The more I hear from Tim Hudak the more I don’t like him. I know I’m going against the tread here but his populist babble is just plain dumb. I’m not exactly a Dalton McGuinty fan either. The wise thing for the Premier would have been to step down as leader last year and allow the party to regenerate. The public is in the mood for change and the Liberals aren’t offering any.
Getting back to Hudak, when you get past all his spin you have a list of bad policy initiatives. The list has been packaged to be family and small business oriented. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. He attempts to build off the success of both the federal Conservatives and Rob Ford campaigns. Here are just a few of his promises:
Reduce the size of the bureaucracy by not filling vacancies
This is always a very popular commitment. Shrinking the size of the bureaucracy can only mean worse services or cutting programs. Remember Rob Ford declaring he was going to end the gravy train at City Hall. Now he is considering cuts to snow removal, recycling programs and water fluoridation. When did protecting children’s teeth get labeled as government waste? The reality is that after 15 years of belt tightening there isn’t a significant government “fat” to cut. But it always gets applause on the campaign trail.
No Cuts to Health, Education and Public Safety
Hudak has committed to not make any cuts to the health, education and public safety sectors. In fact he was promised to spend $6 billion more on health and $2 billion more on education. These sectors are 70% of the provincial Budget. It is impossible to spend more on 70% of your programs and have all the cuts come from the remaining 30%. Mike Harris made similar promises that weren’t kept and in fact the cuts in the remaining programs cause some serious problems, most notable a number of deaths in Walkerton from tainted drinking water.
Reduce taxes
I’m all for lower taxes but not if it creates a larger deficit. A deficit budget is borrowing money from future taxpayers. I don’t see that as being very ethical. So when Hudak promises to remove the debt retirement charge from hydro bills I can only ask who is going to pay it? These are debts from past generations that the Conservatives don’t want us to pay. I can tell you we will pay through income tax which is far less transparent – I guess he like hidden taxes. Hudak wants to eliminate the eco fees which he calls taxes. Whether they are fees or taxes it doesn’t matter. Eco fees are collected by manufacturers and retailers to help cover the cost of collecting and recycling hazardous items, instead of sending them to landfills. By the way Hudak is also in favour of protecting the environment, so he says though he wants to eliminate green projects.
Crime
My favourite is getting tough on criminals by requiring prisoners to work 40 hours per week on manual labour. Easy target here. These programs always turn out to be a bust. They are very costly because prisoners need to be transported to and guarded at the work sites – parks, highways, etc. The work isn’t found in the prisons. I’d rather get a tax cut then waste money on stupid programs like this.
What I hate is being treated like a simpleton. I get his list of pocketbook issues but they need to make some sense. He knows that enough voters will look at his list and say yeah I’m for him. They won’t consider the implications of his promises.
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