Ontario’s good economic news still bad politics

Our provincial economy grows stronger. Yet the Liberal government grows weaker.

Thestar.com
Nov. 15, 2016
By Martin Regg Cohn

“The economy, stupid.”

That celebrated campaign credo helped Bill Clinton win the presidency in tough times a quarter-century ago.

Today, that old Clintonian aphorism isn’t sounding so smart. A growing economy didn’t put Hillary Clinton over the top in last week’s presidential election.

And as goes America, so goes Ontario:

Our provincial economy grows stronger. Yet the Liberal government grows weaker.

By most measures, Kathleen Wynne has presided over a wave of unprecedented job creation, infrastructure investment and deficit reduction since becoming premier in 2013. But the good fortune of better economic numbers has brought only bad political luck - and worsening polling numbers.

Look at the data in Ontario’s annual fall economic statement, released Monday:

Unemployment, which keeps people (and politicians) awake at night, is falling to historic lows: 6.6 per cent this year, and declining steadily.

Economic growth, the elixir of employment, reached 2.5 per cent for all of last year - better than the rest of Canada (0.9 per cent) and Germany (1.7 per cent). It will reach the same level for 2016 (exceeding the 2.2 per cent projected just six months ago in the spring budget). Exports are also growing.

The province has kept its own public sector wage increases at a mere 0.6 per cent a year since mid-2012 - well below what Stephen Harper’s Conservatives negotiated during the same period (1.7 per cent), or private sector pay hikes (1.9 per cent), while still maintaining robust economic growth.

And Queen’s Park is cashing in on the controversial sale of Hydro One, its electricity transmission utility. Despite my past columns criticizing the decision, I give privatization czar Ed Clark grudging credit for at least getting top dollar for the publicly owned asset, selling off two 15-per-cent tranches that have benefited from a rising share price to raise $3.4 billion so far.

For all those reasons, the budget deficit, which peaked at $19 billion after the 2008 economic slump, is down to $4.3 billion today. Despite unexpected hurdles, it will still be eliminated next year - no thanks to the auditor general, who ambushed the government last summer with a sudden change to her own accounting rules that wiped billions of dollars in pension surpluses off its books.

Queen’s Park will balance the budget despite an expensive promise made in September -belatedly (and foolishly) acquiescing to opposition pressure for a tax rebate on hydro bills. Eliminating the 8-per-cent provincial portion of the HST will add $1 billion a year to provincial spending, money that could and should have gone to paying down the debt.

Ontario still has a massive - and excessive - debt overhang of more than $300 billion piled on from decades of overspending by all three parties in power. Interest on that debt will rise to more than $12 billion a year, but would be much higher if borrowing rates weren’t as attractive as they are today.

Part of that huge debt is deceptive, because it includes the tens of billions of dollars going into infrastructure investments that will pay economic and social dividends for decades. More than $160 billion has been allocated through 2026 for public transit, road gridlock, hospitals, schools and child care.

True, uncertainty remains high in an era of precarious employment, de-industrialization and growing income disparities - not just demographic but geographic. Growth is concentrated in what I call the KW-GTHA-NCR corridor extending from Kitchener-Waterloo through Hamilton and the GTA to the National Capital Region. Rising costs, notably higher hydro bills, have stoked resentment.

But the overall numbers speak for themselves and are far removed from the doomsday scenarios many feared just a few years ago. This is about as good as it gets for a manufacturing and trading economy.

And yet on the political front, the numbers are about as bad as they get for a premier. A Forum Research poll published by the Star last month shows the Liberals languishing at 24-per-cent voter support, essentially tied with the third-place NDP (23 per cent) while the Conservatives soared to 43 per cent. Wynne’s favourable rating fell to 14 per cent, the lowest level ever recorded for a sitting premier.

As leading indicators go, that’s a grim outlook. Wynne has averted an economic recession only to fall victim to a political depression.

All these years later, it’s more than “the economy, stupid.” While bad economic news can be good for insurgent politicians, good economic news doesn’t inoculate incumbent political parties.

Welcome to the politics of economics.