Article content continued

They’ll cover all this expense with higher personal income taxes on people making more than $220,000 a year, higher taxes on corporate profits, a tax on cars that sell for more than $90,000, and an annual property tax on foreign owners of property in and around Toronto (expanding a Liberal anti-speculation tax that only applies to sales).

Horwath’s audience loved her, as you’d expect, but it was the idea of making the rich pay their fair share that caused a chant of “NDP! NDP! NDP!” to break out.

“Let’s ask those at the very top to pay a bit more. Let’s ask those who can spend 90 grand on a car to pay a little bit more. It’s absolutely the right thing to do,” Horwath said.

Still, like the Liberals, the New Democrats anticipate running deficits for a whole term — slightly smaller ones, though, with the help of the tax hikes. They’d borrow $3.3 billion this year, increase the deficit to $5.1 billion in 2020 as their new and expanded programs kick in full force, and then shrink it to $2 billion by 2022. The Liberals plan to borrow $6.6 billion this year and have the deficit down to $4 billion in 2022.

The New Democrats offer a more precise accounting than even the Tories’ abandoned “People’s Guarantee” had. Much more precise than the Doug Ford Tories’ five-priorities-no-details plan. The NDP have a big-spending plan to expand Ontario’s welfare state, for better or for worse, but it’s light on the magical thinking.

The exception is the New Democrats’ plan for the electricity system, which they announced weeks ago — cancelling the Liberals’ already-started plan to subsidize hydro bills with borrowed money, buying back the majority share of Hydro One the Liberal government sold, having urban residents subsidize remote communities that are expensive to serve, eliminating the use of smart meters, and yet still cutting electricity prices by 30 per cent. The basic assumptions are that the government can manage electricity supply and demand well (contrary to the last 40 years of Ontario’s lived experience) and prices don’t matter.