People-in-the-Know: Liz Sandals, Part One

One of the advantages of developing a little bit of a profile in the community is that I've begun to find it easier to get time from busy people in order to do interviews. Not only does this allow me to develop better stories for my readers, it also gives me the ability to spend some time with some really interesting persons. In November I had the pleasure being able to interview our previous MPP, Liz Sandals. She represented Guelph for 15 years---from 2003 to 2018, and ended up as the Minister of Education.

I thought that Sandals would especially interesting to talk to because she is ostensibly retired from

Former Guelph MPP and Education Minister, Liz Sandals
Ontario Ministry of Housing Photo,
c/o Wiki Commons

politics. I've found that a lot of people in authority often only really say interesting stuff after they've walked away from their careers. Before that, they are something like actors on a stage. They are concerned about the impact of what they say to the point of not feeling free to speak their minds. She acknowledged the truth of my opinion, and suggested that yes she is a little freer to speak. But she also cautioned me that she still won't share the total truth. IMHO, that's a statement by someone with self-awareness. I came away with a feeling that Sandals is a pretty sharp cookie. I think we could have done far worse during the 15 years she represented us.

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I started off asking Ms. Sandals about climate change. The Conservatives under Doug Ford had just announced that they were ripping up the agreement that the previous Liberal government had undertaken to create a cap-and-trade carbon market in conjunction with California and Quebec. For those readers who didn't know much about this program, it was a mechanism designed to put a price on carbon that would encourage businesses to make reducing their carbon foot-print part of their design criteria. All the money raised in Ontario---by law---had to be spent on programs that was meant to help Ontario move towards a carbon-free economy. The first auction under the program was held on February 21rst of 2018 and the Ontario proceeds amounted to $471 million. Now that that program has been eliminated, the Financial Accountability Office says the government is forgoing future revenue of $3 billion over the next four years. It will also have to spend about $600 million to wind down programs that were to be funded by the cap-and-trade system, as well as an estimated $5 million to settle lawsuits with businesses that made decisions based on the assumption that Ontario was going to continue to be a member of this trading system.

My first question was background about how Sandals felt about the issue, so I asked her "What do you think about climate change? Do you see it as an existential threat to human civilization?"

I'm not sure that I would choose the world 'existential' because I don't use that word a lot, but that's one of the 'biggies'---we have to solve that. It isn't "Do I want to solve it?" It isn't like---because it's really important to me---that we have to teach math better. But it's not like the world is going to fall apart if we don't learn to teach math a bit better. Whereas, we have to solve climate change. It's not an option. 

If we don't find ways to at least reduce the impact, we're going to have terrible consequences. So the whole thing that we see---first in the US and now increasingly in Canada---and---God help us---in Ontario. Where climate change is treated as something that we can choose whether or not to address it. That's like turning off your brain. 

Doug Ford. Is he stupid? Or evil?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Image by Andre Forget, c/o Wiki Commons

This led to my second question, namely, if she believes climate change is something that we absolutely, positively, have to deal with, what did she think was going on in the head of Doug Ford? This is a dangerous thing to ask anyone, as people don't generally think it is fair to question the motives of people, just their actions. But that doesn't mean that motives aren't important, just that it can lead to very strong emotions if people suggest that there is a difference between why someone says they are doing something, and why they actually are doing it. In light of this, I decided to just put the issue as bluntly as possible to see how Sandals would react. I asked "Are the conservatives evil? or are they stupid?"

I don't think all conservatives are evil or stupid, and the fascinating thing is that Patrick Brown started off speaking the party line that "all taxes are bad, therefore no price on carbon" but had come around to "yeah, we have to have a price on carbon". So, you saw him going on this journey of maybe getting out from under Stephen Harper where he came to the view---which was probably a step too far for a lot of his colleagues---that there has to be some sort of price on carbon. 

I think that what you're seeing with Doug Ford is the personality of Doug Ford---who might be evil and stupid. As opposed to all conservatives. 

I believe what I am trying say is that I think there's still some of the old "Red Tory" conservatives around and then there's this new breed of God knows what they are. "Right wing populists", I guess is the best way to describe them. A lot of what they do are not even classic fiscal "conservative". 

But at any rate, it's like those that are the most negative have captured the leadership roles. Which is a bigger question than just climate change. What they've done with climate change in Ontario is just plain stupid.

The bigger point that Sandals was trying to make is that carbon pricing isn't something that traditional Conservatives would have a problem with---once they agreed on the need to deal with climate change. As she sees it, the real problem is that a new, more radical, anti-government attitude has taken hold of the leadership of the party.

I think he chose to go there because if there's two things that Doug Ford actually believes---I don't think that there's a lot that he actually believes in---the two things that I think he does believe, really strongly believes in, are "taxes are bad" and "government is bad". 

Because if you look at the things he's actually done---that aren't "undoing" (so we're just going to reverse this because the Liberals did it)---we're going to give you a tax break. I think if you were going to ask him why you are getting rid of cap-and-trade is because I think it looks like a tax, and taxes are bad. And if you look at what he did yesterday, and what he has chosen to do, is reduced income tax instead of raising the minimum wage---when all the evidence is that people would all be better off if you raise the minimum wage---and then they could pay a little bit of tax---which would be better for the people and for the government---(but government's bad.)  So you've got less tax and don't tell me what to pay my workers. It's all rolled up into that. 

At that point we slipped into a conversation about tactics. How was the Ford government selling their agenda to the public? I mentioned that I'd heard someone opine the night before that Ford had "thrown a shiny penny into the mix" and people were fixating on the shiny penny. I mentioned that I thought the "penny" in question was keeping liquor stores open later.

Hah! Yeah! Which is the same nonsense as the "buck a beer". What is something that he has seemed to slip by the public is that he's also reduced the surtax on the wealthy. Which nobody seems to have noticed.

What Ms. Sandals was referring to are two items of tax policy. First, the Conservatives substituted a tax cut for the increase in the minimum wage. Under the Liberals, the minimum wage was raised first to $14 in 2018, and was supposed to be increased to $15 early in 2019. Instead, Doug Ford's government decided to change the dollar an hour increase to only 25 cents per year which would only arrive at $15/hour in 2022. The tax cut for low income earners is called "the LIFT (Low-income Individuals and Families Tax) Credit". What this basically does is raise the gross income that an individual or family has to receive before it starts to pay taxes.

LIFT Credit, from Government of Ontario Web Site

Sandals is saying that someone on minimum wage is better off having the extra $1/year hour and continuing to pay the previous tax rate than if they are after the tax cut without the increase. Let's assume that someone works 40hrs/week at $14/hour. That would give them an annual income of $29,120. Previously, this person would have paid 5.05% income tax, or  $1470 in taxes. Now they pay nothing. But if they had had a $1/hour raise, they would have made $31,200 and paid $1,575 in taxes. So if you make $31,200 and subtract $1,575, you get $29,625. What this means is that the tax cut that the Conservatives brought in left minimum wage workers with about $500 less/year than if they'd just got the dollar an hour increase in pay. It had the added benefit of keeping the tax revenue that the government could then use to pay for the sorts of programs that lower income citizens tend to depend upon.

The second issue that Sandals is referring to is a proposed change to the tax rates in Ontario. This would have involved removing existing surtaxes on wealthy individuals and replacing them with two new tax brackets and slightly increasing their tax rates. According to a CBC story by Mike Crawley published at the time that this proposed budget was announced, 3/4s of Ontario citizens would not see any change in their income tax, while someone earning $95,000 would pay $168 more, similarly someone earning $130,000 would see an increase of $200. And according to this story from a tax advisory website, the top three tax brackets would have changed from 17.4096% to 17.5%, 18.9696% to 19%, and, 20.5296% to 20.53%.

This is the tax increase that Doug Ford described using the following language:

"Today's budget includes massive — I repeat, massive — tax hikes," Ford said. "I'm not going to go after 1.8 million people and increase their taxes, charge them $200 more when they're already struggling with the highest hydro rates in North America."

While it's important to understand that neither of these two tax policies are terribly important to the an economy and government the size of Ontario, they do both cut revenue at a time when we do have some pretty significant financial and infrastructure deficits that need attention. One cut about $500/year out of the income of the working poor, whereas the other handed back money to the wealthiest fraction of the population. They do seem to be ideologically driven instead of being based on the public interest. And, there does seem to have be an attempt to divert the attention of voters away from them by tossing out "shiny penny" programs like extended hours at LCBO stores out at the same time. 

No more Canadian pennies, so here's a shiny American one.
Public domain image from US Mint, c/o Wiki Commons

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In all of my other articles I've mentioned that people have to get used to paying for news if they want to get something that isn't tainted with "clickbait" or hidden agendas. This time I'd like to offer a slightly different suggestion. A lot of businesses, government services and NGOs used to buy subscriptions to the local newspaper and magazines of interest. These included things like consultants, the public library, elected official's constituency offices, and, public advocacy groups. I suspect that most of these folks haven't really thought about it much, but I'd like to suggest that they should consider purchasing a subscription to things like the "Guelph-Back-Grounder" (and Guelph Politico too) through Patreon. Just like individuals, if you want to support the community and keep a regular flow of local information going, you need to pay for the service.   

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At this point we moved on to social housing. I mentioned my five part series about housing and how it was one of those things where the more research I did, the more horrified I was about the situation.

If I was to say what was the thing that I found most frustrating as an MPP, it would be my inability to get any movement on housing in Guelph. What was particularly frustrating was that there was actually money coming in for housing and trying to get it to materialize in Guelph seemed well nigh impossible.

Hulet: You mean federal or provincial money?

Yeah! Yeah! Because when there's federal money then the province puts in so much, but there has to be a local share. And it comes because housing is managed by the "upper tier" and we do have this weird situation in Guelph where the county is the upper tier for housing and social services and child care, but it's a separated city so Guelph has no say. So you get weirdness there. My initial reaction---because that was in the day when the county and the city were suing each other---.

Hulet:  The thing about the medical centre funding?

Oh, well I think that there were about four different law suits going on about one thing or another at one time. Or if it never got to lawsuits, at least legal wrangling. If you've looked into housing, you will have figured it out that there's a horrendous wait list in the city---particular for bachelor and one bedroom---and if you were to move to the county, the wait list is a month or two. 

The only problem is that most of the people on the wait list need services, and the services are located in the city. So if you have a medical issue or a mental health issue, or a need for counselling, job training, or access to post-secondary education, re-entry into employment----go down the list. Most of what you need during the day is in Guelph. And the people who need social housing tend not to have transportation. And if you don't have transportation, you can't get to Guelph. Especially as there is no Greyhound going down the number six road anymore. (Most of the people who need social housing don't live on the number six corridor anyway.)  

And it's all administered by the county. 

Sandals went on to discuss how her thinking on the issue has changed over the years. At first, she

Conservative Premier Mike Harris
Image from the Manning Centre
c/o Wiki Commons

thought that this was a misallocation of resources, then she moved on to think that it was driven by people with "issues" migrating to Guelph---where the services they need are offered. Then she talked about the history and theory behind how social services are administered. The Conservative Mike Harris government decided to hand the responsibility for social services to the "upper tier" of government---in Guelph's case the county as opposed to the municipality. She also suggested that this makes sense if your municipality is the size of Fergus or Drayton. Where this breaks down, in her opinion, is where you have separated cities---like Guelph. Guelph isn't part of the county. Legally it's a "stand alone". So as a general rule, she thinks that Harris's structure is not a bad idea. But in the specific case where you have a separated city---like Guelph---in the middle of a larger county composed of rural areas and small villages and towns---like Wellington county---it doesn't work well.   

But the reason it breaks down here isn't because of misallocation, it turns out to be because of local share. Cause Guelph, when this stuff got uploaded sort of did this mental shift where they thought "we don't have to worry about social services anymore---cause they're doing it". 

At this point Sandals emphasized her point by acting-out Council rubbing the responsibility off it's hands---.

Now we can get back to the municipal stuff---like hockey rinks, and potholes, zoning, whatever. We don't have to worry about this messy social service stuff, the county will. 

Hulet:  You mean in terms of financial resources or political attention?

Both.

So now we get housing money. How does it arrive? Well, if it's tagged for "new builds" it's usually a third---not always---but generally it's a third, a third, a third. Some federal, some provincial, some local.  

Money arrives for "X" number of new units. The county says to the city "How much money do you have to put up for your share?" And the city hums and haws and says "We don't have any money. Cause we don't have a housing reserve. We're not in the housing business anymore. Why would we have a housing reserve?" They actually used to have a housing reserve and got rid of it when it got uploaded to the county. But the county says "But we have a housing reserve and we'll put it into the county."

Hulet: I have talked to Councillors about this and they have told me that the federal government just needs to kick more money in. But there's such an enormous backlog---.

But there's nothing that says the local share has to be just local government. It could be a mix of government and private.  The one bit of housing we got in while I was involved was the senior's housing at Saint Joes. That was the Saint Joe's Foundation---with some tax forgiveness from the city---but it was really the Saint Joseph's Foundation that was the local share on that deal. 

The Saint Joseph's Health Centre, Guelph
Image from its web page, used under "fair use" copyright provision.

The other thing it could be is just a private developer. And then we've got into the whole NIMBY [Not In My Back Yard] thing that you've identified. So the flap over the housing that Tom Lammer would have built over at the Church of Our Lady. So when Council eventually turned that down---it was a couple weeks before the deadline---and the county said "No problem, we have a housing reserve" and those units that could have gone into Guelph went into Palmerston.

Hulet:  That's something I don't recall hearing from anybody.

No. You wouldn't. [Laughs out loud.] And I would say to people who come into the office and say "You have to support us. We can't have an apartment building on that corner. It would be horrible!"  [Laughs out loud again.] And I would say "If we don't get some affordable housing in there, it's not going to be built in Guelph." And the response would be "That won't happen. They can built it some place else." And I'd say "'Some place else' will be not Guelph."And I'd get this sort of "Oh no, you're wrong Liz" reaction. Anyway, it's in Palmerston.  (29:30) 

And we've done this over, and over, and over, and over, and over----. 

The other thing is that there's such a backlog that you're never going to build enough. So a lot of the money that comes from the province has been flex money so that the local municipality has had the option of either building new units or using it as rent subsidies. So when the county has chosen to use it as rent subsidy---which they've done a reasonably responsible job of doing---then that money would be distributed in an equitable way. 

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Hulet: Just to spin this off in a little different direction, you've talked about NIMBYism. I think that's pretty much at the core of housing problems in Guelph.

Yes. Yes. 

Leading by being just barely in front?
Trudeau the Elder, photo by Chiloa
public domain c/o Wiki Commons

Hulet: And it's very difficult as a politician to alienate voters. Someone once told me---it's probably apocryphal---that Trudeau the elder once said "The art of being a leader is staying exactly seven inches ahead of popular opinion."

That's probably true. 

One of the good things you could probably say about Kathleen [Wynne] is that she got farther ahead of the public than the public was willing to allow.  

The whole NIMBY thing was that we had to get rid of the bad, old OMB. Yeah, the OMB tended to be pro-developer, but the OMB has also tended to be the "logjam"---. One of the things you happened to see in Guelph---and other municipalities---but Guelph is pretty---. Has done it more than once, let's say. Is that when there's a decision that is going to be publicly unpopular, but is technically correct---and probably a social good point of view, reasonable---you will see Council dragging its heels on never quite getting all the information they need on making a decision. And then the timelines expire on how long you can have a development proposal sit without making a decision. So it automatically gets so the developer can appeal to the OMB---because the timeline has expired. They aren't appealing a decision, they're just going to the OMB saying that the timeline has expired, so the OMB can make the decision---because Council doesn't want to make the decision. Because they want to be able to say "we didn't make the decision---the OMB made the decision." When the real issue is that there is a decision to be made that isn't palatable to the local politicians. So we'll let the OMB be the fall guy. 

I've seen this happen with a number of proposals. And that's usually a case where I have nothing to do with it. It's totally private. I just sat back as the observer. I just said "Ah. Here they go again!" 

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This is getting to be a quite long post, even though I'm still less than half through my interview. I think what I'll do, therefore, is split it up into two parts.