Sudbury bribery trial hurt Liberals, poll finds
Despite case being thrown out, survey finds 39 per cent less likely to vote for party next election
The verdict was not guilty, but the court of public opinion is still out on the Sudbury byelection trial, a new poll suggests.
Top Liberals Patricia Sorbara and Gerry Lougheed were acquitted Tuesday after Judge Howard Borenstein dismissed the Election Act case against them for lack of evidence in a rare directed verdict. A Forum Research poll conducted Tuesday and Wednesday found 39 per cent of respondents would be less likely to vote Liberal in the June 7, 2018 election as a result of the trial. Only16 per cent said the case made them more likely to cast a ballot for the Grits with 33 per cent saying it wouldn’t change their vote and 11 per cent weren’t sure.
“The Ontario Liberals could not have asked for a better outcome from the Sudbury trial, but what’s clear from the data is that, overall, the result doesn’t matter much,” Forum Research President Lorne Bozinoff said Thursday.
Bozinoff noted “the damage to the Liberals’ brand may already be done” in a case that dates back to early 2015.
“The longer the story stays in the news cycle, the worse it will likely be for them,” he said, pointing out 47 per cent of respondents said the trial would have a negative effect on the Liberals with only 6 per cent saying it would have a positive impact and 31 per cent neutral.
Using interactive voice response telephone calls, Forum surveyed 946 people with results considered accurate to within three percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Most — 51 per cent — said they weren’t following the trial closely, with 36 per cent saying they were and 14 per cent said they hadn’t heard of the case.
Sorbara, the premier’s former deputy chief of staff, and Lougheed, a prominent Sudbury businessman, had been accused of offering would-be candidate Andrew Olivier jobs or positions in exchange for abandoning his bid for the Liberal nomination in the February 2015 byelection.
That was to make way for Premier Kathleen Wynne’s hand-picked choice, NDP MP Glenn Thibeault, who defected from the federal New Democrats to the provincial Liberals. Thibeault is now energy minister.
Wynne said Thursday that “the acquittal does speak for itself.”
“I always believed that once the process unfolded we would see that there had been no wrongdoing and that’s exactly what the acquittal says,” the premier said, adding she’s eager to have Sorbara back in the campaign fold.
But Wynne, who testified at the trial as a Crown witness, said she is continuing to seek an apology from Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown over his comments about her role in the case.
Brown has been served with a notice of libel for erroneously saying that Ontario has “a sitting premier sitting in trial” and that she “stands trial” in Sudbury.
“Well, if he would like to see a conclusion to this whole situation, all he has to do is apologize and we move on,” Wynne said.
The Tory leader has dismissed her libel notice as a “baseless legal threat.”
“The longer the story stays in the news cycle, the worse it will likely be for them.”
LORNE BOZINOFF FORUM RESEARCH PRESIDENT