Can Wynne Liberals claw way back to contention?

If you’re a sports fan, you’ll know the concept of peaking too early. A hockey team, for example, might hit its dominant stride in January or February, but then things fall apart in April when the playoffs approach. Whatever the causes, it’s just bad timing.

Is this happening in Ontario politics? Over the past year, the governing Liberals were decimated in the polls, particularly over the hydro issue, and would have been in huge trouble in an election. But with the general election not scheduled until June 2018, I’d be wondering if I was a Progressive Conservative or New Democrat: Did we peak too soon?

By the usual economic indicators, the Liberals should not be wallowing in or around third place in the polls as they have been. Though it’s not quite booming, Ontario’s economic growth is at the front of the pack among Canadian provinces. In April, the unemployment rate dropped to 5.8 per cent, the lowest it’s been since 2001. Yet it seemed that electricity rates, Premier Kathleen Wynne’s personal unpopularity and general voter fatigue with the party might be too much to overcome.

That could be changing. Recent polls have shown the Liberals climbing, including one last week by Campaign Research (a conservativeconnected firm) that even showed the Liberals slightly ahead of the PCs.

It helps that the budget is balanced. It’s not so much that voters care deeply about deficits; it’s that it allows the government to afford lofty new projects again. This past budget gave us a limited form of pharmacare, and in the following weeks Wynne promised new jails for Ottawa and Thunder Bay and a $21-billion highspeed rail line for Southwestern Ontario. Get ready for a lot more of this by next spring.

Trouble still looms, of course. The financial accountability officer put out a report this week showing the ugly future of the hydro relief plan, with ratepayers shelling out as much as $21 billion extra over the long term to afford the short-term reductions (enough money, as it happens, to have funded that high-speed rail line.) Hydro relief was never going to be free, and everyone was demanding it, but this is pretty damn painful.

Even worse, two separate trials (one involving computer-wiping allegations, another related to the Sudbury byelection scandal) of former high-ranking Liberal operatives are set to start in the fall, and all kinds of nasty revelations could emerge.

But the Liberals are starting to claw their way back into contention — and they’re getting help. The PCs continue to lurch from controversy to controversy over their nominations, with candidates all over the province furiously alleging manipulation from party brass to get their preferred choice. Patrick Brown’s been at war with factions of his party’s base for the entire time he’s been leader, and there remains little reason to be confident he can put together a platform that appeals to both the PC membership and the general population.

Meanwhile, the highest-profile New Democrat MPP has just ditched his provincial colleagues to run for the federal party’s leadership. Jagmeet Singh hasn’t resigned his Queen’s Park seat, so he could be back by the election if he loses. But while the NDP have done a good job developing policy, including a pharmacare proposal and their own hydro relief plan, they’ve been chronically unable to take advantage of Wynne’s unpopularity. And the government’s next big policy rollout is a package of left-leaning labour reforms that will once again steal much of the NDP’s thunder.

It’s too soon to call it momentum, and a lot could still go wrong. But for the first time in a while, the Liberals seem to have a glint of hope. If you’re their opponent, you didn’t think this was going to be easy, did you?