Friday, September 21, 2007

OTTAWA - Today, after the three main provincial party leaders missed opportunity in the election debate last night, Democracy Watch called on all Ontario political party leaders to take the opportunity to gain voters’ trust by pledging before voting day“I will resign if I break my promises” or pledging to penalize themselves in some similarly effective way, and to pledge to pass an “honesty in politics” law.

Democracy Watch also called on the Ontario media to ask all party leaders whether they will pledge to resign or penalize themselves in some similar way if they break their promises, and whether they pledge to pass a law with an easy, accessible complaint system and high penalties for dishonesty by politicians, political staff, and government officials.

"If the party leaders don’t trust themselves enough to stake their own job on their promises, why should any voter believe that the leaders will keep their promises?" asked Duff Conacher, Coordinator of Democracy Watch and chairperson of the nation-wide Government Ethics Coalition.  "If they want voters’ trust and support, all party leaders must pledge to resign or penalize themselves in a similar way if they break their promises, and must pledge to pass a law making it easy for voters to challenge dishonesty by politicians and other public officials."

The leaders’ promise-making and political promise-breaking was highlighted throughout the debate, and especially in a question (chosen from among questions submitted by voters) by Donna Olivieri of Burlington.  Her question, the fifth of the debate, was as follows:

"Given the history of Ontario politicians and the amount of broken promises that the electorate has had to deal with, I’m hoping the candidates tonight might consider recall legislation and copy the legislation that British Columbia has implemented."

Unfortunately, the question gave leaders an out because it proposed only recall as a penalty for broken promises, and recall as an accountability system has many flaws.  If a recall system was implemented in Ontario, voters would have the right to gather a specific number of petition signatures on a ballot in each riding to force a vote on whether the politician for that riding should keep his or her seat in the legislature.  However, when three or more candidates run in an election in any riding (as is usually the case in all Ontario ridings), almost always the winner has less than majority support, making it relatively easy to gather enough petition signatures to recall them (in each case forcing a costly by-election).

Not surprisingly, the three leaders dodged the question and (without giving any reasons), rejected the proposal for a recall law. 

Very unfortunately, debate moderator Steve Paikin of TV Ontario didn’t ask the obvious follow-up question: "OK, if you reject recall as an accountability system for broken promises and other types of dishonesty by Ontario politicians, political staff, and government officials, is there any penalty system you think would work and, if so, will you promise to implement it?"

Democracy Watch called on media across Ontario to ask party leaders this question before voting day, to ensure voters know the position of each leader on penalties for dishonesty in politics.

The ways in which the leaders dodged Ms. Olivieri’s question in one way or another shows just how much they are used to misleading voters with vague commitments, and just how much an effective honesty-in-politics law, with high penalties for violators, is needed in Ontario:

• Liberal Party Leader Dalton McGuinty: Thanks for the question Donna.  I do not support recall legislation.  I support the right of voters to hold their leaders and parties to account regularly at election time. 
  Let me just speak to the issue of broken promises because my colleagues raise it on a regular basis. I’ve been in politics now for 17 years.  I grew up in a big family, 10 kids.  My Dad was a pretty impressive kind of guy in my life, and one of the most important things he impressed upon me and everybody in my family is you keep your word -- you make a promise, you hold the line on that promise.
  But I was stuck with a difficult situation -- I made a tough choice.  Not because I wanted to; not because I thought that it would raise my popularity, but there was a $5.6 billion deficit and I needed desperately to get money to invest in our health care services, and that’s what I did.

• Moderator Steve Paiken: Mr. Hampton.

• New Democratic Party Leader Howard Hampton: Well, Mr. McGuinty, you must have been the only person in Ontario who didn’t know that the former Conservative government had a $5 billion deficit because there were several credible economic organizations who said that was the case.  You looked into the camera and you promised -- you said 'I will not raise your taxes.'  And then as soon as you had the chance, you hit people with the largest tax increase, and the most regressive and unfair tax increase.  A single parent mom, earning $30,000 a year, with two children, had her provincial income tax increase by 25 per cent. 
  I’ll just say this, the issue of promises is important.  I’m not making six dozen promises in this election like Mr. McGuinty, I’m making six commitments, six commitments that we know we can perform and implement.

• Moderator Steve Paiken: Thank you Mr. Hampton.  Mr. Tory, your response.

• Progressive Conservative Party Leader John Tory: You know Steve, I think if it had been one promise only, and this one that Mr. McGuinty seems to want to explain tonight -- he doesn’t want to explain the others.  I mean, what about coal, what about fixing the hospital emergency rooms, what about autism, the kids who had a promise broken to them and their families, what about making agriculture a lead ministry in the government?  There was promise after promise after promise.
  Mr. McGuinty talks about his family.  I used to go with my grandfather on Sunday mornings to his garage -- he had a trucking business.  And I used to see himm do business with people and he shook their hand, and that was the way he did business.
  And I thiink we should be able to shake hands with the voters, and when they see us say something, that they should know that’s what we’re going to do.  Your word isn’t just important, it’s everything, from leadership.  Strong leadership means that people can find you credible, can follow your word, can know that you’re going to keep your word.  I don’t think that recall legislation is any replacement for a leader who keeps his word.

• Moderator Steve Paikin:  Thank you Mr. Tory.  We go to four minutes of open debate right now.  Mr. McGuinty, you can start off if you like . . .

• Dalton McGuinty then defended the Liberals’ health tax broken promise again, then John Tory listed the Liberals’ other broken promises again and ended saying to Mr. McGuinty "You kept so few of your promises it’s destroyed the credibility of politicians, all politicians."  Howard Hampton then pointed out other Liberal broken promises.  Mr. McGuinty then claimed the Liberals had done different things that were better than the things they promised to do.  Mr. Tory then again highlighted the health tax broken promise and claimed that Mr. McGuinty was still breaking promises.  Mr. McGuinty then implied that Mr. Tory’s promise of cutting taxes will men that Mr. Tory can’t keep his spending promises.

• Moderator Steve Paiken:  Gentlemen, just for the purposes of giving Donna an answer to her actual question, which was about recall, Mr. McGuinty said no, Mr. Hampton on the issue of recall?  No.  Mr. Tory?  No.  Just so we can complete that circle.

"Several polls show clearly that Canadians are sick of politicians baiting voters with promises, and then switching direction when they win power," said Conacher. "The cynicism-breeding habit of politicians and public officials misleading the public will only be stopped if Canadians have an easy way to challenge dishonesty, and have the misleader punished, similar to the relatively easy way that exists to challenge corporations and corporate executives that are dishonest."