Elections in this country are rarely about public policy. They are about political leaders — their character, charisma (or lack thereof) and the degree to which people trust them. On occasion elections are defined by scandals, and often by a simple desire for a change in government, irrespective of the contour of the change being offered.

But elections in Canada rarely centre on public policy or big questions like the role of government in the economy. The 1988 federal election, in which free trade with the United States was the defining issue, was the exception that allegedly proves the general rule.

Things could be changing.

In just a few days of campaigning the Ontario provincial election on June 12 has shaped up to be a public policy blockbuster. Tim Hudak’s hitherto uninspiring stewardship of the Progressive Conservatives, and that tired old Liberal Party now piloted by Kathleen Wynne, are offering Ontarians a stark policy and directional choice for the province. And the two roads are paved with fundamentally different views on the role of government in the economy.

The Liberals and the PCs are, refreshingly, avoiding the tendency to try to be all things to all people and hug the centre. (The New Democrats, for their part, have yet to lay out a substantive agenda.) The middle road is often what voters get offered in this country, and that is part of the reason elections are rarely about policy. The differences between the main parties on big issues are often quite marginal, leaving the party leaders as the defining question. This time in Ontario it looks like it could be different.

The sharp policy lines in the sand, and their underlying differences in values, which have been drawn by the PCs and Liberals, haven’t been this clear in an Ontario provincial election in two decades. You have to go back to the mid-1990s and the battles between Bob Rae’s social democrats (in office and fighting for re-election at the time) and Mike Harris’s neo-conservatives to find anything comparable.

Then, as now, Ontario was going through a tough time economically, having emerged from a recession, yet still afflicted with relatively weak economic growth, strained public finances, abnormally high unemployment at this point in the economic cycle, and a manufacturing sector in decline. Then, as now, the choice in the election centred to a large extent on the role and reach of government in the economy.

This time around the PCs are offering a suite of policies including a 30-per-cent corporate tax cut plus a 100,000-person reduction to the size of Ontario public service. These and other policy offerings give voice to a thesis that argues government is the problem and getting government out of the way to unleash the private sector is the solution.

The Liberal agenda, by contrast, sees an activist government as an important part of the solution to Ontario’s economic problems. A new public pension plan to supplement the CPP, tens of billions of dollars in transportation, public school and hospital infrastructure spending and a new $2.5-billion fund to attract business investment is nothing if not activist in these austere times.

Put another way, the Liberals are embracing the demand side of the economy — trying to get it moving and make it more productive through public spending. By contrast, the PCs are classic supply-siders, intent on freeing business from the alleged shackles of government to let the private sector work its magic.

Interestingly, on the subject of the province’s large fiscal deficit, the two parties aren’t that far apart, both promising to eliminate it within a year of one another. The difference lies in how that is to be achieved. The PCs seek to do it by cutting government. The Liberals think it can be done through milder restraint and boosting revenues through spending that strengthens the economy and makes it more productive. Again, role of government is at the core of that big issue.

While Hudak and Wynne have put in the window some novel policies, their broad orientations are but minor variations on role-of-government themes that have been around for decades. The debate they have launched in Ontario is reminiscent of some of the great battles between the neo-Keynesians and the supply-siders that played out in the U.S. and Britain in the 1970s and 1980s.

For this, we should thank the premier and the leader of the opposition. They both seem to have firm convictions about the role of government and recognize this province is at a fork in the road economically. And they both seem to have the guts to put bold and stark choices about the future direction of the province in front of the electorate. That is a mark of leadership.

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Bring on the debate.

Eugene Lang is BMO Visiting Fellow, Glendon School of Public and International Affairs, York University.

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