03) ONTARIO VOTERS REJECT TORY AUSTERITY AND JOB CUTS

 

Commentary by the Executive Committee, CPC (Ontario) - abridged

 

    The June 12th Ontario election was a victory for the Liberals who won a majority, rebounding from a series of scandals linked to privatization and vote-buying in 2011, and the massive attack on teachers and educational workers with Bill 115 in 2012. The Liberal win was also a resounding defeat for Tim Hudak and the Tories' anti-labour, austerity platform of public sector job cuts, privatization, and "right to work" laws.

 

    This election was unwanted and opposed by the Ontario Federation of Labour, who had appealed to the NDP to support the government's budget. But the NDP pulled the plug on the Liberal minority, heedless of the OFL's well-founded fear of a Tory win and promise of right-to-work legislation.

 

    The Liberals wanted the NDP to support the budget, but were also prepared to go to the voters, with a $130 billion, 10-year infrastructure plan, and an Ontario defined benefit pension plan stolen from the NDP's 2010 policy book. The Liberals designed the budget - which became their platform - to look very progressive, obscuring the regressive wage and privatization policies that were also in it. In the process the Liberals out-manoeuvred the NDP by offering what appeared to be a big and a progressive agenda, while the NDP offered up policies that were small, inadequate, and incremental.

 

    The NDP had no intention of working with labour to extract concessions from the minority Liberals. Instead they planned to force an election, hoping to secure more seats at the expense of the Liberals. NDP leader Andrea Horwath wanted to duplicate the success of Jack Layton in the 2011 federal election when the Liberal vote collapsed and the NDP surged on the "orange wave" to become the Official Opposition. But it was the Tories that formed a majority government in 2011 - one Canadians have been in sharp struggle with ever since.

 

    The "New Labour" politics of Tony Blair, Jack Layton, and Roy Romanow showed up in the NDP campaign, with Horwath's promise to link increases in the minimum wage to tax cuts for small business, and the promise to Big Business that any tax increase on corporations and the wealthy would be minimal and temporary. To those campaigning for "a $14 minimum wage now", Horwath said the NDP would offer $12 - but not until 2016.

 

    The platform and the strategy bent so far to placate corporate interests that a sharply critical letter from 34 prominent NDPers was leaked to the media in mid-campaign, while Gerald Caplan wrote a similar scathing assessment in a Globe and Mail op-ed piece. Among other things, the 34 wondered if there was still a place for them in the NDP. The public agreed with the sentiment and the NDP lost three of its five Toronto seats. They won three seats in Sudbury, Oshawa and Windsor thanks mainly to the efforts of the local labour movement, ending up with the same 21 seat total - and no longer the balance of power.

 

    OFL President Sid Ryan tweeted, "By triggering this election the NDP placed the Labour Movement in harm's way. There will be a serious and frank discussion with the party."

 

    The Liberals meanwhile donned the mantle of defender of workers, jobs, and public services. They were ably assisted by the well-financed Working Families Coalition and its effective television and media attack ads. They appealed directly to NDP supporters to vote Liberal, as the only way to stop the Tories. In so doing, they completed the transformation of the Liberal image from corrupt, self-serving Big Business party, into a defender of democratic and social rights, and as the creator of jobs, growth, and economic and social security. And they did it virtually overnight.

 

The Tories: 1 million jobs and 100,000 job cuts

 

    The Tories campaigned on a platform of creating a million jobs, after by-election results last spring showed that their pitch for "right to work" laws was a vote-loser, not a vote-getter. Tim Hudak declared the issue was off the agenda, but the public rightly didn't believe it, after the trade union movement had spent the last year mobilizing and educating workers and communities about "right to work for less" laws in the US, and the significant loss of wages and rights that followed.

 

    The Tories also shot themselves in the foot with the proposal to start creating one million new jobs, by laying off 100,000 public sector workers. It made no sense, and it struck a chord of real fear in a province suffering one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. Hudak made it even worse by releasing figures that didn't add up, exposing the plan's creators as rank amateurs. Economists from all sectors dismissed the figures as gibberish.

 

    The result was 10 lost seats for the Tories (down to 27), the NDP holding at 21, and the Liberals up to 59 seats with a comfortable majority. Voter turnout was up, despite efforts to suppress the vote by the conservative right. This included complaints by the Liberals and NDP to Elections Ontario that Tory operatives in London and Ottawa had sent letters mis-directing voters to polls on election day. The complaints were similar to the robocall scandal in the federal election.

 

    The Tories were soundly rejected across urban and suburban areas, and in northern Ontario, while they retained rural ridings in eastern and south-western Ontario. The Tories' one "beachhead" in Toronto (won in a spring by-election by former Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday, with the support of Rob Ford and the Harper Tories), was lost by more than 4,500 votes in Etobicoke. In Burlington (just outside Hamilton), the Tories were easily defeated despite having held the seat continuously since 1943.

 

    The Green Party, which had polled up to 7% before the election, lost some support as votes polarized. As well as electoral reform and environmental issues, including sharp opposition to Line 9, the pipelines, and the tar sands, the Greens also campaigned for a merger of Catholic and public school systems which many voters understood to mean a single, secular system of education. This position now has majority support in Ontario.

 

    But in fact the Green Party advocates confederated school boards in which both Catholic and public systems would co-exist, maintaining the status quo where Ontario continued to be the only province still funding a parallel religious school system. With the exception of some of its candidates, the Green party offered no substantial challenge to austerity policies.

 

Communist Party's support grows

 

    The Communist Party more than doubled its vote, and interest was much greater than in previous elections. Only the Communist Party had a clear and consistent platform against austerity, projecting a way out of recession based on job creation, higher wages and living standards, expanded social programs and public services, real economic growth through public investment and the development of an industrial and manufacturing policy that puts people's needs before corporate greed.

 

    The party proposed to double the corporate tax rate to 23%, restore the capital tax and capital gains taxes, collect deferred taxes and close tax loopholes, and introduce wealth and inheritance taxes on estates over $750,000. The party also proposes immediate tax relief for working people by eliminating the HST, removing education from the property tax, and eliminating user fees.

 

    Rent controls and plant closure legislation with teeth are also high on the agenda to stop greedy landlords and run-away corporations, along with action and funds to protect healthcare from privatization in all its evolving forms. Anti-scab legislation and bankruptcy protection are also in the platform ,available at www.CommunistPartyOntario.ca.

 

    In an election where mass unemployment, precarious employment, and declining wages and living standards were the main issue, the Communist Party stood out as the only party fighting for the rights and interests of the working class and youth, and advocating a people's agenda and a people's recovery.

 

    Canvassing and distributions of the Party's platform had some remarkable results. Many people who took the platform on the streets, bus stations, or subways could be seen carefully reading it. Some returned to say they would vote for the candidate, and had been looking for policies like that. Others said they would vote Communist if there was a candidate in their riding. There were many requests for lawn signs, and it was easier for Communist candidates to get into all-candidates debates.

 

Throne Speech

 

    Premier Wynne re-introduced the Liberal budget on July 14th. Reaction from international credit rating institutions was instantaneous. The budget was too rich, the debt and deficit would skyrocket; in fact the earth would open up and the sky would fall. The message was clear: stick to austerity and stay away from interventions in the economy that don't involve more corporate tax cuts, wage cuts, privatization, deregulation and free trade.

 

    Provincial Treasurer (and former banker) Charles Sousa responded angrily that "the banks aren't freaking!". The Globe and Mail, on behalf of corporate Canada, responded "somebody's freaking." But Ontario still has a credit rating equivalent to an "A" on a report card according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

 

A Trojan Horse

 

    In fact the budget contains some bombs which have to do with the funding for the ambitious plans in the budget, and the government's steely commitment to eliminate the $12.5 billion deficit by 2017-18 come hell or high water. After more than 30 years of tax cuts for the corporations and the very wealthy, revenue streams into the provincial treasury have been greatly reduced, generating decades of cuts and privatization by Liberal, Conservative and the NDP government in the early '90s.

 

    The Premier flew trial balloons for road tolls, income tax increases, user fees; but all were found to be vote losers and were dropped prior to the election. Now a new think tank is urging resuscitation of these ideas. The budget proposed privatization of public assets, and expanding public private partnerships, meaning that services that are now public are likely to emerge as partly privatized services.

 

Extending Bill 115

 

    The budget also includes 0% wage increases across the public sector in upcoming negotiations. This is what generated Bill 115 in 2012, and precipitated a crisis in education that ended with the suspension of free collective bargaining, the removal of $2 billion from the pockets of teachers and educational workers, and finally, the resignation of Premier Dalton McGuinty and the prorogation of the provincial parliament.

 

    A similar struggle will unfold, pitting the government against every public sector worker at every level. It must be opposed by those in the Legislature who claim to represent "everyday people" and who, like the Premier, want to "build Ontario up". But this cannot be done on the backs of working people, youth, women, and the unemployed.

 

    The labour movement has been very effective at linking the struggle for public sector jobs with the fight for quality public services. Efforts to privatize public services, healthcare, hospitals, schools, public transit, and more, must be met with stiff public resistance.

 

    The Liberals can count on the support of the Tories who hate public services and assets as much as they hate organized labour and the unionized public sector.

 

    What position will Andrea Horwath and the NDP caucus take? In 2012 the NDP caucus opposed the Bill 115 legislation, but they supported removing $2 million from teachers and education workers' pockets. They argued they could convince the unions to give up the money voluntarily. In 1993, NDP Premier Bob Rae introduced the social contract which opened up collective agreements to pick the pockets of public sector workers in Ontario.

 

The split in the NDP

 

    The split in the NDP is likely to become wider. At the base is the question, which side are you on? That's what NDPers in the labour and social movements will have to decide, sooner rather than later.

 

    What will be decisive is the role of the OFL and the Common Front to mobilize working people for a massive and escalating struggle against austerity, and for a People's Recovery. Despite the Liberal image make-over, there is a huge storm coming and no way around it for Ontario's working people. On this side will be the working class, the unemployed, youth, women, Aboriginals, racialized communities, migrants. On the other side are the corporations and their governments. This budget is the lull before the storm.

 

    The change in leadership and the demand for a change in direction at the recent CLC convention is most welcome. So is the focus on independent labour political action being pursued by the OFL leadership, and by the Common Front with its nearly 100 affiliated community and democratic organizations and people's movements, including the CPC (Ontario). Unity and strength in escalating mass independent political action can repulse the coming attack, and move labour from the defensive onto the offensive. This strategy is needed rack up real victories for working people in the next four years, and to achieve a much different and better electoral outcome in 2018.

(The above article is from the August 1-31, 2014, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)