Voodoo news to me

Last night on TVO’s The Agenda, Stephen Maynard, the NDP candidate in London-Fanshawe, told Steve Paikin that the NDP would create a “Bank of Ontario” that would set its own interest rate. As policy ideas go, it is a surefire award winner for Voodoo Economics. Not even a separate Quebec envisions having its own central bank.

Paikin was nearing the end of the show, so he more or less let the statement go. Trying to confirm or deny it over the Internet is impossible because the NDP Web site, which once featured all kinds of information on a multitude of topics, has been stripped down to six commitments and nothing else. Amazingly, Maynard is in a tight three-way race in his riding, a tribute, I presume, to the quality of his competition. I assume that his Bank of Ontario comments are not official party policy and that the young Maynard was merely musing aloud, but I’d advise him to make like the Web site and stick to only six commitments’ worth of talking points for the next week.