New parents will be celebrating Ontario’s new budget plan for free licensed daycare for children between 2-1/2 and kindergarten age. The toddlers themselves, quietly swallowing whole grapes and staggering towards a power outlet with a wet finger, are oblivious, which is why they need daycare in the first place.

Small children are danger magnets and must be kept under constant surveillance. Also, they are poor which is why they give their parents unsightly fingerpaintings at Christmas. Kids are society’s deadbeats, their only asset a certain animal magnetism, and they are no help paying the huge rent or mortgage costs currently crushing Toronto families even though apparently some of them have their own rooms.

(Progressive) Conservative leader Doug Ford must have forgotten early parenthood and his own toddlerhood or he wouldn’t have responded with this extraordinary remark. “It’s amazing how they pledge billions of dollars for children who haven’t even been born.” Imagine sneering at the pre-conceived. It’s not like they can fight back.

Ford did not say, “It’s amazing how they pledge billions of dollars for old people who are going to die anyway,” even though the Liberal budget will also pay for medication and home maintenance for seniors. That’s because seniors have power, and I mean real power.

Ford is correct about one demographic. The $2.2-billion child care provision will begin in 2020, before some parents have even committed the foul acts that will produce tiny consumers. Some tax-happy toddlers will be stuffing their mouths with $20 bills (seriously, they would do that if daycare staff let them anywhere near paper money) but a large number will have aged out, as they say.

Premier Kathleen Wynne says the budget offers “the freedom to choose when it’s time for mom or dad to go back to work. We’re playing the long game here, folks.” Preparing for the future is one of the purposes of government, given that individuals tend not to voluntarily tax themselves now for a future that might never happen. It’s the same with credit card debt.

So Ford is playing the short game, if that is a concept, and has not even offered voters a Conservative platform as the provincial election approaches on June 7. The man has a chaotic mind, his party is dishevelled and discredited by the scandals of the Patrick Brown era, and he has nothing to offer beyond absurdities like “I’m surprised the finance minister isn’t up here promising free cars. You get a car. And you get a car.”

He refused to say which of Wynne’s spending plans he would halt if he were premier. He is without political courage. Would he kill new dental care? Increased funds for mental health care? It puts him in the uncomfortable position of riding on her coattails or clinging to her skirts or some other wardrobe-related metaphor for fear.

The Liberal budget includes minor tax changes, with those earning $130,000 a year to pay about $200 more. “Today’s budget includes massive — I repeat, massive — tax hikes,” said Ford on Wednesday. He talks like Donald Trump in 2016 saying “Hillary Clinton plans a massive, and I mean massive, tax increase.”

Ford claimed it would cost a family of five $1,000 more. As the CBC’s Mike Crawley pointed out with some puzzlement, that’s only if five adults in your family are each earning over $130,000 a year. Ford even adds like Trump.

Read more:

Kathleen Wynne blasts Doug Ford as a ‘bulldozer’ in a china shop in post-budget speech

Ontario budget to fund free child care for preschoolers as part of $2.2B plan

The budget is costly — although its goals have very long timelines — but it is forward-thinking, the opposite of some Wynne measures such as rent control which will actually damage that great cause, affordable housing.

Although I believe taxes should have risen significantly more, there was a strange reaction to the ambitious budget: that the provincial Liberals are only offering such spending because it’s election time and they want votes.

Of course they do. Why do governments spend at all? They wish to be popular, which means to achieve consensus on the basics. The budget seems suited to modern times when women work, when mental health is a major issue, and when teeth are seen as part of the human body.

Ford is, to use a charitable word, a puzzle. He says his wise management would save the province $6 billion without layoffs but offers no specifics beyond a general air of Make Ontario Great Again. His claim to be a good businessman is so Trump-like it’s toxic. He will cut “red tape,” whatever that is. He says school boards could cut costs through better procurement but doesn’t mention combining Catholic and public school systems.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Worst of all, he has nothing to say to millennials, a precarious generation that is tired of sympathy and wants specifics. The election is 68 days away, not nearly enough time for a plausible party to do its sums and explain them to voters.

Damaged as he is by name recognition, Ford will go into the election with nothing but the primitive social-conservative animus that is toddler food for his base.

hmallick@thestar.ca

Read more about: