Wynne compares pc leader to former premier Harris
Liberals are in an existential fight for the future of Ontario, leader Kathleen Wynne told her Ottawa team Wednesday night.
Four years ago, in the first hours of an uphill campaign, Wynne hit Ottawa for an evening rally. It was sunny and hot and the crowd spilled out the doors of a former carpet store on Bank Street near Heron Road that was about to become a local campaign office.
That night, Wynne’s biggest cheer came from an attack on Stephen Harper, whose Conservative government was on its way down. Harper made a great villain: His government was tired and a year from defeat and seemed to enjoy kicking Ontario when it could. Wynne lashed herself to the record of her predecessor Dalton McGuinty and declared war on Harper.
Now it’s Wynne’s government that’s gone creaky, in need of fresh vitality. Harper’s long gone. The new bogeyman isn’t in Ottawa, he’s in Etobicoke.
“This (election) has a particular edge to it,” she told the 200 or so volunteers and fans who nearly filled the main hall at All Saints, a church-turned-eventspace in Sandy Hill, for her short pep talk. “That’s because of the contrast between what we’re putting forward, that value system that says if you’re stronger, I’m stronger, and we’re stronger together —” she was interrupted by cheers “— and what Doug Ford is saying.”
The Progressive Conservative leader is the modern version of Mike Harris, Wynne said, so much so that “I almost said Mike Ford.” Harris hacked at Ontario’s foundations, Wynne charged, and personally drew her into politics.
Ford believes the provincial budget can be shorn of $6 billion without anybody hurting and he doesn’t want to fight climate change, Wynne said, and the crowd booed obediently.
Her voice dropped. “It’s the care, or the cut. And that’s why this election is so, so important.”
Go knock on doors, Wynne implored the crowd, her voice rising again. She lost her first election by 72 votes. Every conversation matters.
“We can continue to build Ontario up, but to do that we need to get through this election. Thank you so much!”
The crowd cheered and, but for a few who stuck around to get photos and handshakes with the leader, dispersed. Campaign volunteers plucked the signs out of the lawn at All Saints, loaded them into cars, and headed out.
Wynne knows well she’s starting this race from behind. The polls have her Liberals fighting for second place at best.
“I know what I have to communicate is that we are building, by our platform and our budget, we’re building on the foundation that we have put in place in Ontario,” she said in a separate interview before the rally.
In 2014, part of what she was doing was introducing herself to voters who didn’t know her all that well.
That campaign was fought against Tories led by Tim Hudak, who had a detailed ( but technically very flawed) plan to cut public-sector employment and try to goose private-sector growth. The NDP’s Andrea Horwath tried to position herself as a semi-populist alternative but never got traction.
“I think what will be different about this campaign is we actually have an opponent in Doug Ford who, all he does is talk in slogans. He is not explaining to the people in this province what the impact of what he’s saying will be,” Wynne said. “It’s a different campaign in the sense that we’re not debating policy in the same way. He’s bringing forward slogans and we’re bringing forward real solutions to real problems.”
Of course, now voters know Wynne a lot better and a lot of them don’t like her. Her personal approval ratings are terrible, some of the lowest ever polled, and she’s a drag on her Liberal party. Wynne knows that, too.
She’s made the mistake of getting lost in policy sometimes, she said, just assuming that people know who she is and why she’s in politics.
“Every day, I can give you examples of exchanges I’ve had where I’ve tried to help people,” Wynne said. “I’m not saying in an arrogant way — the point I’m making is that, clearly, I don’t project that.
“And that always surprises me, that people don’t know that about me.”
Wynne acknowledges errors, which she sees mostly as failures to communicate. Privatizing a majority share of Hydro One was startlingly unpopular and Wynne believes she and her government didn’t lay the groundwork for it — explaining the infrastructure projects the billions of dollars it brought in would pay for, or the degree of control the province still has over the utility, even as a (large) minority shareholder.
Going back further, in the McGuinty era the province rebuilt the electricity system and closed coal-fired generating stations but didn’t explain how expensive that was going to be and stuck ratepayers with too much of the cost too quickly. The “Fair Hydro Plan,” which borrows billions to subsidize hydro bills temporarily, is a late answer, Wynne admits.
Knowing how you got into a mess isn’t the same as knowing how to get out, but Wynne, unlike some politicians, loves to campaign. Like Hudak, Doug Ford leads rallies with an air of grim resignation. (It befits his message that Ontario needs plucking from the toilet it’s swirling down but it’s still a bummer.) Wynne charges out happily. If she goes down next month, she means to go down fighting.
He (Ford) is not explaining to the people in this province what the impact of what he’s saying will be.