Doug Ford’s budget favours cars; NDP pitch focuses on people

Doug Ford’s Conservative Ontario government presented its long-delayed budget on Thursday, April 28, and then immediately adjourned the legislature.

There will be an election in Ontario on June 2 and so this budget now becomes a campaign document. Oddly, Doug Ford’s finance minister Peter Bethlenfalvy does not commit to re-introducing this budget if the government is re-elected.

The Ford government’s message is: Vote for us and trust us to do the right thing if we win.

The budget comes a few days after the official opposition New Democrats, led by Andrea Horwath, rolled out their campaign platform.

While the NDP emphasizes providing a hand up to the most vulnerable, protecting the environment, and dealing with the backlogs in health care and weaknesses of long-term care for the elderly, the Conservatives put their greatest emphasis on big spending on infrastructure, and grants, subsidies and tax breaks for private industry.

Some of the Ford infrastructure spending will go to public transit. The budget foresees $61.6 billion over 10 years for buses, commuter rail, and subways. That includes a new 15.6-kilometre subway line for Toronto and extending the suburban and ex-urban GO train system that feeds Canada’s largest city.

The budget also provides for a massive expansion of Ontario’s highway system. $25.1 billion goes to a new super (400-series) highway for the region north and west of Toronto, and a widening of the already massive Highway 401 that runs through Toronto east to the Quebec border.

A 19th century attitude toward Indigenous communities

There are also new roads planned for the remote northwest of the province, the mineral-rich Ring of Fire.

The region north of Lake Superior which stretches all the way to Hudson’s Bay, is homeland to scores of Indigenous communities, but the purpose of those new roads would not be to make life easier for isolated First Nations peoples. It would be to make it possible for multi-national corporations to extract and ship out the valuable natural resources locked deep in the ground.

There are pious words in the Ford budget about “multi-generational opportunities” for Northern and First Nation communities.

But Indigenous people are, at best, an afterthought for the Ontario Conservatives.

There is zero recognition of Indigenous rights or sovereignty, and not a word about collaborating with Indigenous communities in the planning and development of the massive projects the government foresees.

Instead, this is how the Ford government sees the Ring of Fire:  

“Geopolitical forces are fueling a surging demand for reliable and responsibly sourced critical minerals, making this a strategic imperative for Canada. The Ring of Fire will bring significant economic, social and community benefits to the entire nation …”

Those words could have been written in the 19th century. The Ford folks could be talking about building a railway, and herding the inconvenient “natives” onto reserves. In the entire 240-page budget these few lines are just about the only mention of Indigenous people.

By contrast, the New Democrats have promised to get the Ring of Fire developed “in full partnership with First Nations”.

The NDP also pledges to complete the development of an Indigenous curriculum for Ontario schools (which Ford cancelled when he first took office), to boost funding for Indigenous language education, and to encourage the recruitment of Indigenous school trustees.

In addition to all that the New Democrats devote an entire chapter of their platform to Indigenous rights.

Their commitments include a for-Indigenous-by-Indigenous housing strategy, coupled with a pledge to construct at least 22,000 new homes in Indigenous communities.

Champion of car-commuters; scant attention to health human resources

For Doug Ford, putting the emphasis on highway construction – in some cases through environmentally sensitive areas – is a return to his true self.

When Ford got elected in 2018 one columnist noted his core support came from suburban car commuters, who wanted to fight back against environmental activists and those whom Ford characterizes as “downtown elitists”.

To give them their due, the Conservatives’ current infrastructure plan does include more than transportation.

For instance, there is $40 billion over 10 years for new hospitals and upgrades to existing hospitals. Much of this has been announced over the past few weeks in election campaign-style events.

There is much less money for the key ingredient in health care: human resources. The multiple difficulties Ontario experienced in confronting the COVID-19 challenge tangibly demonstrated the province does not have enough nurses or personal support workers – and that the latter are woefully underpaid.  

Shortly after he took office and before the pandemic hit, Ford made moves to weaken an already rickety heath human resources system.

In 2019, the Conservatives passed Law 124, which bore a deceptive title: Protecting a Sustainable Public Sector for Future Generations Act.

The law’s purpose was to put a straightjacket on negotiations with public sector unions by establishing a maximum wage increase of one per cent for all Ontario government employees. That massive group includes civil servants of all kinds, teachers, and, yes, nurses.

When the pandemic hit and nurses experienced record levels of stress and burnout their union argued the one per cent cap should be lifted because it made it hard to keep nurses motivated and on the job.

Ford’s response was: No dice.

The result was a large-scale exodus from the nursing profession in Ontario which, in turn, resulted in the need to resort to massive hours of compulsory overtime for the nurses who remained.

Patient care inevitably suffered.

Now, on the eve of an election, the Conservatives are promising a one-time bonus of $5,000 to “support the retention of nurses.” The cost will be $746 million over two years, a small amount compared to the billions earmarked for highways and corporate subsidies.

As for personal support workers (PSWs), at the height of the pandemic the Ford government temporarily enhanced their pay. He added $2 an hour to pay of PSWs who work in hospitals and $3 an hour for long-term care and community workers.

It is important to note that this increase was on a base of $16.50 per hour, which means even the enhanced rate would still be lower than the $20 per hour minimum wage the NDP proposes for all workers.

Now the Ford government to says it will make the temporary increase permanent. The government however has not much more to say about training, retaining and improving working conditions for the more than 150,000 personal support workers who form the backbone of the health and long-term care sectors.

The New Democrats would scrap the one per cent limit deemed by Law 124 and promise to raise PSWs salaries to “at least $5 per hour above pre-pandemic levels” and hire 30,000 more nurses. They would also “expedite nursing credentials of 15,000 internationally trained nurses”.

The $5 per hour for personal support workers would bring to $21.50 an hour, a bit higher than the NDP’s minimum wage target of $20 per hour, which they say they would reach by 2026.

And as for the economy . . .

The first chapter in the Conservatives’ budget document indicates how they want to brand themselves – as the party that keeps Ontario open for business and puts the economy first.

The Ring of Fire is a high priority, but so is the auto industry.

The budget touts the billions in new investments vehicle maker such as Toyota, Chrysler, Ford and Honda have recently announced.

The Conservatives also pay special attention to the electric vehicle sector, which might surprise some. One of Ford’s first acts as premier was to cancel the previous government’s rebate program for the purchasers of electric vehicles, part of the Liberals’ effort to reduce Ontario’s greenhouse gas emissions.

When he came to power Ford’s priority was to reduce gas prices at the pump, in part by scrapping the province’s cap-and-trade system for controlling greenhouse gas pollution.

At the time right-wing columnist Rex Murphy penned a panegyric to Ford calling him “the slayer of carbon taxes”.

That was then.

Today, Ford’s 2022 budget boasts that lower taxes, reduced electricity costs, and cuts in red tape are reviving the once-sagging auto industry, especially the cutting-edge electric portion of it.

As of April 11, the budget says, a variety of companies had announced $11 billion in investments in hybrid and electric vehicle production and battery manufacturing in Ontario.

To attract major private investment in batteries the Ontario government kicked in $1.5 billion in financial incentives for a private sector battery project in Windsor and a quarter-billion for another in the north, near the town of Cobalt.

In the past, multi-national corporations have not always shown much long-term gratitude for such government largesse.

In 2018, General Motors (GM) closed its venerable Oshawa plant. Nine years earlier the company faced certain bankruptcy when U.S. and Canadian governments bailed it out. Auto behemoth GM was too big to fail, they said back then.

The Ontario and federal governments gave $10.8 billion to GM, partly as no- or low- interest loans and partly in exchange for stock (then worthless), which gave the two governments an 11.7 per cent equity stake in the company.

Over the years, the federal and Ontario governments got back $8 billion from selling their stock (as soon as it was worth anything) and through loan repayment. The net loss for Canadian and Ontario taxpayers was $2.8 billion. Less than a decade after its rescue GM turned around and killed over 1,000 Canadian jobs.

The New Democrats also focus on the auto sector, with an emphasis on transforming the Ontario industry to 100 per cent electric by 2035.

NDPers say their strategy “will take a total supply chain approach, with parts and manufacturing happening right here in Ontario.” But, as with much of their platform, they provide neither details nor figures.

The NDP and leader Andrew Horwath have indicated those details and the numbers to go with them will come during the campaign.

We have not yet heard much from the Liberals. Despite their dismal showing last time – they went from government to a mere eight seats in 2018 – many in Ontario still see the Liberals as the natural and logical alternative to the Conservatives.

Once the campaign is underway, we should look for the Liberals to try to make a splash by releasing their plans and promises after the other parties have shown their hands.

Right now, most opinion polls put the Conservatives fairly comfortably in the lead. But recent history has shown that campaigns matter. There will almost certainly be significant movement in public opinion as Ontario voters start to focus on the parties, their leaders, and their plans.

In 2018, the campaign started as a two-way race between the governing Liberals and the Ford Conservatives. It ended was a two-way race, and the Conservatives were the victors.

Their main rivals on election day were not the Liberals. They were the New Democrats.