Buck-a-Beer is Terrible Policy, Great Politics

I'll be honest. It's late on Tuesday and because of the holiday Monday I forgot what day of the week it is, so this has to be written and delivered quickly.

When Doug Ford announced his 'policy' to bring cheaper beer to Ontario I don't know if I could have rolled by eyes harder. It was the exact sort of cheap pandering I had come to expect from the Progressive Conservative leader, but even still, when I first saw the message I thought it was a parody. What could be greater satire than Doug Ford promising cheap beer to win over voters?

To the shame of us all that was an actual commitment and one the government of Ontario has started to move towards making it a reality. The government will lower the minimum cost of a bottle or can of beer from $1.25 to $1. The price was raised ten years ago under Premier Dalton McGuinty. However, anyone capable of basic economics will probably point to the fact that this may not be as simple a fix as that. Prices have only gone up over the last ten years. Inflation and price structuring alone would mean that companies would be hesitant to lower their prices.

The government, ridiculously, is encouraging brewers to lower prices in order to win promotional opportunities at the government-owned LCBO.

Unsurprisingly, there has been significant outcry from brewers about this. Over recent decades small-scale and craft breweries have developed products to cater to a more diverse market. Quality costs money, and some brewers have clearly made the point that in order to meet the prices the Ford government wants, quality or quantity would have to be slashed. 

The truth is that the government of Ontario cannot really control the price of beer. Setting a new minimum will not necessarily encourage anyone to take advantage of it. I remember being a university student and drinking the buck-a-beers. They were awful, almost every one of them. The idea of general affordability is quite popular, no doubt, but whether or not that should be applied to alcohol. I would much prefer people to have cheaper transit or cheaper housing or cheaper food. The public good is much clearer there.

It's ridiculous policy, but it will no doubt be good politics.

Protecting Local Democracy

The decision of the Ford government of Ontario to cut the number of city councillors in Toronto is not in and of itself a threat to democracy. The decision to do so in the middle of an election campaign is. As mentioned in previous blog posts the final day to register for local elections in Ontario was July 27th. This means that the democratic players of Ontario made their choices to run based on long-standing decisions about how the election would be structured. Doug Ford's decision throws all of this into chaos.

The 27th should have set the standards for the election for the candidates and the citizens. I do not love how early the registration closed, but the predictability of it is important to the democratic process. The candidates who registered and planned to run in Toronto now have their candidacies thrown into question. This is in addition to the regional chair elections that have also been cancelled. How are candidates supposed to campaign as a result of this fallout?

I do not like the idea of Toronto's City Council being cut down to twenty-five members. That does seem undersized to serve the city. Plenty of people elsewhere have made the argument that it is improper given the representative needs of the people of Toronto. That said, I could far more accept Ford's decision if it would impact the elections held in 2022. Impacting elections to be held in a few months time just seems vindictive to a level of government that left him bruised.

In short, Doug Ford and the new provincial government is acting in bad faith. It would be reasonable, though ill-advised, to make these cuts for a future election. To do so now is unnecessarily disruptive. The public and candidates were not even given the courtesy of having this idea floated during the campaign so they could prepare.

If this is a portent of how Doug Ford intends to govern, I am concerned. While Toronto bears the brunt there is no reason to assume he and his government will not be inclined to meddle in our local democracies in the future. Municipalities are utterly at the mercy of the provincial legislature. As a result, every Ontarian has a reason to be concerned.

The Ontario Election: History Repeats Itself

Meet the new election, same as the old election. As the results of the Ontario have been decided it is difficult to look over the results and not see a great deal of similarities between the 2018 provincial election and the 2011 federal one.

In both cases the Liberals were battered down to third place. The Tories secured approximately 40% of the vote and in the weakness of the Liberals the NDP filled the gap to become the Official Opposition after a breakthrough. The ultimate kicker - the leader of the Green Party managed to win her/his seat.

There are plenty of parallels to how the Progressive Conservatives won in Ontario to how their federal cousins did seven years prior. In fact, in 2011 Stephen Harper's Conservatives won 73 seats to Doug Ford's 76. Similarly, the Liberals were reduced to 11 seats federally and provincially it was 11.

I think we see a lot of alignment between these two elections because there simply is a lot of shared blood between the six parties. I am less clear on the Green Party, so I don't want to speak out of ignorance. Kathleen Wynne strongly supported Justin Trudeau in 2015, Jack Layton was a strong ally to Andrea Horwath and Jagmeet Singh did pitch in for the campaign this time around. An obvious move given that his brother now represents his old seat. The connections between the Tories are less obvious, but several Harper era Conservatives successfully ran for seats this time around.

Aside from the parallels in the outcomes and votes I think we can likely extrapolate how some of the politics over the next four years may look. Doug Ford is going to introduce a conservative agenda to the province for the first time in fifteen years. There is going to be substantial resistance from the progressive side and its allies. It will be the ONDP's job primarily to keep the PCs in check and hold them to public account. Ms. Horwath will be challenged to do it as well as Tom Mulcair did. For four years he made the case for why the Conservatives did not deserve re-election.

However, do not expect the 2022 election to be a mirror of 2015. Doug Ford will have only completed his first term and the public is more like than not to give him a second, just out of tradition and habit. More likely it'll be a battle for the opposition parties to assert themselves and reduce the PC majority, if possible, and for Mike Schreiner to prove his worth as the sole Green MPP.

On a final note, I predicted 111 of the 124 provincial ridings correctly. In terms of overall numbers I did better, but I figured I'd fess up and say that I was off. I underestimated the NDP breakthrough in Toronto, and which seats the Liberals would manage to hold, and underestimated the PCs in a few spots. Oh well, still not bad for an amateur. I did call all five of my local ridings correctly though, so that's a bonus.

2018 was a hell of a provincial election and will no doubt make for exciting politics in Ontario for the years to come. Keep watching, there's plenty more to come.