Roll out the pork barrel

The next Provincial election here in Ontario is set for June 7, 2018.  A few months ago, Premier Kathleen Wynne and her unlovely crew were insanely unpopular with the electorate: at one point the Premier's personal approval rating dipped as low as 14 per cent, a depth to which even Donald Trump has not yet sunk.  With nothing much to lose, and a strong local economy providing a healthy revenue boost, the Liberals have embarked on a truly astounding series of targeted giveaways aimed at buying back the lost voters.  There was yet more largesse in yesterday's Fall Economic Statement from Finance Minister Charles Sousa.

My aging memory isn't good enough to recall all the money that's been thrown around, but this list should be representative enough:

• The minimum wage, currently C$ 11.60/hour, will jump to $14 at the start of 2018 and will hit $15 at the start of 2019 -- the latter increase being, of course, contingent on the Liberals being re-elected in June.

• The small business sector has been warning loudly that the higher minimum wage will be a job killer, so Sousa's statement yesterday included a cut in the corporate tax rate to offset some of the impact.

• Prescription drugs will be provided free of charge to everyone under the age of 25, starting in January. At the moment only seniors get their drugs paid for. 

• Tuition fees for college have largely been eliminated for lower-income students.

• Homeowners can get a smart home thermostat for nothing.

• The Provincial portion of sales tax on electricity bills has been waived, as part of a series of measures to stem the dizzying rise in energy costs resulting from the Government's "green" initiatives.

And so on.  According to Sousa, the Government will run a balanced budget in each of the next three years despite all of this new spending. We will have to wait and see what the Provincial Auditor, who has been loudly and repeatedly critical of the government's accounting standards, has to say about that.

These are not all bad initiatives, by any means, although the long-term costs for the short-term energy price relief will be enormous.  What grates is the sheer gall of the Government in assuming that a raft of giveaways just ahead of the election will suffice to make the voters forget the incompetence and scandals that have been a feature of the administrations run by Wynne and her predecessor Dalton McGuinty.

The Liberals are leaving nothing to chance.  Canadian governments are always big buyers of media advertising, but the scale of the marketing effort being put behind these measures is startling.  There's scarcely a prime-time ad break that doesn't trumpet one or other of these initiatives.  The ads are blatantly partisan, but a recent rewrite of the rules by Wynne's government leaves plenty of wiggle room, and they're using all of it.

I'm immune to being bought with my own money, but I'm not sure about my fellow citizens. Will people re-elect a government with a leader they heartily dislike just to get their hands on a free thermostat?  We shall see.