A Provincial election here in Ontario is not due until the Spring of 2018. However, the ruling Liberals, and particularly their leader Kathleen Wynne, are in such dire straits in the opinion polls that they are making an early start on trying to win back the voters with new giveaways. Yesterday's budget was choc-a-bloc with goodies, at least one of which was actually a good idea.
Finance Minister Charles Sousa is in the happy position of announcing that the budget will be balanced this year and for the next two years, after a string of deficits stretching back all the way to 2008. Most of the credit for the improvement belongs to the Ontario economy, which is now leading Canada (and all of North America) in terms of growth, after several particularly dire years. It should be kept in mind that, balance or not, Ontario is the most indebted sub-national jurisdiction in the world. Still, there's an election to be won, and the fiscal improvement paved the way for the handouts showered upon the citizenry by Sousa yesterday.
A transit tax break for seniors, more day care spaces, rising spending on hospitals, and on and on the list goes. The one item that looks like something good, or at least the start of something good, is the plan to make prescription drugs free for the under-25s. Uniquely among countries with public health care systems, Canada does not offer any drug benefits, except to senior citizens. This is ludicrous: it means that many people visit their GP (for free) but then receive a prescription that they cannot afford to fill. Thus the GP's time has been wasted and the patient is no better off.
There's an element of cynicism about the Liberals' approach. Under-25s are generally not big users of prescription medications, so the estimated cost of the new plan is a modest C$ 465 million. Intriguingly, the opposition NDP promised early this week that it would introduce a pharma-care plan if it won the election next year, with a very similar cost. Its plan would be available to all Ontarians regardless of age, but would only cover the 125 most-often-prescribed medications. It's not clear which approach the electorate would favour -- my money would be on the NDP -- but one way or another, pharma-care is coming to Ontario, and that's a good thing.
Are there any losers? Yes -- Toronto. Mayor John Tory, as always, is mooching for handouts for an array of projects that he won't ask the city's own citizens to pay for: refurbishment of public housing, transit lines, a glitzy downtown park built over the railway tracks. The Province (and the Federal government) have shoveled huge amounts of money Tory's way in the last couple of years, but there was nothing new for the city yesterday. That's risky for Wynne, given that her party traditionally does very well with Toronto area voters. If polls show the budget is not helping to revive the party's fortunes, we can confidently expect Sousa to conjure up some more money from somewhere to buy those voters back.
And what does all this imply for the election? Wynne, as usual, is moving onto the more left-leaning NDP's turf here. That's risky. Voters unwilling to be bribed with their own money may rally around the Tories, who are well ahead in the opinion polls. One problem there: the Tory party and its young but slightly sinister leader Patrick Brown have even fewer detailed policy positions than Donald Trump. As long as voters hate Wynne as much as they do now, that won't matter, but yesterday marks the start of the Liberals' full court press to reverse their fortunes.
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