It's only days since Ernie Eves' swearing in as Premier of Ontario, but a defining political question is already on the table: Who will run Canada's largest province -- the elected government run by Mr. Eves, or the ideological cabal led by Canada's major labour unions? It wasn't supposed to come to this so soon, but there it is: A surprise court ruling yesterday backing a frivolous union ploy to stop the privatization of Hydro One has the new Eves government over a barrel.
Judging by Mr. Eves' first reaction to the court decision, the morning line tip on the power struggle is to put your money on the unions. If the government backs down on the current Initial Public Offering (IPO) of Hydro One, as the premier hinted he would be willing to do, then Ontario's Tories won't have a political leg left to stand on. "It's possible the IPO could be delayed," said the premier. Sure, it's possible, but delaying the sale of Hydro One becomes a possibility only if the government lets it happen.
The Hydro One court disaster, orchestrated and financed by Judy Darcy's CUPE national anti-privatization crusade, is the first of many tests that will try the soggy wet mettle of the new Eves government. The old Harris Common Sense Revolution having been abandoned sometime back in the 1990s, the new Eves Make No Sense Tories are flying blind into an ideological hurricane.
More than 30,000 provincial civil servants, members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, are in the midst of a month-long strike and are cranking up a confrontation with the new Eves Cabinet, a collection of pink Tories that seems all too willing to ingratiate itself with its opponents. The only question is how much the government will give up to settle the strike and avoid confrontation.
Elizabeth Witmer, Mr. Eves' deputy and education minister, has been cosying up to school boards -- a losing proposition unless the government is prepared to give up cash. The teachers' union, sworn enemy of the Tories, is waiting in the school yards for the next rumble. The provincial budget, meanwhile, is now on hold while the Cabinet figures out what size deficit it will run to keep all these constituencies happy. Fat chance.
The Hydro One crisis, therefore, will set the tone for the Eves regime. Yesterday's court decision turns on a technical issue of whether legislation actually allows the province to sell Hydro One shares to the public. The lower court judge in the case, Judge Arthur Gans, telegraphed his view of the union arguments earlier this week. In mid court, he volunteered the observation that the government may have "sandbagged" the people of Ontario by hiding its intent to sell Hydro One. What's there to hide! A sale has been on and off the agenda for a couple of years, and in any case it's not as if Hydro One will be hived off in a secret transaction through the Cayman Islands.
But even if we assume that the court has indeed found a genuine technical glitch in existing legislation, fixing it should not involve massive delays that could put the whole transaction on hold for months. That route risks total collapse of the IPO. To avoid that risk, which it must, the government has to take up the Hydro One privatization as a firm priority and make it clear that it will not be derailed by union political and legal games.
Cabinet strategists will have a day or two to sort things out, but putting off the sale of Hydro One is not an option. First of all, there are no political points to be gained by caving into the opponents of privatization. That is what they want! A retreat by the Eves government on Hydro One would be a sign to all voters of Ontario that the government is just another wimpy player coddling up to the political left. Ontario already has two parties doing that; it doesn't need a third.
So that should mean moving quickly to change legislation to fix the insignificant legal glitch. Never mind trying to send the privatization off to some board or committee for review.
This may also mean promoting the Hydro One deal and explaining why it must be completed now. The world is also made up of more than public service unions. Don MacKinnon is president of the Power Workers Union, which has 15,000 members who actually work in the industry. The PWU argued against CUPE in the court case, and Mr. MacKinnon said yesterday the government needs to explain "why they started this in the first place and what the results are of not proceeding. The issue is that there's a money problem at Hydro One, and all the critics of privatization have failed to come up with a solution of where Hydro One is going to get funding to stay in business. I don't think there's any public appetite out there for government money going into it. The private sector is the route to go."
That's a union voice the new Eves government should listen to.
THE END
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