Premier Kathleen Wynne was the first leader to the podium this morning seven weeks before Ontario votes. She elaborated on another of her party’s health sector promises this time at a retirement home in downtown Toronto. For the last few days the Liberal policy strategy seems to be to get the leader out early to promote a small slice of the spending announced in the Ontario budget back on March 28. The Liberal event coordinators put Wynne in front of a small group of Ontarians who stand there awkwardly with a glazed look that seems to ask; “It’s kind of early. Is there any coffee around here?”
Today the Premier promised 5,000 new long term care beds across the province by 2022. Wynne took a policy shot at Progressive Conservative leader, Doug Ford, pointing out that the Conservative’s policies will cut billions from the current budget and so the “right care” for the province will suffer. She warned most of the Conservative cuts would be in health care and education. That said we haven’t actually seen any policy from the Conservatives on either health or education … yet.
With the policy strategy out of the way Wynne turned to the reporters for questions. Not surprisingly there were follow up questions after her outburst against Ford yesterday. She referred to Ford as “an unusual candidate” and doubled down on Ford saying she “will not allow smears to stand.” And the Premier got up early to do a radio interview explaining the reasons for her tough language against Ford. Wynne claimed it is not an election strategy. She said she was forced to speak up after Ford suggested an outside audit was necessary to find out if she and members of her government might be guilty of misspending tax payer dollars.
But it sure feels like the Liberal political strategy is to go after Doug Ford hard. Remember the Liberal party is spending up to a million dollars on an advertising campaign about Doug Ford. Last week a senior Liberal party official unveiled the Liberal website, realdougford.ca. The explanation then was that “People need to know Doug Ford.” And the briefing went on to make the political strategy clear: Doug Ford’s character will be an issue the Liberals will address. So maybe, just maybe, there was no plan for Kathleen Wynne to light into Ford and call him a liar and bully yesterday. But the ground work had been laid and for my money the party was waiting for the right moment to have Kathleen Wynne’s voice reinforce the advertising campaign.
Interestingly Doug Ford dispensed with the “small crowd of bored onlookers” photo-op this morning. Instead the party image controllers stood him in front of a phalanx of Ontario flags making his appearance seem official - so much the Premier in waiting. It was a smart touch. And right there on page one of the Globe and Mail he had a gift from the news gods. The story reported that a few months ago the board of directors of Hydro One approved improved severance package provisions for the company’s executives.
All week Ford has labelled the CEO of Hydro One “the 6 million dollar man.” Now Ford talked about the “secret deal behind closed doors” to make executive packages even richer. He called it “shameful and disgraceful,” comparing those packages to all the hard pressed Ontarians forced to pay higher and higher hydro bills. He then repeated his intention, if elected, of finding a way to fire the CEO and the board of Hydro One. Political campaigns get positively giddy when a headline like that falls into their lap to add fuel to a number one issue. The Conservatives followed it all up with a Doug Ford letter to the Premier asking how she will respond to the new deal for Hydro One executives.
The only thing on Andrea Horwath’s schedule today is a supper hour speech to Ontario nurses meeting in Toronto. The party did send out a short email from Horwath saying the only way to control Hydro One is for the Ontario government to buy it back and take control of the utility.
With the “6 million dollar man” suddenly a potential “10 million dollar man” the hydro issue is not likely to go away.
