Ontario’s fast-approaching election is shaping up as a classic danger/opportunity situation for the province’s New Democrats and their leader, Andrea Horwath.

Danger, because they risk being squeezed out in a classic show-down between Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals and Doug Ford’s rising Progressive Conservatives.

Opportunity, because voters’ distaste for both of the above might just allow the Ontario NDP to make significant gains.

Whichever scenario becomes reality will depend very much on how the campaign unfolds between now and June 7. And so far the NDP is off to a good start with an election platform that has the virtue of being unambiguously progressive.

Pharmacare for basic drugs? Check. Expanded dental care? Check. Universal subsidized daycare? Check. More money for hospitals and schools? Check.

The New Democrats have clearly decided to outbid the Liberals for voters who believe now is the time to expand government, not shrink it, and fear the impact of a government led by Premier Doug Ford.

The Ontario NDP deserves credit, as well, for proposing to do this in a way that is at least relatively responsible from a fiscal point of view.

Its big promises would cost many more billions of dollars, and that’s clear from the 98-page platform it released last week.

But the party wouldn’t put all of that on the provincial credit card. It proposes to cover part of the extra cost by doing what a social-democratic party should do in the current circumstances: raise taxes on those who can most afford it.

Specifically, it would put an extra percentage point of tax on incomes over $220,000 and two points on those above $300,000. By doing that, along with raising the province’s corporate tax rate from 11.5 per cent to 13 per cent, it plans to keep the province’s budget deficit below the levels predicted by the Liberal government.

That makes sense. There’s nothing inherently “progressive” about running bigger and bigger deficits. New Democrats used to point to the example of the sainted Tommy Douglas, who produced 17 balanced budgets during his 17 years as premier of Saskatchewan. He always said taxpayers’ dollars should be spent on improving services, not sent to the banks to pay interest on debt.

Raising taxes is never popular, especially on the eve of an election. But the Ontario NDP should get extra marks for being honest about its intentions, and for refusing to simply pile on more debt to cover the entire cost of its promises. That’s especially important when the big credit rating agencies are starting to sound alarms about the province’s debt burden and the added interest expense that comes along with that.

All that being said, the NDP is asking voters to swallow a lot when it promises to cut hydro bills by a whopping 30 per cent.

This stretches credulity to the breaking point. Blaming rising hydro bills on the privatization of Hydro One and profit-taking by the private sector may play well with core NDP voters but it’s a remarkably superficial explanation.

The Liberals made their share of mistakes in the energy sector, but they did tackle some of the major challenges in that area. They tried to come to grips with the environmental challenge by phasing out dirty coal-generated power and encouraging clean alternatives. And they reinvested heavily in the energy system after many years of neglect by previous governments.

Those are expensive but necessary ventures, and the cost showed up on hydro bills. The NDP has no magic wand that will make those problems disappear, and voters are kidding themselves if they believe there’s an easy and environmentally responsible way to slash the price of electricity.

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In fact, it’s disappointing that the extensive NDP platform contains so little about the environment and climate change (just a couple of pages out of almost 100). For a progressive party, in particular, energy shouldn’t be just about making sure consumers pay the lowest possible price. That has to be balanced against longer-term goals of sustainability.

That’s a hard conversation to have in a campaign dominated by a PC leader who offers little more than simplistic sound-bites. But it does have the merit of being true.

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