poverty – not pay lip service to, mind you, real discussion about poverty. I want party leaders talking about energy, healthcare, education. I want to see real issues that impactreal people being put forward by our politicians, not gloss and glitz spiced with a dash of finger-pointing and name-calling.
When provincial and federal parties and candidates get back to the grassroots issues, get back to constructive debate and solutions, and move away from American attack-style campaigning, maybe then I will be interested in a provincial or federal election again.
For now, we’re simply voting for whoever gets to stir the cauldron next.
