Weak bunch running to be Ontario premier

There is something wrong with Ontarians. Why can’t we produce a political party leader who can attract broad public respect?

Looking ahead at next year’s provincial election, the choices for premier seem pretty dismal. Will we pick the person we don’t like, the one we don’t know, or the one we say we like but for whom we don’t vote?

Kathleen Wynne’s personal popularity was in the teens in polls taken this summer, well behind the numbers for her party. If the Liberals win the next election, it won’t be because we like their leader.

Then, there is Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown. I specify his party affiliation because about half of Ontarians in polls say they don’t even know enough about him to form an opinion.

Still, Brown’s party leads in the polls. In a recent Forum Research poll, Brown was liked by 29 per cent and disliked by 30 per cent of those with an opinion.

That’s how we define popularity in Ontario.

Brown is trying to introduce himself to Ontarians with a TV ad that talks about how he overcame a speech impediment. That’s commendable, but it doesn’t qualify him to be premier any more than Wynne’s penchant for jogging does.

About 40 per cent of people say they like the NDP’s Andrea Horwath, but if the last two elections are any indicator, they wouldn’t vote her in as premier.

It would be one thing if these B-level contenders were some kind of aberration, but they’re not. Ontario has a long history of electing premiers that we come to strongly dislike. The last premier who was not generally reviled after leaving office was Bill Davis, and that was 32 years ago. One might generously include David Peterson, but that still only brings us up to 1990.

Peterson was followed by Bob Rae, whose performance as premier seems to have doomed the NDP to perpetual third-place status. Even Rae didn’t like NDP Bob Rae, rebranding himself as Liberal Bob Rae.

Mike Harris still has some fans among conservatives, but the former premier’s abrasive style and zest for picking pointless fights detracted from his accomplishments. The Liberal party has won four consecutive elections by harkening back to the dark days of Harris.

Harris’s hapless successor, Ernie Eves, was quickly dispatched by voters.

Then there is Dalton McGuinty, the premier who immediately blew his credibility by bringing in the kind of mammoth tax increase he swore he would not impose. The list of McGuinty’s miscues is too long to recite. Suffice it to say, no one will be putting up statues honouring him. What are we doing wrong? It is tempting to attribute Ontario’s weak leadership to our political parties’ failure to attract outstanding people, but that’s only part of the picture. The trouble starts with Ontarians’ unwillingness to enter provincial politics and their disdain for those who do.

Politics should be a form of public service, but the nasty, personal attacks make it seem like a dirty job.

Consequently, we delegate the task of choosing our provincial leaders to the relatively few partisans who join a political party and can be bothered to vote on the leadership.

Again, Ontarians are unwilling to join parties because that would make them partisan, which is somehow considered a bad thing.

If Ontarians want better political leadership, we need to step up and get involved. There are more than 13 million of us. It’s hard to believe that Wynne, Brown and Horwath are really the best this province has to offer. — Randall Denley is an Ottawa commentator, novelist and former Ontario PC candidate. randalldenley1@gmail.com