The cost of federalism

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 23, 2012 at 4:34 PM - 0 Comments

The Ontario government figures the Harper government’s crime bill will cost the province $1 billion.

Now that it has passed, the McGuinty government says it has determined that the changes could add as many as 1,500 additional inmates to provincial correctional facilities by 2016 and may require a new 1,000-bed facility to be built. Ontario also believes that police officers will spending much more time in court instead of patrolling Ontario neighbourhoods.

The Ontario government says it intends to call on the federal government to help cover the extra costs at the upcoming meeting of federal, provincial and territorial justice ministers in Prince Edward Island.

See previously: Who pays for what?

Who pays for what?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 16, 2012 at 4:41 PM - 0 Comments

In an interview with the CBC—to be broadcast this evening—the Prime Minister rejects the idea of a health care innovation fund (as proposed by Brad Wall and endorsed by Dalton McGuinty).

“What I think we all want to see now from the premiers who have the primary responsibility here, is what their plan and their vision really is to innovate and to reform and to make sure the health-care system’s going to be there for all of us,” Harper said, according to an excerpt from the interview. “So I hope that we can put the funding issue aside, and they can concentrate on actually talking about health care, because that’s the discussion we’ll be having.”

The idea of a separate fund for the provinces to use for innovation in the delivery of health care got no support from the prime minister. ”I’m not looking to spend more money. I think we’ve been clear what we think is within the capacity of the federal government over a long period of time.”

Meanwhile, in an interview with CTV yesterday, Mr. McGuinty mused intriguingly of “disentanglement.”

The feds do jails and we do jails. The feds do training and we do training. The feds inspect meat and we inspect meat. Why don’t one of us, alone, take responsibility for some of those areas. I think that introduces more efficiencies, it introduces more transparency, accountability is more easily evident. I think those are the kinds of conversations that we need to have going forward in an era of fiscal restraint.

The Ontario premier arrived at this point in response to a question about the Harper government’s crime policies and the burden they will place on the provinces, so perhaps this seems tangential to the health care debate. But maybe it’s all part of the same discussion. Consider the analysis of Scott Clark and Peter DeVries that I noted this morning. Continue…

Avoiding pitfalls, the Liberals give themselves a chance

By John Geddes - Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 3:51 PM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Blair Gable

There was nothing the Liberals could have done at their convention, which just wrapped up in Ottawa, that would have justified anyone declaring with a straight face that this party, so badly mangled in last spring’s election, is back in fine form.

A mere policy convention—considering that the Liberals won’t pick their new leader until next year, and that the next federal election is three or four years off—just couldn’t accomplish anything so decisive.

On the other hand, the 3,000-plus Liberals who showed up here for the three-day confab might easily have taken missteps with the potential to seriously compound their deep-seated problems. And the fact that they didn’t sabotage their own chances of renewal counts as a success of sorts.

Continue…

Who pays the bill?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 at 10:03 AM - 0 Comments

Matching Quebec’s demand, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty says the Harper government should pick up the tab for its crime legislation. Peter Russell considers the possibilities.

More likely, added Russell, provinces objecting to the cost or content of the legislation will ignore certain aspects of it — trafficking or possession of small amounts of marijuana, for example. “They will say to police who are out looking, ‘If you get a call give it a low priority’,” he said. “I don’t think they would actually say, ‘We’re not going to enforce the law.’ They would say to the provincial police, ‘Give people who grow pot a low priority’. They can certainly do that. You just don’t put the resources into it. It’s a matter of discretion.”

Politically, Canada is headed into a situation where the provinces are shaping up as the official opposition, added Russell. “They are taking over that role,” he said, “and have a constitutional right to do so.”

Starting… now

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 9:32 AM - 66 Comments

Stephen Harper, August 2. Harper didn’t stop there, putting in a campaign plug for Ontario’s provincial Conservatives in this fall’s election. ”We started cleaning up the left-wing mess federally in this area. Rob’s doing it municipally. And now we’ve got to complete the hat trick and do it provincially as well.”

Stephen Harper, last Friday. You know I don’t analyse elections, and I don’t get involved in provincial elections. Obviously we congratulate Premier McGuinty on his win. Our governments have worked well during the challenges of the past two or three years, and I look forward to continuing to work with Premier McGuinty’s government.

Reality will bite back in Ontario

By Richard Warnica - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 2:34 PM - 8 Comments

Blair Gable/Maclean's

The Twitterati in my home province of Alberta made a lot of hay this week over a headline in The Globe and Mail that presented the election of Alison Redford, a centrist former justice minister and now provincial premier, as an evolutionary step forward for the knuckle draggers of the Prairie politic. “Alberta steps into the present,” the headline read, to which the easily offended replied, “So where were we before, the past?” Albertans have an almost reflexive sensitivity to criticism from the East. It’s a bit like what the rest of Canada feels for the U.S., a mix of smug superiority and desperation to be noticed. But Albertans should relax. Ontarians seem to think worse of each other than of anybody else. And their politics, well, they’re nothing to brag about.

Take last night’s election. It was, in many ways, an odd campaign. In a province where health care eats up $46 billion a year, more ink was spilled on cross-dressing than on doctors’ salaries. Indeed, it seemed at times as if the parties had made a pact to avoid dealing with most of what a provincial government actually does. Health care? Untouchable. Education? Just keep the kissing booths out and we’re fine. Continue…

Dalton McGuinty: Partial Comeback Kid

By Paul Wells - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 12:14 AM - 58 Comments

“Admit it,” a Liberal campaign guy said to me at the Château Laurier while those last few seats were see-sawing back and forth, “If I had told you six months ago that we’d be on the cusp of a majority tonight, would you have believed me?”

Nope. Six months ago I’d have said Dalton McGuinty was toast with a stake through his heart. Or whatever your preferred mixed doom metaphor is. The Liberal has run a doughy, amorphous government, strong on primary schooling in my opinion, but lackluster with the occasional big mess elsewhere. Most Ontarians couldn’t pick Conservative Tim Hudak or New Democrat Andrea Horwath out of a police lineup but they figured surely anybody had to be better than this boyo.

That changed. McGuinty took a licking but he keeps on ticking. His party lost 18 seats. Eleven go to the Progressive Conservatives, seven to the NDP. Reporters get super-excited when it’s unclear whether a government will hold a majority of seats, but even if he falls one short, at 53, McGuinty is close enough and the affinities between his rivals so few that he’ll be able to govern comfortably for quite a while. He’s already outlasted Mike Harris and David Peterson; he’ll have had the job for about a decade before he has to decide whether he wants to try a fourth time. No, I don’t expect him to. But he’s already proved surprising. Continue…

Dalton McGuinty wins again

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 12:00 AM - 7 Comments

Twelve years ago, after an underwhelming first provincial campaign as Liberal leader, Dalton McGuinty’s future was in some doubt. The columnist in McGuinty’s hometown paper, the Ottawa Citizen, duly wondered if he was a lost cause.

“Should the Liberals keep Dalton McGuinty as leader? Now that the dust is starting to settle on his mediocre election campaign, it’s a question they are going to have to ask. The quick and easy answer is that there’s no one better on the horizon so Dalton’s the man. One can imagine the positive reception this idea receives among Tories. They’d like to see McGuinty keep the job until mandatory retirement age of 65. What better way to assure another 50-year Tory reign?”

Continue…

Election night in Ontario

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 9:40 PM - 15 Comments

With Dalton McGuinty’s side on the cusp of a majority, the TV networks are projecting a reelected Liberal government in Ontario. Results are here.

Depending on your level of interest, it could be a long night.

12:07am. So that was interesting. I spent the evening pretending to know what I was talking about by arguing that no one knows what they’re talking about.

12:24am. Paul Wells, who knows what he’s talking about and has spoken with someone who knows even better, files from the Chateau Laurier.

Stephen Harper’s majority rules

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 22 Comments

Fred Chartrand/CP

In the early morning hours of May 3, with the ballots almost all counted, he basked in a Conservative majority. The Liberal Party of Canada, his nemesis, was in shambles. The Bloc Québécois was decimated. If the world seemed then to have tilted in Stephen Harper’s direction, his political situation has become only more advantageous since.

The NDP, though now the official Opposition, has lost its uniquely popular leader, removing Harper’s primary challenger from the House of Commons. What’s more, with Progressive Conservatives mounting serious challenges in Ontario and Manitoba, Harper might awake one day next month to find that every single province west of Quebec is led by a right-of-centre government—a resounding endorsement of the Prime Minister’s twin assertions that “Conservative values are Canadian values” and that “the Conservative party is Canada’s party.”

But if it is to be Stephen Harper’s world, what will Stephen Harper do with it? Perhaps only as much as he said he would do. “The challenge will be getting the balance right and not overreaching,” says Jim Armour, who once served as Harper’s director of communications. “If the Prime Minister goes too big or tries to go too fast, then he risks unifying the opposition and attracting the media’s attention. If, on the other hand, he continues with the ‘stick-to-the script,’ ‘no-surprises’ approach to governing that he’s taken for the past five years, then he’ll be fine. As with all things—even once-in-a-lifetime political opportunities—the key is moderation.”

Continue…

Third-party advertisers take the spotlight in the Ontario election

By Charlie Gillis - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 9:45 AM - 3 Comments

Andrew Tolson/Maclean's

Outsiders have never been terribly welcome in Canadian election campaigns. In federal votes, the 95 per cent of us who don’t belong to registered parties face a bulwark of laws restricting third-party campaign spending—rules rooted in the fear that, left unguarded, democracy will be sold off to the highest bidder. This theory has been an article of faith among left-wingers since the early 2000s, when a conservative activist named Stephen Harper waged a court battle against the limits, to the delight of Bay Street’s heavy hitters.

The Supreme Court of Canada ultimately upheld federal third-party spending limits. But few provinces have strong limits of their own. And if Ontario’s current election campaign is any guide, fears of big business stealing elections for conservative parties may have been laughably misplaced. As of last week, all six third-party advertisers registered with the province’s election watchdog were either labour organizations or coalitions who have in the past run attack ads against Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak. Meantime, an array of environmentalists, NGOs and green entrepreneurs have joined forces in hopes of saving the province’s two-year-old Green Energy Act, with plans for unprecedented forays into the ground-level campaign. Leaders of the ad hoc group deny they are acting for or against specific candidates or parties. But Hudak is the only leader committed to undoing the act’s key provisions.

The Tories might have seen this coming. Four years ago, they felt the full force of a labour-funded coalition called Working Families, which took advantage of Ontario’s loose laws on third-party advertisers by unleashing more than $1 million worth of anti-Conservative attack ads that helped propel Premier Dalton McGuinty to victory. The Tories later complained to the province’s chief electoral officer, claiming the group was a front for the Liberals. An investigation indeed revealed ties between Working Families and Grit campaign director Don Guy. But the probe found no evidence that the group was outright controlled by the party.

Continue…

Election time and hyperbole is in the air

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, September 19, 2011 at 10:20 AM - 6 Comments

Aaron Vincent Elkaim/CP

Every now and then the province of Ontario takes leave of its collective senses. Grown men jump at shadows. House cats are conjured into dragons. For a time it seems as if the only thought on anyone’s mind is the length of their own toenails. We call these periods “elections.”

Just now this province of 13 million souls is preoccupied with a vast and far-reaching proposal on the part of the governing Liberals to give every new job that comes up to a foreign worker. You read that right: if the Liberals are re-elected, they will make the province’s unemployed sit at home—I believe the slogan is “Ontarians need not apply”—presumably until the supply of foreign workers is exhausted. Indeed, so determined are the Liberals to see these itinerant labourers take over the province that they are actually paying employers to hire them: $10,000 a job.

Quite why the Liberals should wish to do this is unclear, but I have it on no less authority than the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. The party has been blanketing the province with advertisements to that effect, while its leader, Tim Hudak, hammers the point home at every opportunity.

Continue…

The Williams bump

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 4:11 PM - 3 Comments

Getting back to this debate, I decided to run the numbers for the entire shortlist using rg’s metric: by popular vote, compare the last election result before the leader took over to the election in which that leader peaked. So, for instance, for Jack Layton I compared the NDP’s 2011 result to the NDP’s result in 2000.

Using that measure, our seven leaders (including Mr. Layton) post the following gains by percentage point.

Danny Williams 29.0
Gordon Campbell 24.4
Jack Layton 22.1
Dalton McGuinty 15.3
Gary Doer 8.0
Stephen Harper 1.9*
Jean Charest 1.5

Add those numbers to our previous stats as you see fit.

*That compares 2011 to the combined result of the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives in 2000.

‘Foreign workers’

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 10:01 AM - 47 Comments

Adam Radwanski watches Jason Kenney watching Tim Hudak.

On Thursday, federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney – the point man for federal Conservative efforts to reach out to new Canadians – used much milder language than Mr. Hudak in expressing concern about Mr. McGuinty’s promise. The previous night, at a rally, Mr. Kenney applauded Mr. Hudak’s line about “foreign workers.” But glancing around him, he looked slightly uncomfortable as he did so.

Dalton McGuinty thinks Tim Hudak should apologize for his language.

Equality of opportunity

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 11:15 AM - 7 Comments

Jason Kenney comments on the skilled newcomer tax credit proposed by the Ontario Liberals.

“I think we should pursue equality of opportunity for all Canadians,” he said. “I don’t think it’s helpful for newcomers or anyone else to start dividing Canadians based on the longevity of their residency in Canada.”

Kenney said people have suggested a similar idea to him but he said he didn’t think it was fair. He said he didn’t think it was the solution to the province’s “very significant” unemployment problem.

Mr. Kenney’s government does have a Federal Internship for Newcomers program and has committed $22-million to the Bridge Training program for skilled immigrants, in partnership with the McGuinty government.

‘Highly discriminatory’

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 26 Comments

Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro imparts his feelings on the Ontario election campaign.

More than that, however, Mr. Del Mastro says it harkens back to the early 1990s when Interim Liberal leader Bob Rae was Ontario’s NDP premier. He brought in employment equity legislation to encourage the hiring of women and visible minorities. “My opportunities were severely restricted by legislation that was supposed to be creating equality,” Mr. Del Mastro said. “I was in my early 20s and thought how dare they create an entirely discriminatory policy that was going to affect my future.”

As a “young white male” at the time, Mr. Del Mastro said jobs were few and far between as a result. “And here we go again,” he said.

The issue in question—considered here by the Globe—is an Ontario Liberal proposal to create a tax credit for businesses that hire immigrants for jobs in professions such as “accounting, law, engineering and architecture.”

‘The best politician of my generation’

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, August 14, 2011 at 7:30 PM - 18 Comments

Former foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon commends Quebec Premier Jean Charest.

Defeated in the May 2 federal election in the West Quebec riding of Pontiac, Cannon strode into a meeting of the Liberal’s youth wing Saturday to take part in a panel discussion. Cannon was invited to the event by the Liberals but few people knew he was attending until he walked in. But his arrival got tongues wagging about a possible return to politics for Cannon or even a run, one day, for the leader’s job should Premier Jean Charest leave.

The veteran politician immediately moved to quash the speculation. “There’s no race in the Liberal Party of Quebec,” Cannon said. “Jean Charest is an exceptional man, probably the best politician of my generation at least. I am convinced Mr. Charest will be there to direct the troops in a future electoral victory.”

It’s perhaps mildly curious that Mr. Cannon didn’t mention Stephen Harper here and it’s unclear what he means by “my generation,” but it’s not unreasonable to say Jean Charest might be the “best” politician of what might be called the Post-Chretien Era.

For the sake of argument, we’ll generally limit this to Canadian politics since 2003 and those who’ve had their greatest successes in the last eight years. And we’ll also separate the politician (whose primary job is to win votes) from the premier or prime minister (whose primary job, at least in theory, is to effectively govern the province or country). If a politician’s primary task is to get elected and a party leader’s primary task is to lead his party to victory and if we generally accept that party leaders dominate our politics, there are probably a half dozen politicians in this conversation—Mr. Charest, Mr. Harper, Dalton McGuinty, Danny Williams, Gary Doer and Gordon Campbell*. Continue…

Don’t become the story

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 at 4:49 PM - 7 Comments

The Prime Minister’s Office would like Conservative MPs to refrain from bringing too much attention upon themselves as it pertains to this year’s provincial elections.

“During these elections you may be called upon by a provincial candidate to assist them in their election. Please keep in mind that we do not want the federal government to become a story in any of these elections,” he warned….

The memo notes that, “In provinces where there is only one ‘conservative’ option, we may all make efforts as individuals on private time to assist the election of that option — provided that we comply with this policy.”

One might wonder whether Stephen Harper, with his comments at Rob Ford’s barbeque, already violated this rule about becoming the story.

Meli-Melo

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 11:50 PM - 4 Comments

A roundup of stuff I’ve written recently, here and there:

For Canadian Business, I interviewed Major Marc Dauphin, a military physician who was the last Canadian to head up the Role 3 hospital at Kandahar Airfield. It was a seriously fascinating chat, I wish we could have printed the entire conversation. Instead, you’ll have to be satisVirfied with this piece. 

That interview took place the day after I served as MC at the launch of Fawzia Koofi’s book in Toronto, which I wrote about on the blog.  I also got irritated with John Ibbitson’s suggestion that Stephen Harper has a coherent foreign policy, let alone something that could be elevated to the status of a doctrine.

For the print edition of Maclean’s, I wrote about Toronto’s war on fun, which was in many ways  just an excuse to grind a well-worn axe about the need to provide immigrants with the opportunity to properly integrate.  That said, all the evidence suggests that Canadian multiculturalism is doing just fine, despite what Muslim-baiters like Geert Wilders and his estate agents over at Sun Media want you to think.

Over at my other blog, I explained why I have no intention of voting for Dalton McGuinty. It has to do   with Virginia Postrel and  light bulbs.  By the way, did you know there’s been a measles outbreak in Massachusetts?

I also reviewed a book about Jay-Z, the business, man, and saw some very cool shorts at the disposable film festival. 

Reform or bust

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 1:59 PM - 13 Comments

In response to Stephen Harper’s proposed Senate reforms, the Quebec government says it will see the Prime Minister in court. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty suggests it would be best to simply abolish the Senate. Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter says reform has to involve the provinces, but equally wonders about the Senate’s reason for being.

“My position on the Senate in the past has been that I think the House of Commons is elected for the purpose of representing the people of the country,” he said. “The upper house is not necessary.”

The biggest hurdle to reform: unions

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, February 28, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 117 Comments

Jeffrey Phelps/AP

At one of his sporadic encounters with the press the other day in Vancouver, a statesmanlike Prime Minister implored opposition members of Parliament to dispense with political games and “focus on the economy.”

Some readers may be inclined to suggest the Prime Minister should tell this to Stephen Harper. But he is hardly the first political leader to sound this theme: of the vital necessity of elected representatives maintaining a constant vigil on the economy, undistracted by elections, polls or any of the other things that politicians think about all day long, else the whole thing collapse.

It’s never entirely clear what this means. Is it that the economy is kept alive by a kind of collective wish of the political class, like Tinker Bell? (“Focus on the economy, boys and girls: focus really hard!”) Or are we to believe that the economy is waiting for them to actually do something? That would require no less of an imaginative leap: these days, the agenda facing governments at every level consists, in the main, not in fresh openings for the application of government’s miraculous healing powers, but in undoing the mistakes of past governments.

Continue…

The political genius of Rob Ford

By Nicholas Köhler - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 166 Comments

Photographs by Donald Weber

Originally published on Oct. 12, 2010

Rob Ford leans back in the nook of his Rob-Ford-for-mayor RV and, sphinx-like, fixes his gaze on something at the far end of the universe. He is just back from a fundraiser at the Mandarin buffet, in uptown Toronto, where members of the local Chinese communities feted his coming victory over the forces of “waste” and “socialism” at city hall. (Ford passed on the chicken balls and deep-fried shrimp, dining instead on roast beef and mashed potatoes.) In a couple of hours he will square off against his opponents in a Citytv debate—a perhaps anxious prospect given that Ford, according to polls the front-runner, will be an even larger target than usual. Now, in the dark calm of the RV, he is ruddy-faced, disengaged, not altogether present. Is he gathering himself for the coming TV battle against George Smitherman, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s one-time pit bull and Ford’s closest rival? No, he says in a small voice. “I’m just digesting my food. That’s a lot I ate.”

However improbable it may seem to Toronto’s elites and the reporters who cover local politics, Ford has good reason to expect that Oct. 25 will make him mayor. Polls have him as far as 24 points ahead of Smitherman, whose victory in January seemed a foregone conclusion. (“In the absence of an incumbent, they made me the incumbent,” Smitherman told Maclean’s.) If Ford does win, it will be in spite of a history of almost Borat-sized faux pas and brushes with the law, including a 1999 Florida drunk-driving conviction that first came to light in August. “We all make mistakes,” says Ford, still in the midst of digestion. “It was bad. I was drinking and driving. But a lot of people drink and drive. I got caught.”

Continue…

Dalton Trudeau

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 8, 2010 at 9:05 AM - 0 Comments

The Ontario Premier gets comparative.

In a closed-door meeting with MPPs on Wednesday, McGuinty deflected questions from members unhappy at the heavy-handedness of police in dealing with protesters—and the government’s complicity in failing to correct the mistaken impression officers had been given more powers.

“He told us, ‘Just remember, the same guy who gave us the Charter also gave us the War Measures Act,’” said one startled MPP, noting the premier also refuted calls from several members to strike a public inquiry into the G20 debacle.

In fairness to Pierre Trudeau, the War Measures Act was enacted in 1914, he merely invoked it in 1970.

For the sake of comparison though… Continue…

One week later

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, July 4, 2010 at 12:44 PM - 79 Comments

Thoughts from Tabatha Southey, Lisa Rochon, Elaine McCoy, Aaron Leaf and Roland Paris. Torontoist has the 14 essential video clips of G20 weekend and an interview with the hero of the one below. The Star tells the stories of the TTC employee who was tackled and the protesters who got engaged. Dalton McGuinty speaks and punts. The CCLA is considering a lawsuit. And Mark Holland wants federal compensation for business that were trashed.