Ontario’s Liberals will have to earn mining’s respect Laws of gravity

“Gouverner, c’est choisir.”

— Franois-Gaston duc de Lvis, governor of New France (1759-1760), misattributed to any number of political cliche-artists since.

Lvis was right — to govern is to choose — but some people think that to govern is to choose everything: lower taxes, munificent government spending (at least on programs they like), and balanced budgets; cheap and abundant energy, no nukes, and limitations on fossil fuels; or in Yvon Deschamps’ comic formulation, an independent Quebec within a strong and united Canada.

In Canada over the last half-century, people like that gravitated toward the Liberal party, and in the recent Ontario general election this law of gravity was hard at work; it, and general dissatisfaction with the Conservative government of Ernie Eves, gave the party of the mushy middle almost three-quarters of the seats in the legislature.

We don’t look forward to the next few years of Liberal government at all, and the party gave us little reason to; the published platform never mentions the words “mining” or “exploration.” This is not an oversight; the platform teems with interventionist industrial strategy. The Liberals go into detail on two items: the government plans to put good tax money into a “strategic investment fund” designed for the auto industry, and promises “a new generation of safety nets” for farms and supply management in agriculture. Ontario taxpayers, resurrect the Massey Ferguson plant and buy tractors. That’s one way to get your money’s worth out of industrial policy.

We can’t know what the Liberals might do for mining, but equally we can’t guess what they might do to mining. The Peterson government of the 1980s, occupied by other priorities, largely left mining and exploration well enough alone, except for some very sensible reforms to the Mining Act. It is not obvious that a new Liberal ministry would follow the same path, because — with the Walkerton coliform outbreak available for poster duty — the specious environmental rhetoric coming from the Liberals has been deafening. And it won’t be their pet industries like cars and agriculture that pay that bill when, inevitably, it comes.

The industry should watch carefully, because land access for exploration has always suffered when Ontario governments have wanted to establish their green credentials. The Conservatives had Lands for Life; a party that outdoes them in lip service to environmental causes (which should not be confused with environmental protection) will need scrutiny.

What, then, of its general economic policy? All Ontario governments in recent years have found their own path to fiscal irresponsibility, whether through spending orgies or through tax cuts; or in the case of the Harris and Eves governments, through both. If, as the Fraser Institute predicts, the province is looking at a $4-billion budget deficit this year, both spending and tax reductions played a part (although, oddly enough, provincial revenue as a percentage of gross domestic product was higher under the Eves government than it was under the New Democrats in the early 1990s).

Like any party running against a government’s record, the Liberals claim there are more savings to be found, money that can be directed to those shrines of provincial expenditure, public schools and hospitals. Time, and the provincial auditor, will tell. In the meantime, we can reflect that a party carried in on promises of more spending is quite likely to do exactly that, with a predictable outcome for public finances.

The Liberals have, creditably, made it a point of integrity to enforce the parliamentary custom that budgets must be presented in the legislature but have not said anything about repealing the special-warrant provisions in the Treasury Board Act; and they could spoil all the democratic good that that might do with their sham “reform” of fixed election dates.

On the new government, then, it is too soon to say. But it is not too soon to recognize some unnerving straws in the wind.

The defeat of the Conservatives was probably also met with quiet satisfaction by the meat-hunting right wing of Ontario conservatism, for whom life under the Eves ministry was like watching a long action movie in which nothing ever blows up. All that salvaged the show was seeing the protagonist implode at the end.

It is not entirely coincidence that the blue vote fell apart in an election when the voter turnout, at 55%, was the lowest since Howard Ferguson beat Ernest Drury in 1923. It may be that right-wing voters did not merely abandon the Conservatives; they abandoned the whole political process.

The list of survivors, though, suggests that a right-wing core might have stayed with the Tories; one of their flag-bearers, Enterprise Minister James Flaherty, is back and considered a likely successor for Eves (though another, Health Minister Tony Clement, is gone) and most of the remaining Conservative members have been identified in the past with the fiscal and social Harrisites.

Perhaps the right passed this election by, and plans to bring the fight to a future legislature — or maybe this election passed the right by. Has the fight gone out of the right?