Short of being caught with dead kitten fur around his mouth, Dalton McGuinty seems a shoo-in for premier next week.

If so, large numbers of Ontario voters will have been duped.

The Liberal leader’s appeal rests on the popular belief that he’s the best shot at ending the eight-year Tory reign that has made this province a meaner, harsher place, a place where things like edible meat and drinkable water are now considered extras, not part of the basic menu.

McGuinty has offered himself up to voters as the guy who will put nurses back in hospitals and make class sizes shrink faster than George W. Bush’s approval ratings.

But McGuinty hasn’t mentioned that he may not be able to do any of these things. He’s allowed his hands to be tied — by supporting the Tories’ “Taxpayer Protection” act, and by recently signing a pledge to the right-wing Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

Both the act and the pledge are aimed at blocking governments from running deficits or raising taxes. That may sound like a good idea, but it almost certainly means deeper cuts in social spending.

With deficits and tax increases ruled out, governments have little choice during recessions but to cut government spending.

That isn’t even sound economics. It was this sort of obsession with balancing the books that led to economic paralysis in the 1930s.

After a sharp economic downturn, governments kept cutting spending and the economy kept shrinking. It took the great British economist John Maynard Keynes and the architects of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the U.S. to figure out that government spending and running deficits are sometimes the best way to get a sluggish economy moving.

That insight led to the boom of the early postwar decades. But the right never liked Keynes or the big government programs the New Deal ushered in, and has been fighting ever since to come up with ways to cap government spending — particularly social spending.

Balanced budget legislation and so-called taxpayer protection pledges are part of this, and have been aggressively pushed in the last decade by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, whose former CEO and president is Canadian Alliance MP Jason Kenney. The Alliance Web site links to the taxpayers federation.

Ironically, although Ontario voters have repeatedly shown the Alliance the back of their hands, they seem about to choose a new premier who has signed a pledge to uphold the basic anti-tax hysteria peddled by the Alliance and its sidekick, the taxpayers federation.

Balanced budget legislation and taxpayer pledges don’t rule out tax increases, they just make them a political minefield. In Ontario, parties must make written submissions to the Chief Elections Officer of any plans to increase taxes, and then not raise taxes any more than this without a referendum.

Imagine if parties had to make written submissions during an election campaign of plans to eliminate hospital beds, cut education financing, remove support for the disabled, etc., and then be prohibited from making further cuts without holding a referendum.

The taxpayers federation claims it’s just protecting taxpayers. But this glosses over the fact that taxpayers are also citizens; they pay taxes, and in exchange receive public services — like health care and education.

While having excellent public services may not be important to the wealthy (who can pay privately for elite services), having excellent public services is vitally important to just about everybody else.

A “taxpayer protection” pledge only protects us from tax increases. What protects us from government cuts to vital services?

Who’s going to protect us from the taxpayers federation?

So it’s alarming that McGuinty has knuckled under to the strong-arming of the taxpayers federation and other well-financed lobbyists who have created a climate where politicians are afraid not to genuflect before the angry right-wing god of Tax Rage.

Premier Ernie Eves also signed the taxpayers federation pledge. Only the NDP’s Howard Hampton stood up to these unelected, self-appointed guardians of “taxpayers’ rights” and said no, he’d make his own decisions.

So, in the end, McGuinty’s spending plans may be cut off at the knees, especially since Ontario’s finances are worse than the Tories have let on, and the Liberals are expected to inherit a deficit of at least $2 billion.

“Our pledge is very simple,” says the taxpayers federation. “It is a clear statement that does not give lawmakers any wiggle room.”

I guess that means Ontarians can forget about smaller class sizes, more nurses and other things they may think they’re voting for.

Those are just part of the “wiggle room” that’s going to disappear. Count on it. The taxpayers federation has it in writing.

Linda McQuaig

Journalist and best-selling author Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for challenging the establishment. As a reporter for The Globe and Mail, she won a National Newspaper Award in 1989...