By Patrick Metzger

Illustration by Matthew Daley/Torontoist.

Last week the Ontario New Democrats released their “Plan for Affordable Change,” an early edition of selected platform planks, and it looks like Team Orange is ready to climb down off the barricades and move out to the suburbs. Eschewing awkward idealism, leader Andrea Horwath described the plan as “reasonable, practical, and affordable” (like a used minivan or a T-shirt from the Gap), but it actually represents a significant shift in the way the New Democrats want you to see them. Reading the plan, it’s evident that if Horwath and Progressive Conservative chief Tim Hudak aren’t exactly on the same page, they’re starting to cruise some of the same aisles at Chapters.

The political world was simpler back when socialists sported Che T-shirts and facial hair while conservatives were identifiable by their pinstriped suits and silver-headed walking sticks for beggar-bashing. Nowadays, everyone is decked out in identical khakis and shirtsleeves (except for televised debates, where business attire and an expression of pained disbelief are de rigeur).
However, it’s not just appearances that are starting to overlap uncomfortably, but the message itself.
For starters, the NDP title “Plan for Affordable Change,” is awfully reminiscent of, if not as hashtaggable as, the PC’s “changebook”. We’ll give the New Democrats a pass on this one, simply because when you’re going up against a government as unloved as that of Dalton McGuinty, “change” is the mantra to chant if you want to put more orange butts into Queen’s Park seats.
More substantively though, NDP populism is starting to look a lot like Conservative populism, handing a hankie to the self-pitying middle class while promising to lighten the load on their wallets.
Like the Tories, the NDP say they’ll remove the provincial portion of the HST from your hydro and heating bills. Like the Tories, they’ll scrap the Local Health Implementation Networks put in place by the Liberals. Both parties will prioritize help for small business, the NDP by cutting tax rates (wait, what?) and the Tories by reducing red tape in unspecified ways. Both also recognize that not being dead is important to Ontarians, and commit to continued increases in healthcare spending. Both rail Fordishly against waste, although the Tories see that waste in overpaid public sector unions and the NDP in overpaid public sector CEOs (both have a point).
That’s not to suggest a merger is in the offing. The ideological divide is as wide as ever in many areas, including the parties’ respective approaches to the Liberals’ planned corporate tax cuts, which the Tories would maintain but which Horwath and company would eliminate. The latter have also kept touch with their socialist roots by advocating provincial protectionism for government contracts, and would mandate that all resources produced in Ontario be processed in Ontario, a commitment bafflingly broad and at odds with practical economics.
Still, these are innocuous enough ideas for a party that once denounced the whole concept of business making a profit.
To prove their born-again reasonableness, NDP strategists want to nip a common concern about the party in the bud: that they’re financially inept and will turn the province into a permanent have-nottery where families fight feral dogs in the street for dropped Timbits. To that end, the plan makes frequent use of fiscal comfort words like “affordable” and “responsible,” and claims that historically, NDP governments have run fewer and smaller deficits than other parties.
What does all this mean? Well, key planks in the NDP platform, such as education and the environment, won’t be released until later in the summer, so it’s hard to assess fully. However, what it’s starting to look like is more trouble for the already wobbly Liberals.
We may be headed for a replay of the federal election, where the NDP veered slightly right while the Tories swerved just a little left, leaving the poor Liberals squeezed out of their comfortable niche in the centre. If Liberal voters move left (which history suggests is more common than the opposite), we’ll see vote-splitting between the Liberals and the NDP, with Tim Hudak the big winner and Horwath first runner-up.
Yes, a practical platform indeed.