ONE SURE THING: Change is here
By tonight, a number of compelling questions will be answered by the province’s electorate
EVERYTHING HAS A LIFE cycle and that’s particularly true in politics.
Change is washing across Ontario today. How do we know? Because the three major political leaders keep telling us so. Over and over and over and over again.
“Change is coming and help is on the way,” Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford has thundered at every opportunity over the past month.
Meanwhile, the word is built right into the campaign slogan of the New Democratic Party — “Change for the better.”
And we know change is coming because the outgoing premier herself has said so. Before the votes have even been counted, Kathleen Wynne admitted the Liberals’ 15-year hold on power has come to an end, a startling concession to make in the midst of an election campaign.
Depending on your views, Wynne’s admission last weekend was either a crafty move, a colossal blunder or a rare moment of honesty in politics.
By tonight, a number of compelling questions will be answered by the province’s electorate.
Will Ontario have its first-ever premier from Hamilton in Andrea Horwath?
Can the Conservatives finally seize power after a string of self-inflicted election misfires over the past decade?
Will the Liberals swing from 15 straight years in power to so few seats they fail to reach official party status? Or will they retain enough seats to hold the balance of power in a minority government?
CAN MIKE SCHREINER, leader of the Green Party of Ontario, capture the firstever seat in the legislature for his party? The most recent poll shows Schreiner holding a slight lead in his Guelph riding over the NDP candidate.
In Hamilton, the biggest question appears to be whether the city goes from being mostly orange to completely orange.
As Spectator political columnist Andrew Dreschel wisely notes, an orange NDP wave across Hamilton’s five seats could greatly benefit the city if the New Democrats hold power, but it could also push the city’s interests to the sidelines if the Tories prevail.
The most-recent projected standings, based on a consolidation of polls broken down to the level of ridings, suggest the Conservatives will form a majority government with 68 seats, followed by the NDP with 52 seats and the Liberals holding just four seats. The polls are more than a week old, however, which could be an eternity in an election as volatile as this one.
Interestingly, there are 22 ridings where the NDP is predicted to have more than a 99 per cent probability of winning the seat compared to six ridings where the Tories are predicted to have a greater than 99 per cent chance of winning.
Locally, the projections suggest the New Democrats will win handily in Horwath’s Hamilton Centre riding, as well as returning Paul Miller and Monique Taylor as MPPs in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek and Hamilton Mountain, respectively.
The projections suggest the probability of NDP victories in the three ridings is 100 per cent.
In Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas, NDP candidate Sandy Shaw is projected to take the riding with 42 per cent of the votes, ahead of Conservative candidate Ben Levitt at 30 per cent support. The polling consensus has longtime Liberal MPP Ted McMeekin running third with 24 per cent of the votes.
The polls suggest the closest local riding is newly created Flamborough-Glanbrook, where the Conservatives’ Donna Skelly and Melissa McGlashan of the NDP are projected to be running in a dead heat at nearly 40 per cent support each.
THIS WAS ALWAYS supposed to be the Tories’ election to win.
Then again, that was also the narrative heading into the previous three Ontario elections and each time a solid PC lead in the polls at the outset of the campaign vanished in a puff of smoke by the time the votes were counted.
In 2007, John Tory’s campaign derailed when he proposed extending government funding to non-Catholic faith-based schools in Ontario.
Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals were reelected with a majority and Tory failed to even win his own Toronto riding.
By the 2011 election, Tim Hudak had been the Conservative leader for two years.
He started the campaign with a 15-point lead in the polls, but again, the Liberals were re-elected, one seat short of a majority.
In May 2014, an early election was triggered when the Conservatives and NDP refused to vote in favour of a proposed Liberal budget. By that point, Wynne had been the Liberal leader for a little over a year.
Once again, the Conservatives started with a double-digit lead in the polls — until Hudak said he would balance the province’s books by cutting 100,000 civil servant jobs.
Wynne and the Liberals regained a majority government and Hudak announced he was stepping down as leader of the Conservatives during his concession speech on election night.
WHICH BRINGS US to the current election and the Tories’ curious affinity for committing fratricide at the most inopportune times.
First there was the bizarre, late-night abdication in January by then-leader Patrick Brown, just hours after he’d been the subject of a #MeToo-type character assassination, followed by the strange spectacle of the PC leader running through Queen’s Park in an attempt to flee a pack of reporters.
Then there was the ascension of Doug Ford, an unpolished, polarizing figure, to the role of party leader. His supporters believe he will bring fiscal restraint to the province while Ford’s critics fear he’ll usher in an era of Trump-like populist politics.
Now Ford finds himself on the receiving end of a lawsuit launched by his sister-inlaw just days before the election, alleging that Ford’s negligent management of the family business has deprived his late brother’s heirs of millions of dollars.
None of the allegations have been proven in court and Ford has vowed to defend himself in court.
Nonetheless, the allegations could shatter the foundation of his appeal — that he’s a competent businessman looking out for the interests of the little guy.
Meanwhile, Wynne’s fate was sealed long before the election was actually called by a combination of factors. Some were within her control, but most weren’t.
Fifteen years is a long time for one party to stay in power, even when the leader is skilled and beloved. Wynne may have been the former but she was never the latter in the eyes of many.
Asking voters for another four years on top of the last 15 was always going to be a tall order.
“It is a formidable challenge,” Wynne told The Spectator’s editorial board last week.
Wynne was also saddled with the baggage from the McGuinty-era power plant scandal that dragged on through her term.
But Wynne also didn’t help herself by ramming through the highly unpopular decision to sell off a majority stake in Hydro One to private interests.
With a week to go in the campaign, Wynne was reduced to pleading with voters to elect enough Liberals to prevent a majority by either the Conservatives or the NDP.
And finally, there’s Andrea Horwath, the former Hamilton city councillor who could be the first Ontario premier from Hamilton and just the second NDP leader to hold power in the province.
This is her third election campaign as leader. Each time, she has improved her party’s seat count and proportion of the popular vote, and that trend is almost certain to continue tonight.
Horwath said that even though she has been the NDP leader for nine years, she was surprised to find polling that shows some people say they don’t know her very well.
“I don’t know if it is because they don’t know me very well or they haven’t been exposed to me for long periods of time,” Horwath said. “As the third party, it’s harder to get that attention.
“That’s what’s good about this campaign,” she said.
“It really does focus people in on what the choices are.”
The polls are more than a week old which could be an eternity in an election as volatile as this one