Toronto – Premier Dalton McGuinty is trying to make himself a key player in the federal election, but he does not have enough of the right cards.
He has renewed a longstanding request for a fairer distribution of federally collected money and demanded leaders of all federal parties announce how they will provide this. He has explained a sharp decline in Ontario’s manufacturing sector has made it less able to maintain payments to provinces whose economies, ironically, have become more profitable than its own.
He also wants to end anomalies under which Ontarians receive less cash for health and employment insurance than other provinces.
McGuinty has said he will not endorse any party that fails to support this, which is a far cry from past federal elections, when he enthusiastically endorsed fellow-Liberals.
If the federal leaders fail to act, he said, candidates in Ontario for all parties should stand up individually to support more cash for the province. He said one-third of MPs will be from Ontario and they can have a huge impact.
The federal parties want to talk about issues they feel can help them, including who can best manage a weakening economy, how quickly to fight climate change and Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s abrasiveness and Liberal leader Stephane Dion’s indecision. They will not have much time to discuss the province’s request for funding.
Voters also tuned in to meaty federal issues on which a government could stand or fall will not have much thought for what seems a more abstract topic of federal funding for Ontario, which has an aura of merely transferring taxpayers’ money from one government to another.
McGuinty has been pressing for a greater share of money collected federally for years, although he has escalated it recently, and to news media and voters it will seem yesterday’s story.
Harper has claimed already he has dealt with Ontario’s concerns by increasing or promising to increase transfers, but these still are substantially less than McGuinty asked for.
Harper already has handed out big money in the election to Ontario’s suffering auto-manufacturing industry to win votes and is unlikely to promise cash to a province that will spend it and get the credit from voters.
This brings up the nub of the problem, which is parties do not place a high priority on fighting to raise money to hand over to another level of government to distribute and win gratitude –- they want money they can spend themselves
McGuinty also is hampered in his request because federal politicians tend to have an ingrained attitude Ontario has been and always will be the richest province and can look after itself.
They fear other provinces seeing them as focusing too much on one that mostly has had more than its share of the nation’s wealth. McGuinty has called previously on Ontario MPs to support him on the same issue, but few responded.
The federal Liberals may not bend over backwards to win McGuinty’s endorsement. Dion’s performance will be much more crucial to it than support from a premier.
Ontario premiers also have not had much success trying to influence federal elections, an outstanding example being when an unbroken string of powerful Conservative premiers supported their federal party for 42 years up to 1985, but federal voters in all but eight of those years chose Liberals. McGuinty will be following a losing tradition.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen’s Park press gallery.
