They held a leaders’ debate in Ontario on Monday night, less than three weeks before the election, and the big loser – as in so many other recent debates – was the format.
There were four leaders on the debate stage: Conservative Doug Ford (the sitting premier), New Democrat Andrea Horwath (leader of the official opposition), Liberal Steven Del Duca (whose party went from government to a mere seven seats in the 2018 election), and the Green Party’s Mike Schreiner (who holds his party’s only seat in the legislature).
They had 90 minutes to deal with the huge challenges facing Ontarians.
A viewer had the impression the leaders rarely had time to fully develop an idea or a policy.
One was always conscious of the ridiculously short time limit the debate’s organizers and the moderators, Steve Paikin of TV Ontario and Althia Raj of the Toronto Star, had imposed on leaders’ answers and statements.
The debate covered five main topic areas: affordability, health care, education, leadership, and climate change.
As well, there were opening and closing statements, and one redundant, throw-away personal question.
Toward the end of the debate, Steve Paikin insisted on asking each of the leaders what political decision they regretted most. The answers, not surprisingly, revealed little. The frivolous question only served to steal time from real issues.
The moderators made the by-now customary Indigenous acknowledgement at the outset, but that was the last time Indigenous issues got mentioned. According to the 2016 census, Ontario has the largest Indigenous population of any province or territory in Canada.
The debate did not need more topics; it needed fewer.
The organizers and moderators should have given the leaders enough time to develop ideas and explain policy options. Forty-five seconds per answer is not enough.
A nervous Horwath who tried to cover too many bases
NDP leader Andrea Horwath had the hardest time with the time strictures of the format. She seemed – surprisingly, given her experience – tense and a bit off balance.
Part of Horwath’s problem was that she wanted to cover too much territory.
She had set herself the task of doing three things. She would tell stories about Ontarians’ personal struggles, she would attack other leaders, and she would tout NDP policies.
So, the NDP leader trotted out her prepared anecdotes about everyday Ontarians – such as the woman who is waiting too long for orthopedic surgery and who might have to move, or the foreign-trained doctor who crosses the border to work in the U.S. each day because she can’t get licensed in Ontario.
She launched her prepared attack lines, aimed not only at Conservative premier Ford, but at Liberal leader Del Duca.
The NDP leader did manage to get in some good jabs at Ford.
Her best was on the environment and climate change. Horwath pointed out that one of Ford’s first acts in government was to “tear up” green energy contracts and subsidies for electric vehicles – and “vindictively remove” electric vehicle charging stations throughout the province.
The New Democrat’s strongest attack on Del Duca was on the issue of rent control. Horwath noted it was the Mike Harris-Ernie Eves Conservative government, in power from 1995 to 2004, that abolished rent control. She then pointed out that when Del Duca’s Liberals took over they did not restore it.
The problem for Horwath was that she used up so much of her limited time to tell stories and attack her rivals she had almost none left to explain NDP policies.
She did manage to say she would scrap Ford’s Law 24, which limits nurses’ and other public sector workers’ pay increases to one per cent per year.
Horwath also mentioned the NDP would bring all forms of mental health treatment into the public system. A New Democratic government would allow Ontarians to pay for mental health services with their Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) cards, not their credit cards.
Horwath never got to talk about other NDP pledges on health, such as expanding the public system to include dental care and medical drugs.
Nor did she find time to give much detail on NDP housing proposals, which focus on duplexes and townhomes rather than single family homes that create urban sprawl.
Horwath also never referred to the NDP’s just-released, costed program, which shows where a government she headed would find the money to pay for its promised increases in services to the people.
More’s the pity.
The costing document shows how a New Democratic government would use $500 million earned from a two per cent tax increase on individuals earning over $220,000 per year to pay for a prescription drug program.
Similarly, it explains how the NDP would use $2 billion gained by restoring the maximum corporate tax rate from 11.5 per cent to 13 per cent to pay for universal mental health care coverage.
If there was a winner it was rookie Schreiner
The newcomer to the debate, Green Party leader Mike Schreiner, handled the difficult format much more effectively than Horwath.
For his attacks, Schreiner ignored the other opposition leaders and focused exclusively on Doug Ford. He dispensed with the homey prepared anecdotes. The Green leader chose instead to use his time to outline the sort of policies a Green government would pursue.
Many are today favourably quoting the moment when Schreiner asked Doug Ford if he had actually talked to any nurses in Ontario. That was good theatre.
Schreiner’s strongest substantive interventions came first with his critique of Ford’s promise to build a new super highway, Highway 413, in the periphery of Toronto, and then later in his brief lesson on the social determinants of health.
To shave minutes of car-commuters’ time, Ford plans to pave over valuable wetlands and precious farmland. Schreiner pointed out that the billions earmarked for Highway 413 could go to schools, healthcare, and other essential services. He added that Ontario needs its farmland to feed its growing population. Locally grown food is good for the environment, the Green leader said.
On the subject of health care, Schreiner sounded like more of a socialist than Horwath.
He underscored how food insecurity and substandard housing contribute to bad health.
The Green leader said doctors have told him they wish they could write prescriptions for a decent place to live and healthy food for their patients.
Ford, for car-commuters and lower taxes; Del Duca, earnest and dry
Doug Ford was true to himself, touting his measures to help drivers, among them a rebate of the car registration fee and a cut to the gas tax.
Time and again, the Conservative leader boasted he planned to lower taxes and fees, while eliminating regulations in order to allow real estate developers free rein. Eliminating environmental and other restrictions, Ford said, would be the solution to the housing crisis.
Ford accused Del Duca and Horwath of being “no” people while he was a “yes” person.
On housing the Conservative leader said to Horwath: “You don’t want to build nothing!”
Liberal Steven Del Duca was workmanlike, calm and serious. His supporters say he looked like a premier. Others might note his flat manner, almost entirely devoid of passion.
The Liberal leader wanted to showcase his party’s policies, but was vague about them. He kept referring to a 19-point pledge on affordability, which he said he had signed that morning, without providing details on even a single one of the points.
While Horwarth went down too many rabbit holes with her anecdotes about everyday Ontarians, Del Duca did the same with his talk about two Ontarians who happen to live with him, his own children.
There were suggestions throughout the debate of significant differences in policy approaches among the leaders, but, for the most part, they were only suggestions.
On education, for example, Doug Ford emphasized vocational and technical training for the job market, to the exclusion of everything else schools can do. The idea of developing fully rounded people ready to take on the tasks of citizenship was entirely absent from the Conservative leader’s discourse.
The other leaders did not pick up on that issue and challenge Ford on the purposes of education. They stayed away from anything too philosophical.
Andrea Horwath’s main beef with Ford on education is his government’s recently-announced plans to cut its funding by $1.3 billion.
“Who does that during a pandemic,” Horwath asked contemptuously.
All three opposition leaders emphasized the need for smaller classes, better equipped schools (that would include adequate ventilation), more teachers, and an end to the Conservatives’ pre-pandemic edict that for all Ontario secondary students a proportion of their education must be online.
Horwath accused the Conservative leader of planning to use this obligatory online learning as a means to privatize parts of the education system, but did not elaborate on that point.
The New Democratic leader was likely referring to the fact that it is far easier to contract out online courses to private companies than it is to privatize any aspect of in-classroom education.
A more supple and respectful debate format might have allowed viewers and listeners to learn more about such issues.
Ford running away from pandemic record
There was also talk during the debate about Ford’s handling of the pandemic, and especially the frightfully high death rate in long-term care homes for seniors.
Del Duca mentioned some of Ford’s erratic pandemic decision-making – opening up prematurely one day, then clamping down on playgrounds the next.
Horwath pointed out that the Conservatives had passed legislation shielding the private operators of largely publicly-funded long-term care facilities from lawsuits.
Ford’s reaction to those accusations was to deflect and allow the clock on that particular topic to run out. It was a tactic that might work for him in the end.
Ford is counting on a good turnout from suburbanites and car owners, and on a split vote from the more than 55 per cent of Ontarians who want to get rid of him, to carry him, once again, to victory.
Had the election happened a year ago experts in public opinion say the Conservatives would likely have lost. Now, the smart money is betting Ford’s team will be re-elected.
The smart money is not always right.
Those who want to replace Ford are hoping for a bigger turnout than the current apparent apathy of the electorate would indicate.
A big turnout would also be good for the health of democracy in Canada’s most populous province. The advanced polls are now open, and the final vote is on June 2.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
