Politicians pay a price for being too far ahead of the curve.
Far safer to lead from behind. You never risk taking a wrong turn, and you can second-guess everyone as a backseat driver.
But it doesn’t get you anywhere. You risk going in circles instead of making tracks — and laying badly needed track for subway or LRT routes.
How to explain the folly of Premier Kathleen Wynne’s latest U-turn on tolls, overruling Mayor John Tory’s bid for road pricing on the city-owned Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway? No point repeating the arguments, for the premier knows them well enough.
Better to cite Peter Wallace, who served as Wynne’s top civil servant until 2014, and now fulfills a similar role at city hall. In a memo to the mayor and councillors leaked this week, he rebuts his former boss’s wayward logic — reminding us that tolls don’t just raise revenues, they reduce congestion by serving as price signals to motorists, rationing scarce space on our roadways.
Remember, there is an easy alternative to tolls: Do nothing and let commuters speed to a standstill.
That’s why Tory reversed his previous opposition to tolls (“highway robbery”) after receiving expert policy advice from Wallace and the city’s planning department. Wynne’s turnaround came after getting expedient political advice from her panicked cabinet and petrified caucus.
That’s politics — which is not to excuse but merely explain the premier’s decision. And the choices of other players in this political road show.
Tory gave Wynne political cover to finally move on tolls, for he was merely seeking routine regulatory approval to his pre-existing power to charge for the two major expressways. It might have brought to fruition a beautiful friendship, forging a pro-toll alliance against the anti-toll tag team of PC Leader Patrick Brown and the NDP’s Andrea Horwath.
Instead, the politics of tolls marks a remarkable missed opportunity to bring in a long overdue measure. And a missed opportunity for our opposition parties.
The NDP and PCs predictably claimed victory for forcing Wynne’s reversal, but they are no further ahead on the (toll-free) road to power. Voters won’t credit either one for forcing the premier’s hand, any more than they will shower praise on her for rejecting the mayor’s request.
In fact, Wynne’s retreat on tolls emanated from within her own party, which is rattled by a continuing decline in public opinion surveys — for whom the polls toll. In a reprise of the pre-election panic that prompted the Liberals to cancel gas-fired power plants in Oakville and Mississauga in 2010 and 2011, her MPPs feared commuter wrath in swing ridings.
After a tearful appeal last September at a caucus retreat where she beseeched MPPs to help her dig out, how could she ignore their latest advice and lack of consent? Tough enough for a leader to ask the general public to follow her up the mountain when she is going down in the polls, but tougher still to lead the way if her own team threatens to go its own way.
There was a time when Wynne had the political capital, but she let it slip away. Today, with a political rebound still a distant dream, the premier wins merely by not losing more ground in the polls.
As for the PCs, far ahead in every survey, any gains will be minimal. Brown is content to coast to power, opposing the premier while proposing nothing, winning on anti-Wynne animus alone.
What of the NDP? The internal dissent over the party’s reflexive opposition to road tolls and other taxes is spilling over.
Why reject a traffic management tool adopted across Europe and America that could reduce car congestion and raise money for transit? When did New Democrats become like the anti-tax Tories in rejecting government revenues for social goods?
What purpose does the NDP serve when it merely mimics the other parties, instead of differentiating itself by prodding the government to do the right (left) thing? Instead of showing the way, Horwath is now in the same lane as the premier, the opposition leader, and the putative leader of Ford Nation — Doug Ford —on this issue.
If you support road tolls, which progressive party do you vote for?
Years ago, it was second nature for the NDP to stand apart from the mainline parties over first principles — pressuring governments to act boldly rather than boxing them in to avoid risks. New Democrats would keep the old line power-hungry parties honest, rather than echo their dishonest embrace of pocketbook populism.
We are all losers when all three major parties line up with identically populist positions. New Democrats most of all.
Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca , Twitter: @reggcohn
Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca , Twitter: @reggcohn
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