NDP’s aim shows Tories may really be favourites
Here’s proof that the Progressive Conservatives may finally be on the road to forming the next provincial government:
Nevermind the public opinion polls showing them out in front. Forget the positive reviews of their just-released election platform.
No, the biggest proof point is that the third-place New Democratic Party is suddenly taking aim at Patrick Brown’s official opposition PCs. And the NDP is playing hardball.
Traditionally, the party of public policy, Ontario’s New Democrats have lately shifted to playing the game of political criminality.
They fought (and lost) the last election by trying to cast the Liberal premier as the personification of corruption, and they are poised to reprise that role in the coming campaign.
With a vengeance. And a difference.
Now, it’s not just Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals but Brown’s Tories whose ethical conduct is fodder for taunts on the floor of the legislature. Once again feeding public perceptions that all politics is evil, the NDP has demanded that special outside prosecutors be brought in to oversee possible PC campaign abuses.
The goal this time is to tarnish the Tories before they can even win power. Bear in mind that the NDP is in direct competition with the PCs in two-way races across southwestern Ontario where the faltering Liberals are no longer in contention.
New Democrats smell blood. And bloodying the Tories is the best way to beat them.
The NDP’s self-appointed guardian of political probity is himself a practiced politician: Gilles Bisson has collected an MPP’s salary for 27 years, outlasting all rivals for the job of house leader responsible for parliamentary tactics.
On Monday, Bisson rose in the legislature to call attention to a police investigation into allegations of criminal fraud in a disputed PC nomination race in the Hamilton area. And demanded that the government escalate the “scandal” to a higher level:
“Will the attorney general hand the Conservative nomination criminal case to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada?” Bisson asked with dramatic flair.
Bisson has been there before. Back in 2014 he wrote to the Ontario Provincial Police and the chief electoral officer demanding that they launch an investigation into alleged Liberal chicanery in a Sudbury byelection.
He wasn’t alone. Deputy PC Leader Steve Clark joined him in demanding the OPP review the taped words of a top Liberal staffer and local fundraiser, twisting idle political talk into a far-fetched case of bribery.
The conceit of politicians like Clark and Bisson is that people would assume the worst of Liberals but presume the best of Tories and New Democrats — as if they were any better at the nominating, fundraising, horse-trading, horse-whispering, and assorted dark arts of politics.
The PCs are now hoisted on their own political petard, squirming as Bisson digs it in deeper. Never mind that New Democrats were embroiled in their own embarrassing nomination scandal allegations in 2013, when Scarborough-Guildwood riding activists accused party officials of dirty tricks.
All the supposed Liberal impropriety alleged by Bisson in Sudbury came to naught — first when the OPP’s criminal case collapsed, and again when lesser provincial offences under the Election Act were thrown out by a judge in October. That didn’t stop Bisson from flying up to Sudbury, hovering around the courtroom, and then parsing the judge’s ruling to claim the Liberals lost in the “court of public opinion” (thanks in no small measure to his mischievous rhetoric).
New Democrats are normally forgiving of the Progressive Conservatives — on the theory that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. But with the Tories now leading the polls, the enemy of my enemy now gets an enema.
Bisson already knew the answer when he posed his theatrical question Monday, hoping to embarrass the PCs with a purely political, not legal, stunt.
As Attorney General Yasir Naqvi replied, the Hamilton police service is leading the investigation “which is independent from the government and from the ministry . . . we should respect that process.”
If any criminal charges are contemplated “I’m fairly confident we will take the same step and make sure that the Public Prosecution Service of Canada is the one dealing with that matter,” Naqvi said.
As the Star’s Robert Benzie has reported, the criminal probe of fraud and forgery allegations involve a disputed PC nomination race last May in Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas, and it will extend into 2018, an election year.
A separate civil action against the party by the runner-up, Hamilton lawyer Vikram Singh, alleges “wrongful insertion of false ballots,” naming Brown and top PC officials.
The Conservatives have denied any wrongdoing and the allegations have not been proven in court. To repeat, not proven in court. Not to be confused with the “court of public opinion,” as the NDP likes to say — and as the Tories used to say.