The most common claim in Ontario’s Oct. 10 election campaign is only Liberals break promises, and it is as much a myth as the Earth being flat.
Almost every commentary by the public, media and opponents starts with the assertion Premier Dalton McGuinty fails to keep his word and it is based particularly on his promising in the 2003 election he would not increase taxes and dramatically raising them by $2.6 billion a year.
The premier can counter the preceding Progressive Conservative government assured it had balanced its books, which would have put him in a better position to pay for new initiatives, but instead left a $5.5 billion deficit, but there are good arguments he should have suspected this and voters will have to apportion blame.
McGuinty has broken other promises, including those to close polluting, coal-fuelled power plants by 2007, since postponed to 2014, assure adequate treatment for autistic children, limit primary school class size to 20 students, roll back highway tolls and prevent housing on a sensitive moraine.
He also might have had enough cash to keep some of these if the Conservatives had balanced their books.
The Conservatives under leader John Tory keep saying their party in contrast keeps its promises, they are apt to make it their first point in any debate and keep repeating it.
But it was a huge violation of a promise when the Conservative premier before McGuinty, Ernie Eves, in trying to be seen as a prudent manager, claimed he had balanced the books when he had what public servants later certified as a $5.5 billion deficit.
The Conservatives boast repeatedly their earlier, tough-minded premier, Mike Harris, was someone who did not break promises and even opponents grudgingly accept this, because he kept his highest profile promises to cut taxes and government and reduce the power of unions, despite some spirited opposition.
But Harris broke other promises, sometimes with trickery to disguise this. He said he had no plan to close hospitals, but set up a commission to distance himself from such surgery and it closed more than 30.
Harris said he would not impose new user fees in health care, but did the equivalent by eliminating some services from coverage and forcing seniors to pay more for prescription drugs..
Harris said he was against opening more casinos because of his general principle government already grabbed too much of residents’ hard-earned money through taxes, but he expanded casinos and other ways of taking money from gambling.
Harris said he and his party would never support feared market value assessment for taxing homes, but brought in what he called current value assessment, which was exactly the same system under a different name.
Harris said, as one last example, because he broke too many promises to mention in one column, he would sell off assets such as the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, but it remains in government hands.
Before Harris, New Democrat premier Bob Rae scrapped his party’s most cherished policy, government auto insurance, which it had advocated proudly for generations, saying it would be too costly.
The NDP government among other broken promises backed off requiring soft drinks sold in refillable containers to help the environment, because its union members who made the cans objected they would lose their jobs.
Liberal premier David Peterson won an election largely on a promise to allow grocery stores to sell beer and wines, but failed to do so.
Conservative premier William Davis promised to balance his budget by 1981, but instead his deficits grew successively bigger until he retired in 1985.
McGuinty is identified more than his predecessors as breaking promises because he did it recently and news media have seized on it with imagination and flair, particularly by labeling his party “Fiberals,” which the public finds easy to remember.
The Liberal premier cannot justify his breaking of promises by saying others did it, but in fairness it should be recognized he did not invent the practice.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen’s Park press gallery.
