National Post (National Edition)
Does Doug Ford owe the Ontario Liberals anything?
According to Hollywood — which never gets history wrong — the life of a Roman gladiator could be decided by the crowd, which delivered a sign to the emperor to signal life or death.
Doug Ford may not be anyone’s idea of an emperor — he’d look ridiculous in a purple toga, for instance — but one of his earliest decisions as premier will be either a thumbs up or thumbs down on the status of the Ontario Liberal Party.
The Liberals came one seat short of the minimum qualification for official party status, but they’re hoping Ford will either bend or ignore the rules to give them access to the cash and status “official” parties receive.
Without it they’ll miss out on financing for staff, research and other expenses, and be limited in their ability to participate in debates, questions and other legislative business.
If he wants to be a nice guy, Ford could just offer official recognition and move on. They only missed by one seat, after all, and it’s not like world peace lies in the balance. But there are good reasons to give the matter some thought before reaching a conclusion.
To start, in reducing the Liberals from 55 seats to seven, voters very clearly wanted to demonstrate their extreme dissatisfaction with the party and its record in government. This wasn’t a hand-slap, it was a left to the jaw.
As Conservative strategist Jaime Watt observed, much voter displeasure resulted from “the perceived sense of Liberal overreach and the party’s stubborn disregard of voters’ interests.”
The electoral system may exaggerate voting swings as they translate into seat count, but there’s no question Ontarians intended the Liberals to have an extended time out in which to ponder their fall and repair their attitude. At some point in their 15 years in power they lost touch with the province, and reconnecting won’t be a matter of a few quick policy changes and a shiny new leader.
Refusing them party status would be entirely in line with the aim of Ontarians, would provide a motive to the party to get cracking, and intensify the pressure to engage in a serious and in-depth analysis of what went wrong.
There was little evidence in the days after the election that the party was keen on accepting its verdict.
Mainly it wanted to assign blame, and mostly to anyone but itself. It’s difficult to imagine this tired, worn-out group could regenerate itself without wholesale change in leadership, yet its bench strength isn’t great and there’s no sign of an eager throng of vibrant newcomers ready to seize the reins.
There’s also the question of what they would be taking over — Kathleen Wynne and her upper ranks were all over the map in their final desperate months; party policy consisted of whatever they thought might win them votes. Whoever replaces them will have to establish something resembling firm principles in place of the existing mishmash.
Ford is under no obligation to help them by easing the strain on their finances or organizational challenges. It’s not impossible for a party lacking official status to keep itself in the public eye.
The Green Party has spent its entire life trying to do so, with varying rates of success. It’s not clear that Liberals should be given special help while the Greens — who just elected their first-ever member of the provincial legislature — are left to to struggle along on their own. It might do the Liberals some good, in fact, to be forced to reacquaint themselves with the people they aspire to serve.
While they now have seven seats, that could fall to six if Wynne resigns, as other spurned leaders have done. It makes little sense to have guidelines for official recognition if they’re changed every time a party falls below them. There might be concern among Progressive Conservatives that, should they spurn the Liberals now, a future Liberal government might do the same to them. But that’s a mug’s game: even if Ford acts generously now, there’s no guarantee Liberals would do the same if circumstances were reversed.
When New Democrats sought Premier Dalton Mcguinty’s approval for official status despite falling short of the minimum in 2003, he refused. Though he eventually made some concessions, the NDP had to win its way back to full status.
There was allegedly a time when legislators happily castigated one another by day, then repaired for drinks afterward in a spirit of camaraderie. It was just business, after all, nothing personal. If that was ever really the case, it’s long since faded.
Personal attacks during the latest campaign reached awful levels of vitriol. Campaign ads were astonishingly dishonest in their manipulation of information and sheer invention of “facts.”
Blatant inaccuracies were presented as established truths. Throughout their long tenure in government the Liberals used whatever levers they could to hobble the opposition, in particular lavishing resources on public sector unions in return for their assistance at election time. It was the Liberals’ campaign chairman, after all, who launched the party’s re-election bid by describing Ford as “a bit of a dick,” and then offered an extravagantly insincere apology.
All this may argue for a change in direction. Perhaps by demonstrating good fellowship now, the Tories could help reverse the slide into hyperpartisanship and the politics of division. Maybe this would be the very moment to set an example, when the Liberals are down and out and potentially receptive to a new approach.
On the other hand, it’s entirely possible the Liberals haven’t learned a thing, are immune to education and will simply wait out the PC interregnum, convinced Ontarians will eventually tire of the Tories and return them to the position they feel is theirs by right.
It’s something for Ford to consider.
Does Ontario owe anything to the Liberals, or is it the Liberals who need to make the effort to rebuild the party until Ontarians are convinced they deserve to be let back into the fold?
WYNNE AND HER UPPER RANKS WERE ALL OVER THE MAP IN THEIR FINAL MONTHS.