By Nicholas Greenfield
If provincial elections were like wine, then this is one vintage worth forgetting. No body. No flavour. No panache.
The Ottawa Centre campaign is just like that old TV commercial for Partagé wine — the one with the sultry French woman who takes her wine very seriously — it is dry, and ow you zey?, wizout ze edge. It’s dry all right. And there hasn’t been much of an edge either. Without question, the biggest issue in Ottawa Centre is school closures and cuts to health care and the domino effect it will have on the community’s social programs. Why then have constituents been leaving all-candidate’s meetings with only more questions? Where’s the edge? Where’s that pinch in the tastebuds that says, now that’s a bottle worth investing in?
Such mediocrity begs the question: which of the red, blue or orange bottles on the shelf should Ottawa Centre invest in? Reversing tax cuts to the wealthy will be Elisabeth Arnold’s top priority if elected to Queen’s Park; in fact, reversing the Harris government’s four-year common sense revolution is the basis of the NDP’s platform.
Arnold is passionate about the community and her seamless move from municipal to provincial politics has earned her trust and respect. But respect will only go so far in the economically diverse Ottawa Centre. The riding has flip-flopped between the Liberals and NDP, but Richard Patten’s emphasis on restabilising cuts in education, school closures and the health care system, coupled with the realignment of the riding, will make 1999 another tight race. Tight, but dry. Which is all the more frustrating when you look at the fermented bottle the public has been wincing over for the past four years. And, oh, that 54 year-old Harris of the Tory vineyards had such promise. Good age. Strong flavour, a bit of a questionable culture, but that could be overlooked because of his fresh and saucy bouquet. It was saucy all right. A 30-per-cent cut in Ontario taxes over four years in the shadow of a huge deficit. Forget about admiring the bouquet, the trouble came when that first bottle got home and it corked before Ontario even got a taste. Suddenly a bottle with promise was revealed as nothing more than a cheap knock off of a saucy little Albertan everyone had heard about. But while Harris left a bad taste in many Ontarians mouths, he was no Partagé.
And that’s what’s so frustrating about this virtually fermented campaign. It’s such a close race that neither candidate wants to go out on a limb and show voters what makes them the more palatable choice for Ottawa Centre. But risk isn’t always so bad when it comes to wine or politics.