With a week of the provincial election behind us, the candidates are still avoiding the big ticket items in Ontario's $123-billion annual budget.
Instead they've decided the hottest issue of the campaign is an inconsequential, $12-million carrot being dangled by the Liberals.
If re-elected, Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty says he would put a $10,000 reward on the heads of unemployed or under-employed immigrants: hire one and you get a cash prize. Only skilled immigrants with citizenship papers who have not been in Canada for more than five years are eligible quarry in this bizarre manhunt.
And since it takes more than four years to become a citizen, that means only a handful of immigrants will find themselves in the lucky window of opportunity. A limit of only 1,200 has been placed on the number of winners able to produce a payoff for employers.
Yet the Tories and Liberals are both ripping into each other over this as if they've found the most important issue in the campaign.
The Tories say the Liberal offer of payoffs for hiring "foreigners" is a cynical and reprehensible attempt to purchase the support of a voting bloc. Then they tried to pretend they didn't use the "F" word.
Windsor West Progressive Conservative candidate Todd Branch called a media conference Monday to denounce the program as "wrong and shameful ... divisive, prejudicial and biased." It will be a "disaster" if implemented, he says.
The Liberals accuse the Tories of exploiting the issue to play "wedge" politics. Which is true - but it's pretty brave to level the accusation after everybody knows you created the wedge yourselves.
The canny Liberals knew full well that many voters would be disgusted by their offer.
They're just hoping their own political base is pleased. Liberal voters staying home could cost them the election on Oct. 6, just as they did during the federal election.
The Liberals imply that opposition to their kind and caring aid program verges on racism against "foreigners."
They demand an apology. PC Leader Tim Hudak refuses to give one, saying it's Ontario voters who have been insulted, not immigrants.
Meanwhile, some PC insiders complain Hudak has badly misplayed the issue, falling into an obvious Liberal trap.
Some believe the reverse head tax was just a ruse intended to trick the Tories into criticizing immigrants so they could be denounced by the media in immigrant-heavy cities.
But it's difficult to imagine how this offer is going to help the Liberals, even if it plays to their base. Immigration is a sore point with many voters who blame government for bringing in too many newcomers at a time of high unemployment - even immigrants themselves.
"It's hard to wrap your head around it," said Vince Galema, a 38-year-old "skilled immigrant" I bumped into Monday after not seeing him for years. A Red Seal chef by training, born in the Netherlands, often a Liberal voter in immigrantheavy Montreal where he lives now, Galema didn't like the sound of it.
"If I owned my own restaurant, would I look for an immigrant to hire so the $10,000 keeps my floundering business afloat for the next few months?" Good question.
And the program can't help skilled immigrants meet the qualifications of the professional bodies - legal, medical, financial, or epicurean - which designed those qualifications precisely to prevent foreign-trained professionals from taking their work. A $10,000 grant won't change that professional protectionism.
Why would the Liberals take such a gamble for a program benefiting so few? Even if all their friends and relatives vote with them, 1,200 voters can't swing a provincial election.
But as suggested above, the bounty is not aimed at immigrants themselves, it's for Liberals. The idea of $10,000 in aid for worthy newcomers is intended to induce intense warm and fuzzy feelings among the thousands who toil in the immigration industries: inner city teachers, teachers of English as a second language, social workers, employees of helper agencies and related charities.
The Liberals have a long history of using immigrant groups as their political base. As former Toronto Star columnist (and immigrant) Angelo Persichilli wrote of the federal party's deep internal problems last winter, its Toronto MPs lost touch with ordinary voters in part because they turned their backs on regular voters, becoming "for the most part, immigration consultants." (It was brutally frank insights like that which probably led Prime Minister Stephen Harper to name Persichilli as his communications director last week.)
Only a few days ago this space predicted a down and dirty fight, and we've already got one.
What does it tell you when the incumbent government plays the race card in the first week of a campaign? If they're that desperate at this point, the next three weeks could get really ugly.
cvanderdoelen@windsorstar.com
CKA Uber 
