Perhaps the PC narrative wasn’t that shitty. At least the PC’s professed to care about deficits and the debt, unlike the Liberals and NDP. The Auditor General and the rating agencies didn’t have any skin in this game, other than doing their respective jobs honestly by pointing out the Wynne government’s accounting was a lie and that we have a long-term structural problem with our public finances. Furthermore, the PC’s at least recognized that Ontario is becoming even more uncompetitive with the Midwestern and Southern states. The Liberals bear some responsibility for that problem, due to their several Green Energy plans, Cap and Trade, and workplace legislation on wages and other terms of employment. The NDP gave no indication they had any issues with any of these measures, except to the extent they would have been even more hostile to the private sector had they been the government.
It’s inaccurate to claim Ford’s economic plan will be more dangerous than the NDP’s would have been, because the PC’s never articulated a coherent plan. They did argue that the re-election of a sharply leftward-tilting Liberal Party, or the election of an even more hard-line socialist party would have negative consequences for the economy. That was enough to give them a majority. It was certainly enough for me, in spite of my own misgivings over Ford’s considerable negatives.
