Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford is the right choice to lead Ontario for the next four years. The incumbent premier’s focus on economic growth is what this province needs during these uncertain times. An NDP or Liberal government would just be too risky.
That’s how the voting public seems to feel, as well. Ford is on track to secure another majority mandate. The only question is how many people actually show up to vote this Thursday.
It’s a sign of the public interest in this election that the major parties released their campaign platforms with less than a week to go before the vote.
The NDP and Liberal opposition both released their respective pledges on Friday morning. This was a day after some voters had already gone to the ballot box in the advance polls, which ran for a period of three days, beginning Thursday.
Both parties’ platforms commit significant amounts of new spending — $70 billion over three years for the NDP and $65 billion over four years for the Liberals.
The big ticket items pledged by NDP Leader Marit Stiles are a monthly grocery rebate, creating a public builder to construct 300,000 houses and a school food program. The marquee plans from Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie include constructing 90 new public schools and securing a family doctor for every Ontarian.
While they’re both promising to spend big, where they differ is on taxes. The Liberal platform includes no new tax increases. The NDP, however, want to increase income tax, capital gains tax and the land transfer tax all on higher brackets.
What does it say that these parties didn’t feel the need to inform voters of their platforms before the voting days had officially begun? The question can also be flipped on its head. What does it say that voting days had commenced and nobody seemed to notice or care whether party platforms had been released or not?
This all applies even more so though to the governing Ontario PCs. Ford didn’t release his full platform until Monday — which was after the advance voting had entirely wrapped up.
The incumbent government’s platform is the most modest in terms of spending, committing to $40 billion more from the public purse. The platform is heavily focused on economic development and responding to tariff threats from the United States, with $5 billion earmarked towards what they’re calling the “Protect Ontario Account.”
It’ll be interesting to see if Ford wins the advance polls with the same commanding margin that polling suggests he will win the whole election by. If he does, that will mean that the one party that didn’t have a platform released prior to the advance voting was the one that won the advance voting. Funny how that works.
None of this should be a surprise, though. For starters, because of technical reasons: these days, platforms are typically just all of the previously released pledges put together in one document, making the promises easy to read for voters who haven’t been following the daily news from the campaign trail.
But more so because this election hasn’t been about firm policy issues as much as it’s been about the general mood of the electorate. This vote isn’t being swayed one way or the other by policy proposals on major provincial issues like health care and education.
This election has consistently been about exactly what Ford said it would be about: to give the people a say on who is the best person — and party — to govern Ontario during a period of economic uncertainty and throughout the second Trump term.
While it’s undeniable that our schools and hospitals are in disrepair, the frustrations around those concerns never bubbled to the forefront. The Trump factor took up all of the oxygen in the room and still does.
Whether it’s individuals concerned about their jobs or businesses running the numbers on the costs related to their supply chains, everyone is preoccupied with how the threat of tariffs will affect them.
Besides, Ford is ultimately right as he said during the debates that if the economy isn’t doing well then we can’t adequately fund our social services. This is clearly what he focuses on day in and day out. The same can’t be said for Stiles or Crombie.
This election may very likely have the lowest voter turnout in recent history but it will have at least brought stability.
National Post