NANNY STATE

Canada's worst: Mrs. McGuinty's Nanny State whacks Ontario
Terence Corcoran
Financial Post
March 12, 2005

Few governments at any level are all that good. Local, provincial and federal, they muddle through their limited stints in power. It's the nature of the beast, bloated wielders of brute force that inevitably fail to achieve ends that are unachievable. But of all the governments in Canada today, none can beat Ontario's Liberals, by any measure deserving of the title: Canada's Worst.

Since coming to power in October, 2003, the government of Premier Dalton McGuinty has emerged as blundering, mean-spirited, ham-fisted, pandering, petty, vindictive, demagogic and unprincipled. Categorical promises that were at the populist core of the Liberal election campaign -- we will not raise your taxes -- have been broken. Outrageous election promises -- including establishing a permanent and massive greenbelt around Toronto -- have been kept, destroying property rights with what one lawyer called an "iron fist in a green glove."

Iron fisted is one appropriate image. But perhaps the most fitting figure for this government, personalized by Mr. McGuinty, is that of a moralizing nag, a righteous nanny whose government scolds and pontificates and imposes itself on the lives of citizens. If necessary, it will go from door to door, household to household, marching in with orders and instructions on how to live, where to live, what to eat, when to run the dishwasher, have sex or smoke a cigarette.

This is Mrs. McGuinty's Nanny State. Few aspects of personal and corporate behaviour are outside the government's intended scope of activity. McGuinty calls it "reinventing" government. He appointed a chief medical officer of Health, Sheela Basrur, who appears set to swing an iron fist through the eating habits of the province. Bans on junk food in schools was just a start on a multi-faceted campaign to enlist all levels of government, and food manufacturers, in a war on the "obesity epidemic." Dr. Basrur's first regulatory venture, however, was a blunder, an attempt to ban fresh sushi from Japanese restaurants as a health risk, even though no risk exists. The ban, later reversed, scared the sushi industry. "The government is like a Ringling Brothers Circus -- scares everybody, then says 'Whoops!' " said a local sushi vendor.

Circus -- another good image, but let's stick with Mrs. McGuinty's Nanny State. The government's small-time nannyism, aimed at shaping personal behaviour, is nothing compared with the iron-purse swinging the McGuinty Liberals bring to major policies in health, energy, development, budgets and regulation.

Health Minister George Smitherman has filled the health care system with bombast and bad policy and alienated just about every constituency. Negotiations with doctors crashed when they voted against his sneaky agreement with the medical association to force doctors into community care structures. Relations with hospitals are at an all-time low, and the government's blind resistance to all forms of private service delivery has baffled the medical industry and produced warnings of further deterioration. At a meeting with the National Post editorial board, Mr. Smitherman claimed that while Quebec might allow privatized services, Ontario would not, and the result is that "Ontario's health care system is better than Quebec's."

The government's most draconian initiative so far is the greenbelt around Toronto, a 700,000-hectare noose around the city that blocks all development over an area roughly the size of Prince Edward Island. Pandering to environmental activists, the province produced legislation that gives it absolute development control over every car dealership and farm property within the area. Pol Pot marched Cambodians out into the country. The McGuinty government hopes to lock them up in the city.

As for the property rights of people and companies that own land within the greenbelt, forget it. Paragraph 19(2) of the Greenbelt Act says that "No costs, compensation or damages are owing or payable to any person and no remedy, including but not limited to a remedy in contract, restitution, tort or trust, is available to any person in connection with anything" in the act. One developer alone says the greenbelt act has stripped up of land values of approximately $240-million.

Property rights not being a right in Canada, Ontario just might get away with such a massive confiscation of land without compensation. Compounding matters is a provision that no development decisions by the government are open to appeal to any court or agency. Mrs. McGuinty rules, absolutely.

Also looming over the province is the massive and incoherent restructuring of the electric power industry. The provincial energy board yesterday unveiled its plan to control prices for power throughout the province. Rates will go up for all consumers, depending on how much electricity they use. The objective is "to make sure the prices consumers pay for electricity better reflect the price paid to generators."

Instead of letting prices actually reflect generators' costs, the government has imposed a bizarre set of controlled prices that will be adjusted from time to time. And, in typical nanny mode, it will set prices at different levels depending on the time of day and time of year. Nothing wrong with matching prices with supply and demand, but Mrs. McGuinty has decided to manipulate price to allow people to use more electricity during winter than summer. Another plan is to put a "smart meter" into every home so that consumers can adjust consumption.

The trouble with the smart meters is that they will be hooked up to a dumb generating and distribution system. Especially dumb is the province's plan to shut down coal plants by 2007. Nobody expects that to happen, but the province has yet to notify voters that another election promise is dead.

There is much more. We didn't get to the looming budget deficits; the ethanol subsidies; the vindictive harassment of the private owners of Highway 407; the breached promises to the restaurant industry on tobacco regulation; labour legislation; a new environment law. When you're dealing with Canada's Worst government, the end is unlikely to be near.