Nickel and Dimed

Election Day nears and it seems the big parties are all fighting to see who can promise voters the most. It's the usual campaign spending spree: Billions of dollars are being pledged, mostly without any mention on how the province is supposed to pay. Ontarian's have seen these antics before and are tired of them—$300,000,000,000 worth of debt tired!

Here is where a traditional party would pause to sell themselves—outlining their grandiose plans to turn everything around while proudly claiming to cut taxes without reducing services. A smart candidate would take a moment to explain how he is different from all the other cookie-cutter politicians.

Only I'm not different. At least not entirely. And neither is the Northern Ontario Party.

While the NOP and I aren't planning any major spending, we also aren't fully costing out our promises either.

Why not?

First, we don't make promises. We have ideas, some of which seem to make a lot of sense to us, but nothing is set in stone. Rather than boasting how "We'll fix that!" the NOP wants public feedback. Tell us what Ontario needs and we'll listen.

From there we'll look at what's worked before, in Ontario, elsewhere in Canada, and around the world. Reinventing the wheel every time is costly. The NOP will take suggestions from any source, even from our political opponents. (We'll be the first to admit that the PCs, the Liberals, and the NDP all have some good ideas…they're just buried under a lot of political nonsense!)

The second reason we aren't explaining how we'll pay for our platform is because we don't know…yet.

Ontario's books are a mess. Costing every one of our ideas out when we can't trust the Liberal numbers is a waste of time and effort. That's not a slap at the current government. Every ruling party fudges things in their favour.

And here is where the NOP can finally differentiate itself. We will never tinker with the books because we can never form a government. Even if we swept every riding we entered our party is limited to the North—it's right there in our name—and 13 seats at Queen's Park is a long way from a majority!

Spending is where governments are made or broken. The current ruling party has spent freely. The PCs and NDP are promising to do better—while still listing billions in new funding. It's like money isn't even real to them!

Most of the Northern Ontario Party's candidates are working men and women, people who know the value of a dollar. Heck, our leader has vowed to donate 20% of his MPP salary to his local hospital! He is confident we can do more with less and so am I. In fact I'll state here that I would follow his example and put 1/5 of my elected income to my riding's hospital.

"Trust" isn't a word politicians like to use. Too often it earns laughter. Disbelieving laughter. But trust me when I say "I hate spending money." People who are kind call me "Frugal", people who are brutally honest say "Cheap." Should the people of Nickel Belt elect me to the Ontario Legislature I will treat their money as if it were my own and hold it tight.

No expense account, no travel allowance, no office decorating budget, none of the usual political nickel and dime shenanigans. I would do the job as cost effectively as humanly possible…and that would make me different. And when it comes to spending taxpayers money, different is good.

Mat