With 10 days until Ontario voters head to the polls for a snap winter election, the province’s four main party leaders debated health care, taxes and big spending in a major televised debate they hope will have a bearing on the race.
The Monday night debate saw the party leaders — the Progressive Conservative Party’s Doug Ford, NDP’s Marit Stiles, Liberals’ Bonnie Crombie and Greens’ Mike Schreiner — trying to define themselves and each other.
The set piece was an opportunity for Stiles and Crombie, both new party leaders, to introduce themselves to voters who may not yet have tuned into the campaign. It also allowed Ford to repeat his argument that he needs a new, strong mandate to handle potential tariffs from the United States.
“There’s one person on this stage that’s going to protect your families, protect your jobs and protect businesses — and that’s myself,” Ford said.
Schreiner was able to promote his party’s star candidates in key ridings to a provincial audience.
“What separates the Greens from every party up here is that we are running local champions who will be your voice at Queen’s Park,” he said.
Ford’s three opponents went after his record over the past seven years, blaming the PC leader for a range of issues, including the increased cost of living. They argued he had failed on health care and housing and urged voters to send a new governing party to Queen’s Park.
Both Crombie and Stiles also attacked one another’s parties, trying to differentiate themselves as the main alternative to the Progressive Conservatives.
“Let’s be clear, the hallway health-care crisis that we are in right now was invented by the previous Liberal government — but Doug Ford poured gasoline all over it,” Stiles argued during the debate.
During her closing statement, Crombie made a direct plea to NDP voters to back her party.
“Today, I am asking you, I’m asking those of you who voted NDP in the last election, to note Liberal,” Crombie said. “To vote for a government that will fix our health-care system and get you a family doctor.”
Disagreement on health care
Health care is an issue on which opposition parties believe the Progressive Conservatives are weak and, at the start of the campaign, it topped public polling as the most important issue to voters.
The Ontario Liberals have made their promise to get everyone in the province a family doctor front and centre of their campaign, something Crombie returned to repeatedly throughout the debate.
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“We need a leader who will not only protect jobs but a leader who will get you a family doctor,” Crombie said. “And that’s what the Ontario Liberals will do. We’ll get the basics right; I’ll ensure you have a family doctor.”
Ford’s opponents have all promised to connect everyone in the province to a primary care practitioner.
The Liberals are promising a family doctor, while the Greens have promised to prioritize rural communities and hospitals. The NDP made the same promise, pledging to target red tape in health-care and reduce the paperwork for doctors.
Just before calling the election, the Progressive Conservatives unveiled their own plan to connect everyone in Ontario to primary care. Despite the plan, Ford focused his answers to most questions — including health care — on the economy.
The PC leader has run his re-election campaign under the slogan Protect Ontario and stuck diligently to that theme.
“I can tell you one thing: you can’t do it without a strong economy, the foundation of our health care is a strong economy,” he said.
Stiles, whose NDP has been in opposition since 2018, tried to differentiate herself from the Liberals and the PCs — blaming both for current hospital wait times.
“We have a crisis in our province right now,” she said.
Highway 401 tunnel and Ontario Place
As they try to make the election a referendum on Ford’s record, Crombie, Stiles and Schreiner singled out specific PC policies they called “fantasy” and said were wasteful.
They singled out a PC promise, made before the election and repeated on the campaign trail, to build a tunneled expressway under Highway 401 as one they vehemently disagreed with. The plan has not been costed or undergone a formal feasibility study but the PCs say it would stretch from Brampton to Markham and run underneath the existing Highway 401 road.
Crombie claimed the project could hit $150 billion, a cost she did not cite or back up. Experts had previously pegged the price in the tens of billions of dollars.
“This is a fantasy project, it is a 40-year project,” Crombie charged. “It won’t be built in my lifetime, it won’t alleviate any congestion, it will bankrupt the province.”
Ford has justified his plan by saying the province’s other 400-series highways will soon reach capacity.
“The folks on the stage here, they don’t believe in building highways — they’re against the tunnel,” he said. “So, I guess my question to all three of them is, where’s the traffic going to go?”
Elsewhere, Schreiner attacked the idea of the Ontario Place redevelopment project started under Ford’s premiership.
The previous Progressive Conservative government launched a process to allow a private company to build and run a spa on the public waterfront land with taxpayer support for parts of the redevelopment work. The province released the lease for the agreement last year, showing the public would pay to clear the current site and to provide a parking garage, among other obligations.
Ford has defended the deal as a world-class destination but his opponents claim it is a waste of money.
“If it is such a great destination, why are taxpayers on the hook for this?” Schreiner said. “I want to build things but I want to build things that make sense for the people of Ontario, like homes they can afford.”
Stiles also said the deal was a waste of money.
“Two-point-two billion dollars that you’re spending right now to subsidize a luxury spa in downtown Toronto — that’s $400 per household in Ontario,” she said. “Do you think you could maybe cancel that so that people in Ontario won’t be subsidizing a luxury spa?”
Bickering on taxes
The leaders also clashed several times on taxes — a topic the Progressive Conservatives and Ford feel particularly confident about.
The PC leader claimed his opponents would raise taxes on various items and hurt economic growth and job creation.
“All you three believe in is simple, just tax the people to death, tax companies to death,” Ford said.
Later, he added: “The difference is, I don’t believe in taxing people and I will never take money out of your pockets. They believe it is their money — there’s never been a tax they don’t like or a toll they don’t want to hike.”
Both the Ontario Liberals and the Greens have promised tax cuts if elected.
Schreiner, whose party is the only one to release a fully costed-platform so far, said the top rate of tax would increase to fund relief for less wealthy Ontarians.
“The Ontario Greens are saying, we will lower taxes for low and middle-income earners, saving them $1,700 a year and asking the wealthiest to pay a bit more,” he said.
The Liberals have also put tax changes in their election campaign — promising to cut the rate of tax for middle-class earners and also to remove HST from home heating and hydro bills.
“Hey, Doug, you promised seven years ago that you would cut our taxes — I’ll tell you what, I’ll get it done, Doug, you didn’t,” Crombie said.
Ford responded.
“I almost fell off the stage here, David, when Bonnie Crombie said she’ll cut taxes,” Ford said, addressing the moderator. “When she was mayor, she raised taxes every year.”
Crombie countered her municipal tax increases were similar to the hikes in Toronto when Ford was a Toronto city councillor. During the time both Ford and Crombie served on municipal councils tax rates were set by majority vote, not either politician individually.
During the tax debate in particular Stiles struggled to be heard, as Ford and Crombie argued back and forth, cutting each other and the moderator off.
“You’re talking about your little things,” Stiles said, as she tried to move the conversation onto Ontario Place.
Election day is Feb. 27.
— with files from The Canadian Press