An informed and viciously satirical look at the Ontario Tories, who've polarized public opinion unlike any other government in the province's history. Three years into Ontario's Common Sense Revolution, hospitals and schools are closing by the hundreds; thousands of nurses and teachers and other workers are jobless; schools are in chaos; pregnant welfare mothers have lost their nutrition allowance because the Premier thinks they'll spend it on beer; Toronto the megacity is collapsing under the weight of its own amalgamated administration; the Premier's last cultural experience was Mr. Silly; the rich are getting larger tax cuts while the province won't spring to bury the homeless; and welfare recipients deserve to be fingerprinted, but motorists running red lights shouldn't have their pictures taken because it would violate their privacy. What can you do but laugh? That's the approach taken by Linwood Barclay, who's been skewering the current occupiers of Queen's Park in his Toronto Star column since they took office.
There's never been a political document in Ontario quite like the Common Sense Revolution, drafted by Mike Harris and his advisers, the so-called Whiz Kids, prior to the 1995 election that swept him into office. It's a statement of philosophy and ideology more dramatic than anything put out previously by any other party in this
province, including previous Progressive Conservative
administrations.*
* It even beats "The Bland Manifesto" of the Bill Davis government.
Most everyone is aware by now of the basic principles
contained in the Common Sense Revolution. Mike Harris campaigned on a platform of lower taxes, reduced spending, and a balanced budget. The document spelled out how provincial personal income taxes would be reduced by 30 per
cent, and how this infusion of cash into our wallets
would boost the economy and create jobs. The document also promised that this could be accomplished without "cuts to health care."
Here are some of the other principles listed in The Common Sense Revolution that not everyone
may be aware of:
• Big cars and fast-living are good for Ontarians:You have a right to drive on the province's major expressways without fear of nambypamby speed limits. If God hadn't intended for you to drive at 150 km/h, he would never have invented fuel injection. To this end, we will eliminate photo radar vans as soon as we take office and instead put them into service as highspeed,
radar gun drive-by assessment vehicles for recalculating property values in the city of Toronto and elsewhere.
• You can never have enough:Our tax cut pledge will insure that the more you make, the more
you'll get to spend. (Don't worry about our surtax for people earning more than $50,000,- that's just window-dressing. We're going to look after you. People earning far less will get less back in the tax cut plan, but let's face it, if they knew what to spend money on, wouldn't they be making more of it in the first place?) If this copy of the Common Sense Revolution did not come with an Audi brochure, please call your local PC office and we'll mail it to you.
• Nobody works as hard as you do:Everybody else out there is ripping you off. While you're reading this, worrying about your province's future, the teachers, the civil servants, the nurses, the jail guards, snowplow drivers, those folks who mail out the cheques for the Family Support Plan, probably have their feet up right now and are watching Wheel of Fortune. Why should they be living on easy street when you've got so much to worry about, like why Emilio the pool boy
forgot to pull over the solar blanket yet again?
• It's okay to run with scissors:The days of government interference in your life are over. Shouldn't you have the right to do as you please? If you want to swim less than an hour after eating, shouldn't you have the right to? If you want to run with a sucker in your mouth, is it anybody's business? Want to eat fish on a plane? Golf in an electrical storm? Do it! And if you want to pay your employee less than you've already contracted to pay him, shouldn't you feel free to express yourself in that manner?
Introduction: Would You Let These Guys
Finish Off Your Basement?
Chapter 1: The Common Sense Revolution
Chapter 2: What the Tax Cut Means to You
Chapter 3: The Environment: If There's a Good One for Business, Everything Else Will Look After Itself
Chapter 4: Amalgamation, Just for the Fun of It!
Chapter 5. The Paint-by-Numbers Approach to The Arts
Chapter 6: The Tories' Malpractice Approach to Health Care
Chapter 7: It's a Crime What the Tories Are Doing
Chapter 8: The Unity Crisis: Leading the Way
Chapter 9: Crisis 101: The Tories and Education
Chapter 10: Gambling Our Way to Prosperity
Chapter 11: How the Homeless Can Help
Chapter 12: Getting Ready for Election Suggested Readings
Linwood Barclay is one of the Toronto Star's best-read columnists, a public speaker, and the author of Father Knows Zilch: A Guide for Dumbfounded Dads and This House Is Nuts!
