This op-ed was published on the National Post
on Wednesday, August 12, 2015.
 

The Ontario government has launched a host of new taxpayer-funded ads promoting the Ontario Retirement Savings Plan (ORPP), which use a series of trendy acronyms, like YOLO (You Only Live Once), TTYL (Talk To You Later) and LOL (Laugh Out Loud), to hype its combined 3.8 per cent new payroll tax.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has been effectively running against Ottawa on the ORPP since she proposed the idea. Her famous 2014 complaint about the prime minister “smirking” at her was over his refusal to support ORPP, and for his correct description of the ORPP as a tax.

Now, ORPP is becoming a federal election issue. On Aug. 2, after the federal election was called, Wynne urged voters to turf Prime Minister Stephen Harper because of his “blatant disrespect” for Ontario by refusing to support her new payroll tax.

The problem of a premier running against Ottawa in the midst of a federal election is that while federal government advertising stops, provincial government ads continue. And now Premier Wynne is spending taxpayer money advertising an issue she has said Prime Minister Harper ought to be defeated over.

According to Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk, who reviews all Ontario government advertising to prevent partisan spin, the ads were scheduled to end on Aug. 3. The minister of finance’s office states that the ads were approved to run until Aug. 15.

It is fair game for premiers to campaign against a prime minister in the tried and true fashion of uploading responsibility for provincial mismanagement onto the federal government. However, as Premier Wynne embarks on a campaign against Prime Minister Harper, she may encounter some problems under the federal Canada Elections Act.

Former Newfoundland and Labrador premier Danny Williams ran the “Anything But Conservative” campaign during the 2008 federal election over what he saw as an unfair treatment of his province by the federal government. However, the “ABC” campaign registered with Elections Canada as a third party for the purposes of election expenses, and the expenses in that campaign came from the Newfoundland Progressive Conservative party, rather than taxpayers.

Like Williams, Wynne clearly believes that our now have-not province, with the same credit rating as Newfoundland and Labrador, with a higher debt-to-GDP ratio than Newfoundland and with some of the highest hydro rates in North America, is being treated unfairly.

However, if she wants to wage a campaign against the prime minister, she should do it on her own party’s dime, not at taxpayer expense.

Of course Premier Wynne is openly supporting federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, and has said she will be outspoken throughout the campaign. The irony is that Trudeau, of course, has been a major critic of exactly the kind of taxpayer-funded government advertising that Wynne is using to promote her ORPP tax (and campaign against the Conservatives). Trudeau has called federal government advertising “wasteful, partisan government ads,” for which Canadian taxpayers are paying. His party even launched its own television spot to run during Senators-Habs playoff games criticizing the government’s use of public funds to promote the federal budget.

Yet, when it comes to Wynne’s use of tax dollars for government advertising for part of a larger campaign to take down his political adversary, Trudeau is mysteriously silent. It’s enough to get Ontario voters to say OMG.