Front Burner - Ontario’s election looms, and parties are staking ground

Episode Date: December 3, 2021

$210-million dollars went out the door and into the pockets of businesses who shouldn’t have received it. That was the assessment of Ontario’s auditor general in an annual report this week that looked, in part, at the pandemic support of Doug Ford’s Conservative government. And it definitely got the opposition parties in Queen’s Park talking. The audit comes as each party stakes out their pre-election ground and try to build a narrative that will lead to a win in June. To help us take a bite of the pre-election stew bubbling in Ontario politics, we’re joined by CBC News’ Mike Crawley.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Angela Starrett. So $210 million went out the door and into the pockets of businesses's Auditor General in an annual report this week that looked in part at the pandemic support of Doug Ford's Conservative government.

Before I take questions, I need to address today's Auditor General's report. Premier Ford shoveled this money out the door in two days of putting together a back-of-the-napkin plan after dragging his feet for 10 months while businesses were going under, but with no questions asked whatsoever. The report today makes it evident that it was, what, December 17th when they started to design this program. It was put together within, what, 48 hours. It was rolled out a few days after that fact.

The minister responsible wasn't even in the country. Mr. Speaker, this government is basically a terrible version of Oprah, and with taxpayer money. You get the grant. even in the country. Mr. Speaker, this government is basically a terrible version of Oprah and with taxpayer money. You get the grant. You get the grant. Outside of Ontario, you get a grant as well. Today, how that number fits into the larger story as the province's major parties stake the pre-election ground. To make sense of this, we're joined by Mike Crawley. He's our Queen's Park reporter. Hi, Mike. Hi, Angela.

Okay, so we're going to talk about, you know, how this election landscape is shaping up. But first, I wanted to ask you about this auditor's report that came out this week. It covers a lot of ground. But I guess one of the big findings in this report, you know, found that Doug Ford's government actually paid a bunch of businesses who weren't entitled to COVID support. What happened there? Yeah, so this is probably the big headline out of the auditor's report. So the program's called the Ontario Small Business Support Grant, and it's basically, it was designed to give some compensation to small businesses that were forced to shut down during the pandemic, so that had their revenues impacted by lockdowns and restrictions. And so businesses could get anywhere between $10,000 and $20,000 from the government for their lost revenue.

But the auditor says the government basically didn't put in the checks that they needed to have to weed out the businesses that were not eligible. And more than 14,000 businesses in Ontario that did not qualify under the government's own guidelines actually got money anyway. It added up to $210 million. Wow. So what did the premier say in response to this? He started talking about fraud and talking about how they had to rush the money out the door and that fraud is a thing that happens when you rush the money out the door. Well, we don't believe in wasting taxpayers' money. We put out $3.3 billion, if you put

that into perspective. And similar to the federal government, when we're rushing the money out the door to support the small businesses that were in desperate need of it, unfortunately, you're going to see some fraud. But there's a couple issues that need to be taken with what he said there. Fraud was actually only a tiny portion of what we were talking about. That $210 million was not about businesses deliberately trying to scam the government and misrepresenting themselves. Doug Ford's own finance minister actually admitted that fraud's only a tiny fraction of what went on. This was basically a government mistake. They gave the money where they shouldn't.

And as for rushing the money out the door, this money wasn't going to these businesses in March and April of 2020 when the pandemic started. The government didn't actually even launch this program until January of this year. And so the money was being paid to these businesses, you know, 10, 11, 12 months after the first lockdowns happened. after the first lockdowns happened. So, you know, there's a couple of issues that you can take with what it was that Doug Ford said. Yeah, so Doug Ford, he was a different kind of Doug Ford in some ways from what he's always been.

He's always had this notion of, I'm out here to protect the taxpayers' money. And, you know, the best dollar spent isn't money spent by the government, but, you know, that actually stays in the taxpayers' pocket. And, you know, here is Premier Doug Ford looking at this $200-plus million that went to businesses that weren't eligible for it. And here he was saying, well, you know, this money went out into the economy. What the Auditor General reported is not 100% accurate, Mr. Speaker. What it is, it's a time

that one month they took. It was one month. And you're telling me businesses only lost money for one month? They lost it throughout the whole pandemic. So again, Mr. Speaker, with a snapshot in time of $225 million, are we going after bad actors? We'll go after bad actors. 100%, we're going to go after them. But for the leader of the opposition to sit there and criticize

when she was against 120,000 businesses and wouldn't give them one red cent, we would be short 120,000 businesses if it was up to the leader of the opposition. In his defense, clearly there was a need to get this money to businesses. And I think there would be some people who would say, well, you know, a little bit of it is going to go astray. And that's not the worst thing to have happened in the pandemic. And I mean, this is an interesting reply, I guess, because like you said, this is a different Doug Ford than people might remember from his election,

you know, a real stop the gravy train kind of guy. And I know this election is coming up. How has he been trying to change the image that he puts forward to the public? Yeah, I think there's a bit of a shift in Doug Ford. I mean, certainly the pandemic humbled him. You know, he rode into Queen's Park in 2018 on a on, you know, a pretty big push to to change things and to, you know, get rid of a whole bunch of stuff that that happened under the previous liberal government. And, you know, it was almost as if, you know, he and his PCs were going in there to kind of take a wrecking ball to things at Queen's Park. Then the pandemic hit and you saw a different Doug Ford during the early days. He was, you know, in many ways trying to project an image of, you know, calm and competence and, you know, running the government in the way that the people of Ontario wanted.

And it showed in his approval ratings, right? And coming now out of the pandemic and the looking forward, the image that we're getting here at Doug Ford is somebody who wants to build the future of Ontario. So he's trying to say that his government is going to say yes to the projects that Ontario needs to build the highways we need and build the hospitals that we need. As for this question about handling the money, I don't know if this is necessarily trying to change his image and to say, well, you know, it's not like as if he's saying he doesn't care about the fact that $200 million went to businesses that weren't eligible. He's just emphasizing that the real important priority was, hey, let's get this money to support these small businesses. I think there are some other ways where he's trying to change his image. I mean, his big campaign slogan in 2018 was for him was

to change his image. I mean, his big campaign slogan in 2018 was for him was Ontario open for business, you know, all about, you know, making things good for businesses. In the last number of weeks, he's been talking a lot about trying to make things better for workers. Not people that he necessarily talked about previously. In fact, his government froze the minimum wage. They ripped up a bunch of pro-labor legislation that had been brought in by the previous Liberal government. But just in the last month, they've increased the minimum wage to $15 an hour. They brought in some protection for people who work for temporary agencies. And as a PC strategist told me, there's a lot more workers out there who are voters than there are people who own businesses. And so there's definitely a political strategy at work here

in terms of Doug Ford being for the workers. Oh, he even stood at a podium with a couple of major union leaders, Jerry Dias from Unifor and the head of Ontario's Public Service Employees Union. Doug Ford has in the past gone after union leaders, in particular the leaders of the Teachers Union. So this was quite an interesting sight to see him there at the announcement of the minimum wage increase can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization.

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In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Just search for Money for Cops. Yeah, definitely hints that we are headed towards election season. I mean, what are some other hints that that election season is almost in the air? I think we're seeing a lot of things from from Doug Ford about moving beyond the pandemic. You know, talking about plans of building a big highway around the greater Toronto area, because there's a lot of voters who are commuters who care about, you know, commuting times, and he's talking about that. We're hearing signs that the progressive Conservatives want to

do something around housing affordability. They want to see more houses get built sooner to boost the supply of housing availability because house prices have been going just increasingly crazy in Ontario. Not just the Greater Toronto Area, it's long been talked about how expensive it is to buy a house in Toronto and the Toronto region, but in cities like Peterborough and London and Windsor, places where buying a home is more affordable, they've seen jumps like 50, 60, 70% over the course of the past two years. And so it's an issue out there that's mattering to people a lot. I think we've also heard a lot in the last month or so around the COP26 summit about the government's record on the environment.

The opposition parties think that they're a bit vulnerable on that. Obviously, I'm in Vancouver, but I remember at the beginning of the pandemic seeing Doug Ford get a lot of support. Remember at the beginning of the pandemic, seeing Doug Ford get a lot of support. Angus Reid even found that seven in 10 Ontarians professed they approved of him in the weeks after the pandemic was declared. That's, you know, an all time popularity peak for Ford. But by October this year, only 36 percent of people said the same. What happened there? So one thing that happened is just about every political leader in Canada got a pandemic bump.

There was support, generally speaking, support for governments of all stripes in the first couple of months of the pandemic, a sort of pull together, you know, we support our leaders. together, you know, we support our leaders. The decline in Doug Ford's popularity hasn't been as great as, you know, Jason Kenney has seen out in Alberta. But it's, you know, it's not something to be shaken off. And I think that what happened is over time, there was, you know, an increase in scrutiny of the Ford government's handling of the pandemic and people realizing that there were options. They could have done a little bit more, could have done things a little bit differently, and a certain amount of criticism of some of the decisions that were made or the time it took the government to make decisions around bringing in public health restrictions. So that support has eroded. It's now back down almost as low as Doug Ford's approval rating was before the pandemic. But it's still nowhere near as low as Kathleen Wynne, his predecessor, saw just before she went into the 2018 election and got demolished.

How will the other parties try to edge out for, try to position themselves or carve out a win? Yeah, so the real challenge for the Liberals and the New Democrats in Ontario is it's the electoral math. If the progressive vote, the anti-Ford vote, or the, you know, we don't want to vote conservative grouping of people, if that splits kind of evenly between the New Democrats and the Liberals, then Doug Ford and the PCs come up the middle and they win. So for each of these opposition parties, they are trying to portray themselves as the one alternative to Doug Ford, that they're the ones who are best positioned to beat Doug Ford and the PCs.

From the Liberals, the pitch is, hey, we're competent, we've had experience in government before, and by talking about them being competent, it sort of preys on the notion that a lot of voters have in Ontario that the NDP doesn't have the chops to run the province. The NDP, their perspective is, they're trying to appeal to voters by saying, hey, you had the Liberals in here for 15 years and see how bad they were. Well, then Doug Ford came in and made it worse. So, you know, take a chance on us this time. Right. And we've talked a bit about how the political leaders want to be seen going forward in this election. But I want to ask you a bit about the kind of baggage they're carrying that may prevent that image. And I think we've talked about this a little bit already.

But how has this pandemic been managed by Doug Ford more broadly? And how is that going to impact his run? Yeah, Angela, it's a good question because, you know, the management of COVID has been by far the biggest issue in Ontario for the past couple of years. So, sure, it's got an impact on how Doug Ford is doing at the polls, but it's not necessarily totally negative for him because there's a solid proportion of people out there who are pretty satisfied with Doug Ford's performance here. And so when I look ahead to 2022, given where things are in the polls right now and how people view Doug Ford's performance during the pandemic, I don't think that COVID in 2020 and 2021 is what's going to take Doug Ford down at the polls in 2022. And here's my logic on this. The people who have a negative view of how Doug Ford handled the pandemic, you're seeing those numbers in the

polls that are out there right now. And it's unlikely that there's anything that's going to happen in the next six months that's specifically related to the pandemic that's going to bring that support down further, just in terms of how people view Doug Ford and his handling of COVID. Look, there could be something else that happens, that emerges. Things could get worse about non-pandemic things. non-pandemic things, and the PC party is very aware of that, that the way the polls are right now, Doug Ford would have a very good shot at being premier again if the election were held today. And I want to talk about the other parties a little bit here. You know, I know the PCs aren't the only ones with baggage. The Ontario Liberals have a new leader going into the election, Stephen Del Duca.

How is he going to pitch himself as the premier of the future when he was a member of the Liberal government that got demolished at the polls last election? Yeah, that's probably the biggest challenge for Stephen Del Duca. The other parties, both the PCs and the NDP in their advertising, have been tagging him as having been Kathleen Wynne's right-hand man. It's not actually true. He was a member of her cabinet, but he was hardly her right-hand man. But, you know, that doesn't matter. It's all about perception, right? You know, he wasn't, when he was a cabinet minister,

there weren't any particular liberal scandals that were, you know, that he was a part of. But he's trying to portray himself as a steady hand at the wheel, right? Again, this is about trying to offer a contrast to Doug Ford or a perception that people might have about Ford's competence as Premier and also to prey a little bit on concerns that, you know, the NDP and their leader, Andrew Horvath, wouldn't, you know, be a good manager of the province. But Stephen Del Duca's other challenges, he'll even admit himself, he's not a charismatic kind of guy. And right now, he's got like almost zero name recognition among sort of ordinary voters in Ontario.

You talked about Andrea Horvath a bit there. What are the challenges ahead for the NDP? what are the challenges ahead for the NDP? So Andrea Horvath has been the leader of the New Democrats since 2009. And so her real challenge is to try to persuade voters that, well, they should vote for her this time when they didn't pick her as the premier in the last three straight elections. She had the potential in 2018 for there to be a kind of perfect storm, right? Because she had a highly unpopular liberal leader in Kathleen Wynne, who was dragging down the liberals at the polls. She was running against Doug Ford, who, you know,

clearly is polarizing and at that point in time was, you know, inexperienced. He'd never been anything more than a one-term city councillor in Toronto. And yet, you know, the NDP didn't win that time. So, you know, if you couldn't win in those circumstances, it's kind of hard to see how the electoral map can fall just the right way for the New Democrats for her to win next year. And also, you know, this time she's running against a Liberal leader who is, you know, perhaps some new blood. And Doug Ford has had a chance to show Ontarians what he can do as Premier. But look, the New Democrat strategists that I talk to, they're feeling really confident.

They've got a lot of money in their election kitty, and that's something that New Democrats have not had before. So you may see a surprising campaign from this party that hasn't been in power in Ontario since one term in the early 1990s. Mike, thank you so much for this. I really appreciate it. You're welcome, Angela. That's all for this week. And if you haven't done it already, please give us a rating

and leave a review on your podcast app. It really does help out a lot. And thanks so much to everyone who's left a review so far. Frontburner is brought to you by CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show was produced this week by Simi Bassi, Imogen Burchard, Ali Janes, Katie Toth, and Derek Vanderwyk. Our sound design was by Mackenzie Cameron and Nuruddin Korane. Our music is by Joseph Chabison of Boombox Sound. The executive producer of Frontburner is Nick McCabe-Locos. I'm Angela Starrett, in for Jamie Poisson, and I, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.