The beginning of a blue wave?

EDITORIAL: WHAT OTHERS THINK

Ontario voters clearly wanted change. Well, they got it. The Doug Ford-led Progressive Conservatives, fuelled by voter discontent over 15 years of Liberal scandals and overspending, along with enough hesitation to trust the NDP to be any different, roared to a majority government in Ontario’s provincial election Thursday.

The PCs took 76 of 124 seats. The NDP, now the official opposition, grabbed 40. The Liberals, with just seven seats, lost official party status in a stunning collapse (their share of the popular vote, 19.59 per cent, is the lowest ever recorded). Premier Kathleen Wynne barely held on to her Toronto seat and immediately resigned as leader of the party.

Many mocked Ford’s populist message that promised to take Ontario back from the elites and hand it back to hard-working, everyday folks. But Ford’s vows to restore fiscal sanity clearly resonated in a province weary of seemingly endless Liberal deficit spending, which had ballooned the provincial debt to a projected $325 billion in 2018-2019.

The surge in the polls late in the campaign for the NDP, which roughly doubled its seat count under Andrea Horwath, obviously faltered at the end. The New Democrats finished with 33.57 per cent of the vote to the Tories’ 40.49 per cent.

The Tories did well in their traditional rural base and made major inroads into urban areas. That included greater Toronto excluding the downtown core, where the NDP took advantage of Liberal weakness to dominate.

However, Ford now faces an unavoidable reality — sticking to simple talking points in a campaign as the front-runner and actually delivering on election spending promises that never quite added up are very different challenges.

Ford vowed to cut taxes, along with the price of beer, gasoline and power — promises that onlookers estimate will cost at least $8 billion altogether — while somehow also balancing the budget in two years. Ford claimed he could find $6 billion in “efficiencies” within government, but that still leaves him short. He’s got four years to try to make it work, thanks to his majority.

Meanwhile, the Ontario election results will be closely studied by all three federal parties with an eye to winning seats in the country’s most populous province in next year’s Canadian election.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has lost an ally in Wynne and gained an adversary in Ford. Ontario’s new premier is already committed to oppose Trudeau on carbon pricing and likely many other policies.

And the Ford phenomenon may only be the first stage of a blue wave that could sweep centre-right parties into power in three of Canada’s biggest provinces.

The Coalition Avenir Quebec, under populist Francois Legault, a former Parti Quebecois cabinet minister, is poised to replace the unpopular Liberals in an election in Quebec this fall. The latest polls put CAQ on top with 41 per cent, followed by the PQ at 26 per cent and Liberals at 16 per cent.

Meanwhile, the United Conservative Party in Alberta, led by former federal Conservative cabinet minister Jason Kenney, has a even stronger lead over the governing NDP, 53 per cent to 28 per cent. Albertans vote next spring.

In other words, Ford may only be the beginning of Trudeau’s federalprovincial problems.