It was just like old times two weeks ago as the legislative session wound down for the holiday break with the opposition parties yelling about the outrageous expense claims made by some Pan American Games executives. It has been a very good year for Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals and we saw the New Democrats and Progressive Conservatives showing signs of life in closing the house down with familiar acrimony.
Heading into 2014, Queen’s Park watchers were glued to Wynne’s 2014-15 budget – and guessing which way NDP Leader Andrea Horwath would lean as it moved toward a vote. In the background, the ever-present gas plant issues hung in the air as an opportunity for the opposition, and a deep threat for the Liberals. The unfolding of this drama ended up defining the year, and in fact, the next four.
This was a rapid-fire burst of political history and theatre that saw the Liberals stack their budget with a boatload of NDP-friendly social policy proposals, including a new, progressive Ontario Retirement Pension Plan to supplement the Canada Pension Plan, and increases to the minimum wage indexed to inflation.
Private and public sector unions threw their weight behind the budget and an NDP-Liberal budget deal, worried that a defeated budget would pave the way to election victory for the Progressive Conservatives.
When Ms. Horwath’s thumbs went down the morning after Finance Minister Charles Sousa’s May 1 budget speech, Wynne didn’t wait for the expected confidence vote on the budget. With her campaign bus parked out front, the premier went straight to then-Lt.-Gov. David Onley and triggered the provincial election. The resulting rift between the NDP and its traditional union base is still an open wound.
To be fair to Horwath, a budget deal would have essentially ceded the core of the NDP’s social policy turf to the Liberals and to a premier with a leaning toward progressive social policy. Horwath saw the trap but couldn’t pivot well to a different election strategy. It was a rag-tag approach mixed with the peculiar rejection of policies she had been heralding a couple of weeks earlier.
I thought Horwath had paved the way for a Tim Hudak PC government. With the Liberals under the intense spotlight of the gas plant issue, Mr. Hudak’s job was to stay on course and out of trouble. As the pundits said, the election was his to lose. It all changed in a hurry with the PC’s explosive campaign commitment to cut 100,000 public sector jobs – a deciding factor from which the PCs never recovered.
The bottom line was that voters had no idea what Horwath stood for, and they didn’t care for what Hudak was offering. Wynne rarely put a foot wrong. She had earned some public trust and credibility in her year in the premier’s chair, the Liberals' high-spending social policy platform was surprisingly popular and her competitors struggled. Wynne stunned the province with a solid election victory.
In the election’s aftermath, Hudak stepped down, triggering a competitive leadership race. Horwath has clung to her job for the short term but will have to do a lot better if she wants to keep it.
The Liberals ended their honeymoon year with several key pieces of legislation passed, many flowing straight from their ambitious budget. They include the indexation of the already stepped-up minimum wage to the cost of living; Bill 8, which strengthens accountability and oversight in Ontario’s broader public sector; and legislation establishing a framework for the new Ontario Retirement Pension Plan.
Throughout the past 12 months, Ontario’s fiscal shortfall has loomed large with repeated commitments from the premier and finance minister that fiscal balance will be achieved by 2017-18, an already stretch-target now threatened by plummeting oil prices as well as a rapidly receding timeline. The post-election appointment of Deb Matthews as president of a more muscular Treasury Board was a key step in reining in program spending. The 2015-16 budget will reveal what Matthews has been working on with officials in the well-guarded Frost Building at the south end of Queen’s Park circle.
Tensions between Ontario and the federal government have heightened as the year progressed. A fight with Ottawa sometimes makes for some good politics, but the Prime Minister’s mean streak makes him a soft target. In the past days we have seen evidence that you don’t always have to play by the prime minister’s rules to make headway. The $1.25-billion increase in the federal health and social transfer for 2015-16 is good news for Ontario and a boost to the premier’s efforts to achieve fair levels of federal funding for Ontario. A decent federal contribution to the development of the Ring of Fire should hopefully follow.
Next, a look at the year in the Ontario Public Service.

Dean: Wynne stuns, Horwath dithers and Hudak takes the fall – 2014 had it all

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