Promises aimed at voter's wallets

PARTY PLATFORMS
This is a useful summary of some of each party's promises as well as the total costs. The latest predictions are for a Liberal majority government. The Greens will end up with 0 seats and the NDP 12. If the MMP passes the Greens would do a lot better and probably the NDP as well.

TheStar.com | Ontario Election | Promises aimed at voters' wallets
Promises aimed at voters' wallets



04:30 AM
Rob Ferguson
Queen's Park Bureau

If voters sit down to talk turkey about Wednesday's provincial election this Thanksgiving, they'll notice a few items on a $58 billion political menu that may surprise them.

Tax cuts from the NDP. A Green pledge to stop funding Catholic schools in favour of one public system. The Progressive Conservatives promising tougher fines for industrial polluters and putting the poor first in line for a break on the health premium.

Dozens of promises cover the gamut from health to education, the economy, financial help for cities, the environment, property taxes, poverty, crime and more.

But, after a month on the hustings, opposition parties hoping to unseat Premier Dalton McGuinty's Liberals complain their platforms are barely getting a nibble from voters who seem to have had dessert first – namely by watching the Conservatives twist over an unpopular promise to extend public funding to religious schools.

"Canadians are like stock car racing fans; they like watching politics for the crashes," said Terry Flynn, a marketing professor at McMaster University who studies political communications.

With families gathering for Thanksgiving this weekend, parties are hoping Ontarians think more broadly about the election race that ends with Wednesday's vote.

The Liberals have put a $14.7 billion price tag on their promises, the Conservatives $14.1 billion on theirs, the NDP $16.8 billion and the Green party $11.7 billion.

"I think it's going to be a crystallizing weekend where people sit down with friends and family they love and respect to talk about the important choices they've got to make," said a senior NDP strategist.

From the get-go, the campaign has been dominated – and the platforms of all three parties overshadowed – by Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory's early promise to use public money to fund religious schools.

After his decision this week to allow MPPs a free vote on religious school funding – a move widely criticized as a flip-flop – Tory said he hopes voters will move on.

"I think they'll be asking themselves – in an Ontario where we have kids with autism not getting treatment, in an Ontario where we have families without family doctors, in an Ontario where we have farmers struggling to make ends meet to grow our food – are we getting the kind of leadership we need to take us forward?"

Not surprisingly, many of the parties' promises are aimed at voters' pocketbooks. Both opposition parties are promising relief from McGuinty's health tax of up to $900 per person. The NDP is targeting health tax reductions at people earning less than $80,000 and eliminating it on incomes below $48,000.

The party is going one step further by pledging to reinstate Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) coverage of chiropractic care, eye exams by optometrists and physiotherapy cut by the government – something the Conservatives and Liberals say they can't afford in their programs.

The NDP also is proposing a denticare plan worth $100 million.

The moves will save Ontarians up to $450 per person, with the $1.5 billion cost recovered by raising taxes on corporations and people with incomes over $150,000, the party says.

Tory is promising to phase out the health tax over four years, but would scrap it starting Jan. 1 for people earning less than $30,000, saving them up to $300.

McGuinty stands by the health tax, which the government brought in despite McGuinty having promised during the 2003 campaign not to raise taxes. "We've made some difficult choices, and we stand by those choices," the premier says.

In this campaign, the Liberals are promising a $45 million denticare plan for the working poor, free PSA tests for prostate cancer and fertility testing for women.

The Conservatives propose to ease wait times through use of private health clinics at which Ontarians would be able to use their health cards to pay for care. Tory's rivals challenge the premise.

Analysts say the opposition parties' health premium promises aren't gaining traction with voters who remain wary after the cuts to government services and taxes during the Mike Harris era.

It's an even tougher sell for the NDP given the notorious tax hikes when Bob Rae was New Democrat premier in the early 1990s, said University of Toronto political scientist Nelson Wiseman.

"The image of the NDP, no matter what they say, is that these guys are tax and spend types."

NDP Leader Howard Hampton defends his promised cut, saying McGuinty's health tax took a bigger bite from lower-income families than the more well off. "He went after people who struggle every day just to pay the hydro bill and just to put food on the table."

On helping the poor, the Liberals are sticking to a pre-election promise to raise the minimum wage to $10.25 by 2010 from the current $8, and tout their Ontario Child Benefit of up to $1,100 per child within four years as groundbreaking.

Hampton is continuing his call for an immediate $10 minimum wage, contrasting it with the 25 per cent pay raise for MPPs that McGuinty pushed through the Legislature before Christmas with support from the Conservatives.

Hampton says the raise, which boosted McGuinty's income by $40,000 a year, should be rolled back, while Tory says it should stay and is promising annual reviews of the minimum wage in consultation with business and labour groups.

Environmentalists feel they've been pushed off the radar screen by the school controversy. The issue has "sucked all the oxygen in the room," said Keith Stewart of the World Wildlife Federation.

While he's pleased the major parties have substantial environmental promises, Stewart said their strategy of making them public early on was designed to keep the environment "off the table" during the campaign despite the fact it's another top concern for voters.

"If you talk to insiders in the Liberals and Conservatives, they say if they talk environment it bleeds votes to somebody else," Stewart said, suggesting the Greens are the beneficiary.

He criticized the Liberals and Conservatives for planning more nuclear power reactors – the Liberals plan two and the Tories at least that many, arguing it's the best way to keep the lights on without producing global warming gases.