Altered state: Legislature resumes amid Tory turmoil
MPPs are back from break, and almost everything has changed
What a difference 10 weeks can make.
When MPPs rose for the winter break on Dec. 14, Patrick Brown was leader of the Progressive Conservatives.
Brown’s election team and his carefully crafted People’s Guarantee campaign manifesto were intact; the Liberal reelection effort was being led by Patricia Sorbara; and the New Democrats’ campaign hopes lay with Michael Balagus.
Fast-forward to today as parliamentarians return to Queen’s Park — and all of that has changed.
Brown was forced out as leader early on Jan. 25, just hours after his senior aides resigned en masse following CTV News’ reported allegations of sexual impropriety involving teenage girls.
Premier Kathleen Wynne has replaced Sorbara, one of her most trusted aides and a key architect of the Liberals’ 2014 election win, in a campaign shakeup. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath has placed Balagus, her chief of staff and campaign director, on leave over accusations he did not take women’s complaints about a groping cabinet minister “seriously” while chief of staff to Manitoba premiers Gary Doer and Greg Selinger.
All of this has happened against the backdrop of a looming June 7 election.
But no party is in more turmoil than the Conservatives.
The Tories have been thrust into a March 10 leadership race where former MPP Christine Elliott, runnerup to Brown in the 2015 contest, exToronto councillor Doug Ford, rookie PC candidate Caroline Mulroney, anti-sex-education activist Tanya Granic Allen, and, in a bizarre twist, Brown himself, are vying for the crown.
All except Brown oppose the carbon tax that bankrolled the big-ticket promises in the “People’s Guarantee,” including more funding for mental health, child-care breaks and income-tax cuts.
A recent Campaign Research public-opinion survey showed that dumping Brown appears to have helped the party’s fortunes, regardless of who leads them into the spring vote.
Elliott, Ford, and Mulroney each poll ahead of Wynne and Horwath, but pollster Eli Yufest said the situation is volatile.
Indeed, on Friday, interim PC leader Vic Fedeli turfed Brown from caucus.
“Shortly after becoming interim leader, I asked Patrick Brown to step aside from the PC caucus,” Fedeli said in a statement.
“The Legislature is set to resume sitting on Tuesday . . . following Family Day,” he said.
“Mr. Brown was notified that he has been removed from the PC caucus effective immediately.”
In part that was because the Tories did not want the distraction of a discredited former leader in the House — even one who has denied any wrongdoing and vowed to clear his name.
But Brown was having none of it and jumped into the race for his old post just two hours before the deadline for entry.
Wynne, for her part, doesn’t really want to talk about her former rival across the floor because the PC spectacle has meant the Liberals are get- ting precious little media attention.
“There are lots of questions for the Conservatives that are swirling around the situation and, really, it is up to them and their leadership to answer those questions,” the premier said last week.
“We cannot answer those questions. It is up to the (Progressive) Conservatives to do that.”
The government is instead hoping the weeks leading up to an expected March budget will be spent talking about the Liberal “OHIP+” pharmacare program and last month’s increase to the minimum wage, which is now $14 an hour.
“We’re going into a budget cycle, as you know, so that will be very much a part of what we’ll be doing,” the premier said, adding trade issues will also be top of mind.
“One of the first things that we will be doing when we go back to the Legislature is introducing legislation that will enable us, as a province, to put in place policies to counteract the ‘Buy America’ policies that we see popping up in the United States,” she said.
“We’re challenged by the New York ‘Buy America’ policy that is . . . narrower than they had first intended. It’s about government procurement, but the reality is that if there are those protectionist initiatives taken in the States, then we have to have the ability to respond.”