Wasting Time: a Meeting between Wynne and Harper

Vincent J. Curtis

3 Dec 14

My hometown newspaper jumped on the Liberal bandwagon, again; in this case joining the chorus of voices demanding that Prime Minster Stephen Harper meet with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.  Wynne has been demanding such a meeting for a year.  I suspect the reason she wants one is so that she can be seen publically castigating Mr. Harper for her political gain.  It would therefore be reasonable for Mr. Harper to ignore such a call, since he can't win in such an unpleasant encounter.  The political differences between the two simply can't be bridged, and so there is no real point to a meeting except for political optics.  Below is my comment to the paper about the merits of the content of their editorial.  I did not accuse them of favoring Wynne.

 

 

Sirs;

 

The Spectator Editorial Page seems to believe that talks, in the form of a public forum, between Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Prime Minister Stephen Harper would be a good thing.

 

Superficially, this may be so; but what, realistically, is to be accomplished by such a forum?  Wynne, fresh from a new electoral mandate, is going to be seen at such a forum hectoring the Prime Minister about something or other.  Equity, fairness, how Ontario is being done in by Harper’s policies, whatever.  As a lefty, Wynn is full in her self-righteousness and inevitably regards the right-wing Harper as evil and fully deserving of such treatment.

 

Harper is going to mumble something about how the Ontario Liberals’ madcap economic, fiscal, and industrial policies are hobbling the Ontario economy.  The failure of the Ontario manufacturing sector to grow well during the Liberal years is what is contributing mightily to the Ontario budget deficit and is not helping the Federal budget picture, either.  The kind of technical thing that, while true, doesn’t garner the headlines like a screaming demand for simple fairness would.  Deceased Finance Minister Jim Flaherty used to lecture Dalton McGuinty regularly about madcap Liberal policies, but they had no effect and gathered no headlines.

 

The Wynne idea for an Ontario Pension Plan is a case in point.  The lefty wants to take money out of the economy so that the Ontario government can borrow it now and later pay it back as a pension supplement to the CPP payment, leaving the fiscal problem of finding the money to pay it to a subsequent government.  The righty wants that money left in the economy so that the GDP will grow now.

 

While there is a publicity upside for Wynne, there is nothing good in it for Harper.  And if Harper does agree to meet Wynne, you have to wonder what bombshell he has planned.

 

Anyhow, since the invention of the telephone and email, there are plenty of opportunities for Lynne and Harper to confer with each other if they wish.  A public forum signifies little more than posturing is in the offing – just the kind of thing that makes for column inches of reporting and commentary.

-30-

 

Late in December, Harper did meet with Wynne in circumstances which prevented her from organizing a public hazing of Harper.  This meeting was treated as an act of cynicism by the paper, but that is the subject of a future posting.