The return of the Mike Harris Progressive Conservatives to a second straight majority government proves that the protest, and its propaganda, has lost its power.
The Tory majority should also serve as a wake up call for major newspapers like the Toronto Star to start getting in touch with the people who make profit margins a possibility, its own readers.Throughout the campaign, The Star called on readers to cast anti-Tory votes.
In its last pre-election editorial (Toronto voters could tip the balance, June 2/99), The Star called on voters to rally behind opposition candidates, in a strategy to keep the Tories from forming a second majority government.
The editorial made no difference. The Star lost.
For almost four years, Ontarians were bombarded with the propaganda of left wing "coalitions", financed by trade unions. They blamed Harris cutbacks for drastic changes in the quality of life of the average Ontarian. Their real motive was the steady erosion of the perqs of the special interest groups who exist largely because of government handouts.
Big guns in the Days of Action Protest, which ground our public transit to a halt, promised to take the Tories down.
They had almost four years to protest and communicate their message.
During the recent provincial campaign, protesters trailed Harris everywhere, but from the day the writ was dropped their numbers had already begun to dwindle. Just two days before election, only two dozen of the expected hundreds of protesters turned out to protest the Premier at a rally in Woodbridge.
All along, members of coalitions against the Harris Government were somehow leaving an impression of altruism, that they were speaking out for the majority. The majority in the meanwhile, without the luxury of government grants or union money, continued to keep up with the rent or mortgage.
In spite of all the rhetoric, the Tories won a second straight majority, and we note, did so in the face of every dirty trick in the book from spend-happy pious municipal politicians, who have portrayed the provincial government as a kind of boogie man ever since amalgamation.
The $18,000 councillors like Jack Layton and Olivia Chow spent on a pre-election tenant brochure would be laughable were it not for the fact they paid for it with taxpayer’s money. Did the Tories earn their boogie man image?
If anything that they proved during their first term in office it was that government is still government. They sometimes moved too quickly on cutbacks, and their communication ability was nil.
But as Harris said on the campaign trail, "thanks to the difficult but necessary decisions we made, people’s lives are much better than they were less than four years ago."
Cutbacks in the megabucks traditionally ponied up for special interest groups caused the most rancor. More than one scam artist was bankrolled by the Trillium Foundation. But after all was said and done, the Mike Harris government was the first one in living memory that actually did what it said it was going to do after election.
During their first term in office they created 540,000 new jobs and knocked nearly 400,000 people off welfare before nudging the province toward a balanced budget.
Through the caterwauling of the coalitions who rose up against them from day one, one fact was often overlooked: the Ontario well had been run dry by the time the Mike Harris Government came into office.
In post-election, the ideology of left-wing protest groups, from whom Ontarians have heard so much over the last four years, won’t change.
They have been able to gain the lion’s share of publicity through the news media, and will continue to do so. Perhaps that’s a good way to keep the Tories from becoming too arrogant.
But even the coalitions will have to conclude one thing about this election: The majority has its protests too, in the election polling booth.
Let it be written that on June 3, 1999 the true voice of Ontario was finally heard.