ONTARIO’S POLITICIANS STOP FIGHTING TO GO PLOWING
It is an eccentric tradition even in calmer political times, rendered all the more remarkable this year by the events that unfolded at Queen’s Park in the early hours of Monday morning.
Each September, Ontario Members of Provincial Parliament suspend legislative business to converge on the International Plowing Match, a major agricultural expo held in various rural corners of the province. The ritual persisted on Tuesday near Pain Court, Ont., a village 80 km east of Windsor — a little more than 24 hours after Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives burned the midnight oil to propel forward a bill that would slash the size of Toronto city council in the midst of a municipal election campaign.
Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath and many of her party’s MPPs were ejected from the provincial legislature last week for vociferously protesting the reintroduction of Bill 31, an act to cut Toronto’s number of councillors from 47 to 25 that Ford has safeguarded by pledging to invoke the “notwithstanding” clause of the charter. Ford called emergency sittings on Saturday afternoon and at 12:01 a.m. Monday to push the bill closer to passing before his caucus left for Pain Court.
On Tuesday afternoon, however Horwath grinned as she climbed into the seat of a tractor to face off against Ford in a field-plowing competition. It was an odd scene in the context of the premier’s current crusade, one that raises the question of why attending a plowing match, of all commitments, has taken precedence over urgent legislative affairs.
“The government is convinced this is the most important thing right now, to reduce the size of city council. They have to do it, they feel, or there will be chaos,” said Nelson Wiseman, a University of Toronto professor who has written extensively about Canadian political culture.
“Oh, but we’re taking a break to go plowing. So how does that add up?”
The annual mass migration of MPPs to the plowing match has no apparent parallel elsewhere in Canadian politics. Since the inaugural expo in 1913, the event has expanded in scope to attract many thousands of Canadian and American spectators; 100,000 or so are expected to descend on Pain Court from Tuesday through Saturday. Government support of the event dates back to its origins, Ontario Plowmen’s Association board member Don Priest said, and politicians have been making their presence known there each year for several decades.
Recent iterations of the plowing match have brought crowds to the communities of Walton, located northwest of Kitchener in Huron County, and Finch, southeast of Ottawa in the township of North Stormont. In 2016, visitors to Harriston, Ont., booed then-Premier Kathleen Wynne to express their discontent over rising hydro costs, one of the province’s most contentious political issues of the moment.
Protesters at Pain Court on Tuesday hailed Ford’s arrival at the plowing match by unfurling a large white banner that read, “Don’t Plow Our Charter.” As it stands, his government could pass Bill 31 later this week when the legislature reconvenes.
In an interview Tuesday, Wiseman called the plowing match a relic of an era in which agriculture was more central to the Ontario economy and said it’s ironic and “sort of ridiculous” that the government broke for Pain Court while trying hurriedly to downsize Toronto council.
“In the total calculus of Ontario politics, where does (the plowing match) rank?” Wiseman said. “How many people would even mention this thing as something they know about or they think is important enough for the Ontario legislature to suspend its business?”
However Monte McNaughton, the PC MPP whose riding of Lambton-Kent-Middlesex encompasses Pain Court, told the National Post on Tuesday that his party never entertained the thought of skipping this year’s plowing match to keep the legislature open. He said the event brings small communities together in celebration of farmers and other people who work in agriculture.
“We worked all night on Sunday until Monday morning in order for MPPs, one, to work to pass this legislation, and also to attend the plowing match,” McNaughton said over the phone from Pain Court.
“This is a sign of respect for rural Ontario. It’s a sign from MPPs that rural Ontario is important to the overall economy.”
Jonathan Malloy, a political-science professor at Carleton University, said the plowing match has become “a one-stop shop” for MPPs to engage with rural and agricultural Ontario — to listen to their concerns and attempt to humanize themselves by driving tractors, as Ford and Horwath took turns doing on Tuesday.
MPPs who attend the plowing match are also trying to win future votes, Malloy said, a pursuit that has made it an “automatic part” of the legislative calendar in a province where parties must account for urban and rural interests alike.
“We have the (Toronto) city council bill pushed through, and then it has to stop so they can go to the plowing match,” Malloy said. “It symbolizes that Ontario’s a big, broad, diverse province, and this is part of it.”