Provincial Tories must focus on real enemy

It was legendary American football coach Vince Lombardi who said, “Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.”

Signs are beginning to appear that the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party has taken losing to heart.

With Premier Kathleen Wynne’s popularity in decline, it would appear next June’s election is Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown’s to lose.

At least some members of the party seem to want to ensure that loss, giving Wynne another crack at running Ontario further into the ditch.

The provincial Tories have a history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. More than once the party handed the Liberals a win on a silver platter.

First was the election of 2007 when then Progressive Conservative leader John Tory promised to extend public funding to Ontario’s other faith-based schools. The Catholic system already is fully funded along with public schools. However, other religious schools are not.

Conservative candidates reported voters were angry and willing to take it out on all party MPPs. This was the message they were getting when door knocking in their ridings.

Because of this and similar reactions, the issue morphed into a full-blown controversy that gave the Grits the win.

The next Progressive Conservative giveaway was in 2014 when leader Tim Hudak promised to cut 100,000 civil service jobs in the province.

Although such cuts would have served the province well, the public service unions rebelled and their members started getting information from their top dogs that painted Hudak as the enemy of all things good and worthy.

In essence the message was that Hudak would reduce public servants to little more than serfs by ending maternity leaves and the like.

On election night, Wynne’s party was returned to majority status and Hudak was history.

Fast forward to late 2017, we have but months before the vote and the Conservative infighting is threatening to create a three-peat for the party.

The issues all centre around Brown and his leadership. Progressive Conservatives in various parts of the province are calling for his head over headquarters’ interference in nominations, past stands on social issues when he was an MP, and other issues.

Brown still has a chance to pull this one out of the fire, but he must get at the tricky job of building unity immediately.

One chance might be the meeting set for late November in Toronto.

The 2017 Ontario PC election readiness and policy convention is designed to get the rank and file involved in policy refinement for the June vote.

Beyond that, continuing antiConservative movements that spring from animosity toward Brown will get no traction in much of rural Ontario. The boonies have been so mistreated by this government for so long nothing will move rural voters away from their plans to show Wynne the door.

However the cities, where the most votes and the most seats are located, are a different matter.

Election results, therefore, are still an open question.