You may have missed it but this happened.
It was a stunning admission with less than three
three weeks to go before the election the NDP admitting over the weekend that there is a
$1.4 billion costing error in their platform.
“The Ottawa Citizen” reported that the NDP had wrongly
categorized a $700-million reserve fund as revenue.
So how does $700 million become 1.4 billion?
Well, first you have to know what a reserve fund is.
By law, governments must set aside money just in case something unexpected happens
that requires immediate funding.
But here’s the thing
reserve funds have to be counted as an expense in the budget.
You have to assume that you're gonna spend it.
The NDP’s initial platform had these 700 million listed as a revenue
But not only is it not a revenue. It's an automatic deficit.
So while the NDP platform looked like this.
It should have looked like this.
We've fixed the problem that was identified
This kind of mistake would be embarrassing for any political party
but it looks especially bad for the Ontario NDP.
Not only because the party has been fending off accusations that its numbers don't add up.
Or because leader Andrea Horwath has talked a lot about how thoroughly they check the numbers.
It's because of this guy.
if you're over 50, you're probably cursing at your screen right now
And if you're under 50
You may recognize him as a Liberal MP or the interim leader of the federal Liberal Party.
Either way
that’s Bob Rae.
Despite the fact that he was elected premier before I was born
and that he then left the party to become a Liberal
Bob Rae’s legacy as premier has haunted the Ontario NDP for over two decades.
As Premier
and President of the Council
In a nutshell, Rae was elected Premier of Ontario as Canada entered a recession.
He tried to spend his way out of it and the province racked up a lot of debt.
His government then increased taxes and tried to save money by
forcing public service workers to take unpaid days off.
Which became known as “Rae Days.”
He angered a lot of people across the political spectrum
Especially his own NDP labour base.
Now, you can argue that it’s the recession that caused all the other
Bad problems not vice-versa; that in fact, Bob Rae was just stuck being premier at a lousy time to be premier.
But memories are long in Ontario
and anything that reminds Ontarians of the Bob Rae government
would tend to be a bad news for the NDP.
The fallout from Rae’s time in office was
massive for the Ontario NDP
The party had won 74 seats in 1990
the most in the province’s history.
In the next election they only won 17.
In the five election since
the party still hasn’t fully recovered.
So, it makes sense then
that this time around Horwath had a fully costed platform from the outset
after all the province’s finances
have been centre stage this election.
Doug Ford talks about how he’s good at managing money
but still hasn’t revealed how he plans to pay for anything.
Kathleen Wynne has lost credibility since the province’s Auditor General
accused the Liberals of Understating deficit projections by about $5 billion.
And then there’s Horwath
who plans to run a deficit but one not as big as the Liberals.
This time around the NDP has a real shot of winning.
Horwath has the opportunity to attract all of the anti Kathleen Wynne voters
that aren't taken with Doug Ford’s style of politics.
A recent poll found that nearly half of the NDP voters are voting for the party
just in order to prevent the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives from winning.
Right now, it’s starting to look like nothing can slow the NDP down
but—
if anything could it would be
a dumb arithmetic mistake
the sort of thing that you could you would assume that a high school student would be able to avoid
one that
reminds people of their preexisting assumption that the NDP
Shouldn't be trusted with public finances
something that reminds Ontarians of the Bob Rae days.
So for those reasons together, this is
not a trivial problem for the NDP.
It’s one that they must be really regretting and one that could hurt their chances going forward.
So if you live in Ontario go check your mail.
You probably have a little card in it that explains exactly how you can vote.
the election is on June 7th, so
Get out of vote people