{"id":22941,"date":"2011-10-03T08:30:18","date_gmt":"2011-10-03T12:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=22941"},"modified":"2013-01-21T15:06:44","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T20:06:44","slug":"lorinc-urban-agenda-at-stake-in-provincial-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2011\/10\/03\/lorinc-urban-agenda-at-stake-in-provincial-election\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: Urban agenda at stake in provincial election"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4139\/4752391807_f61662b7a8_z.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/spacingmedia.com\/uploads\/toronto\/feature-lorinc.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"85\" \/><\/p>\n<p>As we head into this week\u2019s provincial vote, has anyone noticed a ballot question floating around Ontario\u2019s body politic? Oh, I pretty much know what the parties vying for Dalton McGuinty\u2019s head want the ballot question to be. But whether there\u2019s a real one out there is hardly clear. Certainly, the live wire of political anger that accompanied David Miller\u2019s departure from the mayor\u2019s office is conspicuously absent from this race.<\/p>\n<p>The only compelling narrative, at this point, is whether Andrea Horwath, the NDP leader, gets to be a kingmaker after Thursday. Will she make populist common cause with Hudak and negotiate the end of the HST on hydro bills? Or would she unearth the few progressive tidbits in the NDP platform and cut a deal with Dalton?<\/p>\n<p>I can barely contain my excitement.<\/p>\n<p>Lost amidst the desultory speculation about the shape and trajectory of a coalition is any consideration of how said minority government would deal with the occupants of that Death Star up in Ottawa.<\/p>\n<p>As a general rule, federal-provincial relations work best when there\u2019s a bit of creative &#8212; which is to say partisan &#8212; tension built into the partnership. Yes, there were Liberals on either end of the equation between October, 2003, and January, 2006, with David Miller rounding out a progressive trifecta that delivered the gas tax, housing money, and other city-friendly policies.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>But the McGuinty government has also maintained a solid working relationship with Stephen Harper\u2019s Tories over the past five years, at least in part because the Liberals showed they had the guts to back the HST.<\/p>\n<p>Yet I\u2019d argue that Toronto and the GTA benefited because the provincial Liberals could operate from a position of strength; after all, they found themselves dancing with successive minority governments \u2013 first Paul Martin\u2019s (2004-2006) and then Harper\u2019s two terms presiding over a split Parliament.<\/p>\n<p>Harper, ever eager to hold onto power, had an incentive to play nice.<\/p>\n<p>The reverse certainly won\u2019t be the case. I am not eager to have a minority government at Queen\u2019s Park try to negotiate with a Harper majority. He\u2019s got zero incentive to yield on contentious matters, especially if he sees that the gang running Queen\u2019s Park seems a bit unsteady on their feet.<\/p>\n<p>Do federal-provincial relations bear on city issues in the foreseeable future?<\/p>\n<p>Absolutely. Ottawa maintains a large infrastructure pot, but spending plans must be negotiated with provincial counterparts. A Tory-on-Tory negotiation, if you will, can only mean that such funds are unlikely to trickle into this decidedly non-Tory city.<\/p>\n<p>As for a Liberal-NDP coalition, Horwath\u2019s priorities, both electorally and from a policy perspective, have little to do with urban issues. If the NDP are propping up a hobbled McGuinty regime, there will be that much more pressure to direct funds to the hinterland.<\/p>\n<p>As is probably obvious by this point, I am not a fan of Horwath\u2019s NDP. The party\u2019s transit platform is a joke (how do they propose to force municipalities to freeze transit fares, and is that even a good idea?), their positions on the HST and gas taxes are intellectually dishonest, and their green energy policies make no sense.<\/p>\n<p>Between 2004 and 2006, Paul Martin and Jack Layton made common cause on a constructive, albeit short-lived, urban agenda, largely because they were both interested in city issues. The McGuinty Liberals, for the most part, have also done right by the GTA. But Horwath\u2019s head is elsewhere, and I\u2019m guessing that Harper\u2019s tacticians will easily figure out how to exploit the constituency gap between the two parties, possibly with an eye to making even more gains in the vote-rich GTA.<\/p>\n<p>From where I sit, the best way to keep a federal Conservative majority in check is with an Ontario Liberal majority, especially given the leadership vacuum on the opposition benches.<\/p>\n<p>Just remember Mike Harris and Jean Chretien, and then flip it around.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/bensonkua\/4752391807\/in\/photostream\/\"><em>photo by Benson Kua<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As we head into this week\u2019s provincial vote, has anyone noticed a ballot question floating around Ontario\u2019s body politic? Oh, I pretty much know what the parties vying for Dalton McGuinty\u2019s head want the ballot question to be. But whether there\u2019s a real one out there is hardly clear. Certainly, the live wire of political<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2011\/10\/03\/lorinc-urban-agenda-at-stake-in-provincial-election\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;LORINC: Urban agenda at stake in provincial election&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11642,18059,3216,425,31,1273,8866,14031,983,734,12521,426,4127,1529,735,636,346,1439,316,44,2092,19],"class_list":["post-22941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-andrea-horwath","tag-benson-kua","tag-dalton-mcguinty","tag-david-miller","tag-election","tag-gas-tax","tag-gas-taxes","tag-green-energy-policies","tag-head","tag-jack-layton","tag-jean-chretien","tag-mayor","tag-mcguinty-government","tag-mike-harris","tag-ndp-leader","tag-ontario","tag-ottawa","tag-paul-martin","tag-queen","tag-queens-park","tag-stephen-harper","tag-toronto"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>LORINC: Urban agenda at stake in provincial election - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2011\/10\/03\/lorinc-urban-agenda-at-stake-in-provincial-election\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LORINC: Urban agenda at stake in provincial election - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As we head into this week\u2019s provincial vote, has anyone noticed a ballot question floating around Ontario\u2019s body politic? 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