The easiest way to describe the new Conservative platform released on the weekend is in the negative: it is no Common Sense Revolution.
The CSR, as it came to be called, was the Conservatives' platform in 1995, when Mike Harris was their leader.
It was edgy and short (just 21 pages), but it was filled with highly charged language ("welfare fraud," "bloated bureaucracy") and specific promises (30 per cent income tax cut, elimination of 13,000 civil service jobs, 22 per cent reduction in welfare benefits).
Now John Tory is the Conservative leader, and his platform has a much more prosaic title ("For a Better Ontario: Leadership Matters") and is almost three times as long (58 pages). But it actually says less than the CSR, if that is possible.
That's because the language is flabby, with section headings like "investing in stronger communities" and "building for Ontario's future." As those titles suggest, the platform is all over the map, with dozens of promises to spend more and tax less.
The governing Liberals – who had a "war room" monitoring the platform launch – did a count and say there are 244 promises in the document. That is even more than the alleged 231 promises in the Liberals' 2003 platform.
The Conservatives objected that the war room was double-counting some of the promises and that the actual number is lower than the Liberal score.
More to the point, whereas many of the Liberal promises were quite specific (close the coal-fired power plants by 2007, put a hard cap on class sizes in the early grades), those made by Tory and the Conservatives are wishy-washy.
In some cases, Tory is promising to do things the Liberals are already doing, such as spend more on health care and education. The numbers in the Conservative platform are only marginally different from those in the Liberal budget.
In others, Tory makes only vague promises to "increase funding" for mental health, for example, or to make "major investments" in infrastructure, with no numbers attached (although he suggests they may come later).
And elsewhere – such as the reversal of downloading of provincial programs onto municipalities and the development of co-op housing – Tory is promising only to come up with a "plan" or "a strategy" once in office.
Even in those areas where Tory's platform appears to be directly at odds with the governing Liberals – such as his call for repeal of the "health premium" and funding for "faith-based schools" – there is less than meets the eye. The health premium would be "phased out" over the life of the government's mandate, and the faith-based schools would get funding only if they agreed to a wide range of conditions.
The reason for this caution is that Tory gave strict instructions to his platform writers to refrain from including promises he couldn't keep.
And for those critics (mainly inside the Conservative party) who grumble that this platform falls well short of the standards of the CSR, that's just fine with Tory. For he doesn't want to be seen as Harris – a divisive figure who probably couldn't get elected in Ontario today.
Rather, Tory invites comparisons to Bill Davis, his old boss and Conservative premier of Ontario from 1971 to 1985.
To underscore this connection, Tory was introduced by Davis Saturday night at a gathering of the party faithful to make the platform launch.
"I genuinely believe that John Tory will be the next premier of this province," said Davis, as Tory beamed.
Harris was nowhere to be seen.
Ian Urquhart's provincial affairs column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Contact him at iurquha@thestar.ca
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