Horwath muscles McGuinty on budget

And: NDP support increases in Ontario.

by Inside Queen's Park

Adjusting the budget
In the British parliamentary system, taxation and spending in a given financial year (running from the beginning of April to the end of March) acquire governmental authority when legislators vote in favour of a motion "that this House approves in general the Budgetary Policy of the Government". Passage of that bland formulation at the end of the 12-day Budget Debate endorses both the Budget Speech and Budget Papers.

The third leg of the budgetary table is the numbingly detailed Budget Implementation Bill — this year, Bill 55 — which gets first reading when tabled by the Finance minister after reading his speech but typically does not get final approval until much later in the session. And the remaining leg is the detailed spending plans set out in the Expenditure Estimates, which may not be presented until after the Budget Debate is over.

After the initial stir created by the Budget itself, the steps in that humdrum budget approval process ordinarily get only sketchy coverage. In time, however, some overlooked specific provision will attract later attention, on occasion generating a big fuss.

But as we have seen since Strong Action for Ontario was unveiled March 27, the sketchy coverage of budgets presented by majority governments can be utterly transformed when the fiscal plan is that of a minority. Even with Tim Hudak's PCs dealing themselves out of the minority budget wrangle by declaring in advance that they would vote against it, we have witnessed a fascinating semi-public negotiation between the third party and the government about changes to the document originally tabled two weeks ago.

NDP leader Andrea Horwath said at the outset that her party would not be drawing any "lines in the sand" to demand particular changes to Dwight Duncan's Budget 2012. Instead, her party invited voters to call in to say what changes they wanted and for good measure whether they wanted a 2012 election, six months after the 2011 one.

The McGuinty government initially seemed inclined to get on its constitutional high horse and resist the NDP bid to rewrite Budget 2012, but the Premier soon adopted a decidedly calm manner, lamenting Horwath's decision to lay out a series of suggested budget changes and reminding her that it's easier to spend more and harder to spend less. But with a trip to the polls a possible outcome, this interaction has been quite remarkably mature and free of partisan snidery.

Horwath's proposals to increase actual taxes have been criticized by McGuinty, who stands to get slammed for breaking his famous promise. Not unreasonably, the premier says his public response will be forthcoming "in due course". In the meantime, the Liberals and NDP are going to embark on behind-the-scenes discussions, to permit the good ship Budget 2012 to get through the Strait of Horwath — or to declare electoral war.

The chances of slipping into the latter could be significantly enhanced by partisan sloganeering — such as Horwath's remarks today declaring her solidarity with "daycares" and inviting the premier to come out for "millionaires". And given how carefully she has expressed herself in this delicate process thus far, "silly" was surely not the only term she could have used to answer McGuinty's costing of her budget changes.

Inside Queen's Park exclusive

Provincial poll & seat projection
IQP has obtained the results of a poll conducted for the Canadian Union of Public Employees — Ontario Division — by Angus Reid Public Opinion. The on-line poll, in the field April 2 & 3, surveyed 1,500 adults, yielding a margin of error +/- 2.5 percent, 19 times in 20.

It's important to note that the questions reflect CUPE's critical perspective on Budget 2012, posing several "preferred budget trade-off" questions, eg, support for a new tax on high earners if it allowed the government to provide a cost of living increase to social assistance recipients. Some analysts contend that such questions lead the recipients, thus skewing the findings of the poll. CUPE feels that the poll "confirms that there is real support for alternate ways to balance the budget".

The poll also asked decided vote intent. It found that: 35 percent of respondents voted PC in October 2011 and that 34 percent would now vote PC; 38 percent voted Liberal in 2011 and 29 percent would now vote Liberal; and 23 percent voted NDP in 2011 and 31 percent would now vote NDP.

Because decided vote totals are very close, IQP commissioned a seat-projection analysis, using the Angus Reid regional breakdown of ridings. The regional decided vote was compared to the regions' actual vote shares in 2011. A number of methods were used to project vote swings in each riding, assuming gains and losses are spread evenly across the region.

The seat-projection identified 16 nominal PC gains from the Liberals and 11 nominal NDP gains from the Liberals, as well as 27 nominal Liberal losses.

The PCs take a total of 53 seats; the Liberals take 26 seats and the NDP takes 28 seats.

PC and NDP gains are listed below:
PC gains: (n=16)
Ajax-Pickering; Ancaster-DFW; Brampton-Springdale; Brampton West; Brant; Kitchener Centre; Mississauga-Brampton South; Mississauga East-Cooksville; Mississauga-Erindale; Mississauga South; Niagara Falls; Oak Ridges-Markham; Oakville; Pickering-Scarborough East; Richmond Hill; St. Catharines.

NDP gains: (n=11)
Guelph; Peterborough; Scarborough-Rouge River; Scarborough Southwest; Sudbury; Thunder Bay-Atikokan; Thunder Bay-Superior North; Windsor-Tecumseh; Windsor West; York South-Weston; York West

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