The nastiness has begun in Ontario’s election campaign.
WYNNE PREDICTS ‘VICIOUS’ ELECTION CAMPAIGN, THEN GETS VICIOUS
Even when you see the train coming at you, it’s a shock when it hits. Such is the case in Ontario right now, where the Liberal government has ensured the coming election campaign — which hasn’t formally been called yet — will be one of the ugliest and demeaning in memory.
Premier Kathleen Wynne cemented this when she launched an extraordinary blitz of invective at opposition leader Doug Ford on Wednesday, followed by days of determined efforts to liken the Tory leader to Donald Trump. By Friday, her campaign chairman was tossing civility to the wind, telling a TV host his boss’s opponent was “a bit of a dick.”
It was as predictable as an onrushing train, yet unsettling nonetheless, that a sitting premier would so quickly turn a political contest into a barrage of insults against an opponent. In particular given Wynne’s justification for her attack: it was, she said, an attempt to alert voters that the race was bound to be nasty. Worried that the campaign could get vicious, she concluded it was best to get vicious first.
“Doug Ford sounds like Donald Trump and that’s because he is like Donald Trump,” she told a Toronto audience. “He believes in an ugly, vicious, a brand of politics that traffics in smears and lies. He will say anything about anyone at any time. Because just like Trump, it is all about him.”
Just in case anyone missed the incongruity of her remarks, Wynne declared that she’s worried the nastiness she was starting might prevent the race from sticking to the issues voters care about.
“I have to call it out,” she said. “I want to have a debate about issues and things that we can do in this province to make people’s lives better,” she asserted. Then she backed her truck up and unloaded the muck. Why? Because “I believe that it is my responsibility to be honest about what I’m experiencing and what I think is in the best interests of the province.” And the best interests of the province apparently lie in a campaign for re-election that resembles two hyenas fighting over a bone.
This is not a premier trying to set an example by refusing to wade into the swamp. Brought low by her party’s record and her personal unpopularity, the Liberal leader is playing her last available card. Quickly taking her cue, campaign cochair David Herle suggested that, while people sort of liked Rob Ford for all his faults, “I think people think Doug Ford’s a bit of a dick, to be honest.”
Later Herle pretended to apologize. “Doug Ford has a long history of using derogatory and insulting terms to refer to a wide range of people with whom he disagrees — including female journalists, parents of autistic children and many others,” he said. But, OK, if we’re going to make him say it: “No matter how commonplace such conduct might be for Mr. Ford, it is no justification to follow suit.” Even though he just did.
Ford has been making it easy for such crudeness, in essence taunting the Liberals to respond. A regular flow of Tory releases have portrayed the government as a corrupt cabal of insiders enriching themselves and their friends at public expense. Wynne’s diatribe followed a missive that suggested “If Kathleen Wynne tried to pull these kinds of shady tricks in private life, then there would be a few more Liberals joining David Livingston in jail.” The reference was to a former Liberal chief of staff sentenced to four months behind bars for destroying data related to a Liberal energy scandal.
Wynne’s need for a lastminute miracle increased when New Democratic Party leader Andrea Horwath unveiled a platform that effectively blocked Liberals from outflanking her on the left. In the 2014 election Wynne succeeded in attracting NDP votes by moving left just as Horwath was trying to shift her party to the centre. Wynne had hoped to repeat the feat this time, releasing a budget that threw fiscal caution to the wind with promises of debt-financed plans for free daycare, free drugs for seniors and a panoply of other assorted goodies calculated to be too good to resist.
Not this time: Horwath made clear an NDP government wouldn’t be outspent, with its own daycare plan, a universal dental plan, billions of dollars for hospitals and even a “tax the rich” plan to match the Liberals’ repeated assaults on upperincome Ontarians. The NDP would make no more effort to balance the budget than Liberals — who have projected six more years of deficits — but at least it would mean bright new faces running up the debt in place of tired old Liberals.
If Horwath’s move succeeds in keeping left-leaning voters loyal — perhaps even luring away dismayed Liberals — Wynne’s advisers evidently see little choice but a full frontal war against Ford. Yet events continue to conspire against her. On Wednesday Moody’s rating agency downgraded Ontario financial outlook to “negative” from “stable,” noting that Liberal plans would see interest on the debt reach $16.9 billion by 2025-26, or more than $1.4 billion a month.
Meanwhile, one of the teachers unions that have been among the Liberals’ most reliable supporters is enraged that part of a multimillion-dollar payout — the latest in a series of generous government payments to the unions — will be shared with another teachers’ union that it feels is undeserving. The government maintains its practice of buying “labour peace” with regular concessions to the unions has nothing to do with its re-election hopes.
Wynne has kept up the attacks on Ford, even while maintaining it’s not a campaign strategy. “I’ve been very, very careful,” she insisted on a morning radio show. Then she toddled off to brand Ford a big rich guy who doesn’t care about anyone else. Just to ensure things didn’t get nasty.
THEN SHE BACKED HER TRUCK UP TO THE PODIUM AND UNLOADED THE MUCK.