Terence Corcoran
National Post
June 29, 2000

One of the little mysteries of the Canadian Alliance leadership race is the belief that the Harris Tories in Ontario offer a blueprint for national policy and good government. Preston Manning, Tom Long and Stockwell Day genuflect at the mention of Mike Harris and his Common Sense Revolution. As this is written, Harris cabinet ministers, backroom operators and fund-raising wizards are lining up behind the Alliance, the assumption being that Ontario’s Conservatives, along with Ralph Klein’s Alberta Tories, are natural political allies who share objectives and philosophies with the Canadian Alliance.

It may come as a surprise to some, but the Harris revolution, mostly myth right from the beginning, is now down to a few wheezing talking points on the subject of tax cuts. On any other policy issue — health care, education, privatization, municipal affairs — the Harris government has no reform agenda to speak of. The Walkerton water tragedy, while not of its making, has only further paralyzed a government that has no intellectual capital of its own to fall back on.

Nowhere is this core vacancy more obvious than in the turmoil within Ontario’s electric power industry. Originally scheduled to open a pioneering power market next November, complete with competition at the consumer level, the industry is now on the brink of chaos. Over the past couple of weeks, the government has postponed introduction of a widely advertised power trading system for at least six months; issued directives to a regulator reversing its own legislation; tabled new legislation that puts many cities at financial risk; stalled the privatization of parts of the industry; and in the process risked driving private capital out of the market.

Calls are out for the resignation of the province’s energy minister and former health minister, Jim Wilson. The mayor of Toronto’s biggest suburb, Mississauga, accused the minister of bungling and called for his removal. “The new legislation introduced this week clearly indicates that the minister misled the public of Ontario and in fact his own government. This minister has made a mess of Health and now he is making a mess of Energy. Not a very good track record for a government that prides itself on being efficient and organized. This latest action by the minister is a disgrace.”

The mayor of Mississauga, herself a long-time Tory, is prone to flights of hyperbole, but in this case she has her feet on the ground. Under legislation, Ontario cities were given authority to convert local electricity distribution utilities into profit-making corporations. The half-baked plan produced predictable problems, but now — too late — the government is trying to reverse the legislation. Mississauga, Toronto and others face hundreds of millions in losses and other difficulties.

Tom Adams, a veteran Ontario power industry watcher, says Mr. Wilson has undermined the fairness and integrity of the whole system. The province needs a new energy minister — and a premier who will “give the energy portfolio the attention it deserves.”

Whether more attention from a government lacking in reform ideas will solve the problem is debatable. The power mess is the result of a spineless unwillingness to adopt key reforms needed to break up the province’s bankrupt Ontario Hydro power monopoly and create a dynamic, competitive marketplace. Instead, the old monopoly has been carved up into several monopolies — a big power generating company, a big transmission company and a big market operator. At the same time, the $39-billion in debt left behind by the old Ontario Hydro sits unattended.

This is not the handiwork of a government steeped in radical reform and guided by much in the way of economic principle. Not one privatization has taken place. Many deals have been talked about, including the leasing of a nuclear plant to British Energy, but the government now appears to have a moratorium on privatizations, if not an outright fear of them. In a recent speech to industry reps, Mr. Wilson said the financing of the nuclear power deal had been halted because of a “messaging” problem surrounding privatization in the wake of Walkerton.

The reason Walkerton now looms so large within the Harris revolution is that the government has spent all this time in power and never once formulated a meaningful set of principles. Failure to set out privatization objectives and plans has left it at the mercy of critics. When the left pounced on Walkerton as a product of privatization, the Harris revolutionaries could do nothing but run for cover. A cabinet that cannot muster the conviction to privatize liquor sales cannot be expected to defend itself against critics of privatized municipal services.

In short, inside the Harris revolution, the lights are out. Based on its track record, the Alliance hopefuls would do better to look elsewhere for a coherent model of a national revolution from the right.