Doug's Bribe, And How The OLP Should Respond

How To Take Advantage Of Doug's Bribes

Doug Ford confirmed the Star’s reporting that they will be sending out pre-election checks to every taxpayer at a $3B cost. I could write a column about how that’s a waste of money (it is), about how this proves Doug Ford doesn’t care about fiscal prudence (he doesn’t), or about how Bonnie Crombie should make the progressive case for a Commission of Audit (I already have). I could do any or all of those things and I’m sure progressives would suddenly love me again. (You’re still all wrong if you think Trudeau should stay but whatever.)

That said, I’ve decided to stick with whatever constructiveness kick I’m on and offer up a few ideas to Bonnie in the wake of the Ford Bribe announcement. Consider it my penance for fighting with my side for too long, a tithe for my sins.

Announce Bold Spending Plans Now

The honest truth, as terrible as the FordBucks are, is that they’re a political godsend to the opposition. Not because voters will have an objection to them, but because it has completely and utterly destroyed the ability of the PCs to run on fiscal responsibility in the next election.

The political press in Ontario are not always the best at holding Ford to account (or to what he said last week), but they are not bad enough to let him try and get away with playing the fiscal discipline card after this bribe. There is no way that if Bonnie, hypothetically, announces a fund of new money for school construction and repairs, and she’s doing events backing it up, that Ford can credibly say “where’s the money?” and have anybody believe him.

Will he still try to make the election about Liberal debt and deficits? Sure, but he won’t get the help of a credulous press that he had in past years. It’s also helped that Bonnie Crombie won the Liberal leadership as the moderate and codes as more of a centrist - she can probably get away with uncosted spending increases bigger than Nate could. The reality of the situation is fiscal prudence has been tossed aside as a cudgel the right can use here.

Now, it is a mantle the left can use, but it’s more important to make the point that Crombie can just promise the money needed. We know we need to pay nurses, teachers, doctors, and public servants more money. We know we need to build more schools and hospitals. We know we need to spend way more on transit. These things cost money.

Ford’s bribe has made it significantly harder for him to credibly attack us when we announce our plans there. It’s a godsend. Take advantage.

Return To A Much More Local Politics

This is something I’ve had to be convinced of over time, but I actually think one of the big mistakes the left is making in Ontario and more broadly is focusing so much on high level theme and not enough about pure local grift.

One of the things I would do if I were Crombie is I’d make a series of big, high level announcements in the next 2 months - billions for school repairs and construction, billions for new health care capacity, billions in new transit lines and increases GO capacity/frequency, whatever - and then spend 2025 and the writ period going up and down the province saying “elect a Liberal Government and we will build X”. Whether that’s better and/or more frequent transit access to Toronto, a new ER, a better maternity ward, a new high school, whatever it is.

It’s a way of having a high level focus that works - Doug Ford has broken Ontario’s public services, we’re going to fix it - while also allowing Bonnie a ton of popular, announceable policies. Every community in Ontario needs something. By focusing more on specific communities you get to make more announcements, command the news cycle more, and you’ll also build a lot of people willing to advocate for you locally.

Take, for an example chosen entirely at random and not at all because a certain frequent podcast guest refuses to shut the fuck about it to me, the $7.7M funding gap the Halton school board is facing. A school board in a place full of marginal seats we need to win, and includes a place we failed to flip this spring, is facing a $7.7M funding shortfall. We should have already announced we’d fill that in. Now, we should announce a 9 figure fund to fill these kinds of holes across the province, and then hold the kickoff event in Milton or Burlington with the organizers of the Fair Funding for HaltonFair Funding for Halton group.

Humanize Bonnie

I have written this before but one of Doug Ford’s great assets is that people think he’s authentic and a man of the people. He’s not, but people think she is.

I get Mississauga residents probably know her humanity pretty well but I legit do not know anything about her beyond her backstory and her political history. Is Crombie a Leafs fan? Does she care about sports? What’s her favourite musician?

Like, I know this stuff doesn’t matter, but it does. People are much more willing to vote for politicians they feel a connection to, and as stupid as it is to change your vote for governmental office on the whims of essentially trivia, Kamala Harris talking about how she grew up in a house full of Stevie and Aretha and Miles Davis and Coltrane is genuinely humanizing.

Have Bonnie sit down with Nate and talk about the Blue Jays and Neil Young and precisely zero actual policy. It’ll do more good for the campaign than a hundred ads.

Hire More Of Nate’s Team

In recent months I’ve been made aware of the fact that more elements of Nate’s very good campaign team have been folded into the OLP, but the digital operation Nate ran was top notch and the OLP’s operation is still not at the level. It’s much better than it was, but there’s still not that sense of digital working seamlessly with the policy teams and the Leader's office.

Take Karen’s PMB last week - there could and should have been a better digital rollout and digital strategy to make that vote the issue of the week. With all respect to friend of the site John Michael McGrath, tweeting out that he endorsed the bill isn’t a digital strategy.

What the party needs is to hire more of the architects of the Nate digital strategy - including, yes, my guy Nathaniel Arfin, who kicked ass on that campaign and is one of the best campaign staffers in the country - to help roll out the party’s vision and take the fight to Ford.