Mike Harris and his team launched the Common Sense Revolution campaign back in 1993, two years before they rode the platform to victory in Ontario.  I hadn’t even hit my teenage years yet so I wasn’t always up to date on politics but what I did know was Premier Bob Rae was not a very well liked man in my house.

My Mom, who is a nurse, complained almost daily about “Rae Days”. She was forced to take several days off a year without pay. On top of going 10 days without pay there was a shortage of nurses when Bob Rae was Premier. So, not only did my mom feel like she was doing two people’s jobs at once, she was forced to take on even more of the load when nurses were off because of the social contract.

These days my mom says she won’t ever vote for the provincial NDP. The Harris Government mercilessly slashed health-care spending and took the axe to so many social programs.  Because my Mom was spared the Harris axe, they don’t stick out in her memory like those Rae Days.

The talk of Dalton Days have been squashed by our current Premier but with the economy still struggling something has to be done to address the growing deficit in Ontario. Rae Days spread the burden around and helped to keep people who are paid by the public purse employed, albeit with less pay. But, my mom didn’t see that angle. She and many other nurses remember Bob Rae not for just the unpaid days but for making their jobs a lot more stressful due to the increased work load. 

There might not be Dalton Days but the McGuinty Government will implement the HST in July. Could the HST be the straw that breaks McGuinty’s back? I know we aren’t comparing apples to apples. But the HST is something that the opposition is clinging to as a major factor in their early campaign. So, Could the HST be McGuinty’s Rae Days, the unforgivable sin of his reign? Is the current political and economic landscape paving the way for Common Sense Revolution 2.0?