Common Sense Revolution

The phrase Common Sense Revolution (CSR) has been used as a political slogan to describe common sense conservative platforms in Australia and the U.S. state of New Jersey in the 1990s. However, it is most widely known as the name of the political movement and policy document advocated by Mike Harris, the Progressive Conservative premier of the Canadian province of Ontario from 1995 to 2002. This article deals with the "Common Sense Revolution" as it was in Ontario under the Harris administration.

Origin of the CSR

The CSR cannot be understood without briefly mentioning the political culture of the province of Ontario.

From 1943 to 1985, the Progressive Conservative (PC) Party had held uninterrupted power in Ontario, under Red Tory premiers such as Leslie Frost, John Robarts, and Bill Davis. However, in 1985, this veritable political dynasty (termed the Big Blue Machine by observers) came to an end when the government of Davis' successor, Frank Miller, was defeated by an alliance between the Liberal Party of David Peterson and the leftist New Democratic Party (NDP) of Bob Rae in that year's provincial election. The Liberals formed a minority government with NDP support, and Peterson was sworn in as premier.

After the fall of Miller's government, the PC Party found itself in the political wilderness. Known for decades as competent managers with a left-leaning tendency towards building up Ontario social programs (such as health care and education), they found themselves losing this ground to the Liberals and their charismatic leader, Peterson. Sticking to their policy status quo, the party was trounced in the 1987 election that gave Peterson a majority government. Faced with massive debt and public disinterest in their leader and policies, the party needed a new angle. In 1990, an upstart junior cabinet minister from Miller's former government named Mike Harris won the leadership of the party. This was widely interpreted as a move to the political right, as Harris defeated the more centrist Dianne Cunningham.

Harris immediately set about crafting a new image for himself and the party. In his first election in 1990, he branded himself "the tax fighter." Despite his party's third place showing in the election (which was won by NDP leader Bob Rae), Harris had managed to improve the party standing in the legislature and bring some attention to his cause. After the 1990 election, Harris and his advisors (including prominent Ontario Tories Tony Clement, then President of the party, and Tom Long) set to work creating a more comprehensive reform package to present to the province. The result was the CSR.

Content of the CSR

The CSR reform package was markedly neo-liberal in nature, closely mirroring the platforms of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. Philosophically it was aligned with the theories of prominent 20th century economist and political theorist Friedrich A. von Hayek. In fact, during Harris' time in office, political staff at Queen's Park - the provincial seat of government - were known to keep copies of Hayek's seminal work The Road to Serfdom on hand in their offices.

The central foci of the CSR were tax reduction, balancing the budget, reducing the size and role of government, and an emphasis on individual economic responsibility (often summarized by an opposition to government "hand-outs"). Among other things Harris promised to reduce personal income tax rates by 30% and balance the provincial budget at the same time (which had reached a record $10 Billion deficit under the NDP).

The CSR was specifically tailored as a reform document. It was presented as a radical change to the status quo of provincial government business, which was widely seen to be poorly managed and inefficient. Indeed, the opening words of the document were "The people of Ontario have a message for their politicians -- government isn't working anymore. The system is broken."

The 1995 Election

When Bob Rae called the 1995 election, most political commentators were sure that Liberal leader Lyn McLeod would end up taking the premier's job. However, this prediction proved rather premature.

Sticking to the contents of the CSR, Harris fought a campaign focused on simple, easily communicated messages. Specifically, he consistently hammered home the party's promises to lower taxes and reduce the number of people on welfare (Ontario's social assistance program). The turning point in the election is often considered to be Harris' performance in the televised leader's debate. Rather than get caught up in the debate between McLeod and Rae, Harris used his camera time to speak directly to the camera to convey CSR points, virtually ignoring all questions asked of him by his opponents. As a result, Harris and the CSR won a strong majority government in the election as the PCs took 82 of the province's 130 seats.

For more information on the 1995 election and Mike Harris' first term in office, see the respective Wikipedia articles.

Impact on cities: Bill 103

Harris' interest in reforming the political structure of cities dated back to his time in opposition. While the leader of the third party, he created the "Mike Harris Task Force on Bringing Common Sense to Metro" (Toronto), on January 5, 1995. This in many ways was designed to counter Premier Bob Rae's government Task Force on the Greater Toronto Area, chaired by Anne Golden. When the final report (called the 'Golden Report') was released in 1996, it called for a GTA-tier of local government and for inter-municipal service agencies (based on a similar model to that of Metro Toronto government).

The net effect of this proposal was that it countered the Mike Harris pledge of "less government." The creation of a larger organizing body for the region went against what his party had fought against. Harris had felt that politicians, in particular lower level city councilors, were problematic to his party, and prevented free enterprise. The plan for reduced government might have emulated Margaret Thatcher's approach that eliminated upper-tier city governments, replacing them with a collection of special-purpose bodies. See Greater London Council.

While many suburban municipalities grew rapidly during Harris' first term (1995-1999), some have argued that the net effect of many CSR policies was to transfer wealth from urban to suburban areas and to refocus services to commuters and suburbs. In a highly controversial move, the former city of Toronto was merged with four surrounding cities to form a new "megacity" (as referred to by citizens and the media). The Harris government saw the megacity as a cost-cutting measure, while Urbanist argued that cities of 750,000 or less were an optimal size for service delivery. The fact that the merger took place in Toronto, a region that had not voted for any Conservative MPPs, further polarized the debate on the merit of the merger. Many non-Conservative Party voters felt like they were being punished for not supporting the Harris government. Some municipalities, particularly Toronto, also complained that the government was "downloading" the costs of services that the province had formerly paid for onto local city and municipal governments.

Long before the merger, in October 1996, a focus group conducted by Angus Reid for the government warned Municipal Affairs Minister Al Leach that there would be "considerable public resistance" (May 9th 1997 Toronto Star) to the creation of a unified Toronto. Leach would go on to blame local mayors and community groups for the opposition, going on to be quoted in the same article as saying: "In the end, it became a cause célèbre for all of the issues that the government was bringing forward on its agenda".

One of the loudest opponents to the new city was former Toronto mayor John Sewell who led the action group Citizens for Local Democracy.

In April 1997 the government introduced Bill 103, in attempt to block passage the NDP party created a filibuster by reading out every street name in Toronto. The round-the-clock fight at Queen's Park lasted 10 days before the legislation finally came into law on April 21.

Successor of the CSR

Attempting to build on the success of the CSR content and messaging strategy for the 1999 election, Harris and the Ontario Tories branded their new policy document the Blueprint. (Blue being the official colour of the party).

The Blueprint followed the same theoretical framework as its predecessor, yet was tempered for a much different political environment. In 1995 the message had been "reform" and "revolution", but after four years of conservative government, the message became a balance between stability and emphasizing that there was still "much left to do".

Though not as successful as the CSR, the Blueprint nonetheless earned Harris re-election with another majority government (defeating new Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty).

Failings of both the CSR and the Blueprint became obvious in the second term. By 2003 the Toronto merger had failed to deliver any savings whatsoever. A process of suburban colonization commenced of which the primary obvious beneficiary was Mel Lastman who had become mayor of the new megacity, but was unable to manage it easily. The province under Harris transferred tax funds to suburbs at the same time as downtown services were cut, reducing the city's quality of life and triggering riots, notably by Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) in 2000.

Other controversial municipal amalgamations took place during Harris' second term, including in Ottawa, Hamilton, Greater Sudbury and Kawartha Lakes. Unlike the Toronto amalgamation, however, these all involved large rural areas in addition to the primary urban core. Controversy over the amalgamations is still a significant political issue in these cities as of 2006 (unlike in Toronto, where no serious deamalgamation campaign is currently active), as many residents — especially, but not exclusively, in the rural areas — feel that the quality of municipal government services to their area has deteriorated significantly.

Harris resigned as premier in 2002, and was succeeded by Ernie Eves. Through a variety of factors, including dissatisfaction with the effects of the government's platform policies, deterioration of municipal services after downloading, and Eves' handling of the Northeast Blackout, the Progressive Conservatives were defeated in the 2003 provincial election.

Retrospect

Opinion on the CSR legacy is far from unanimous today. Supporters of Harris praise the movement as the main reason behind Ontario's massive economic turnaround in the mid-late nineties. They maintain that the clarity of the CSR messages, the soundness of its' economic policies, and Harris' perseverance in "doing what he said he would do" ensure the CSR is seen in a positive light today. Indeed, many Ontario conservatives attribute Ernie Eves' defeat in 2003 to his abandonment of CSR principles.

Opponents of Harris see the CSR in a much more negative light - attributing the deterioration of social programs to its tenets. They perceive Eves' defeat to be a rejection of 8 years of conservative rule under CSR policies, and of cities being ruled by their suburbs.

The dispute may not be settled until the Ontario general election, 2007 or beyond, but what is agreed upon by both its supporters and opponents is that the CSR resulted in far-reaching changes in the provincial government. Some have even argued that the impact of the CSR approach was so profound as to actually cause a right-ward shift in Ontario's political culture. An example of this shift can be seen in the contemporary dialogue used by political leaders of all parties in the province.

Today, the CSR themes of keeping taxes low, budgets balanced and people off social assistance are used by even the Conservatives' opponents. In fact, a key plank in the McGuinty Liberals' platform in their 2003 election victory was to criticize Eves for failing to ensure a balanced budget, and promising to do so themselves. Another key plank was to hold the line on provincial taxes.

Meanwhile, however, Conservative leader John Tory, himself from Toronto and a contender for the Mayor's job there in 2003 (losing to David Miller), preached a return to the "Red Tory" tradition of Bill Davis and his moderate centrist governance approach of the 1970s by which the Ontario Progressive Conservatives had ruled Ontario for the decades after World War II with comfortable majorities.

External links

Text of the CSR
Canadian Journal of Regional Science - "Amalgamations, Service Realignment, and Property Taxes: Did the Harris Government Have a Plan for Ontario's Municipalities?"