NDP, CONSERVATIVES IN HIGH-STAKES SHOWDOWN FOR WINDSOR-AREA SEATS
It’s the Progressive Conservatives or the NDP for voter Sandy Gagnon of Windsor.
“He wants to change things as far as hydro and health care,” Gagnon said in Kingsville last week, where PC Leader Doug Ford met supporters. “Those are important.”
But she also believes the NDP would be “more concerned about this area.”
Across the province and Southwestern Ontario, the provincial election appears to be down to two very different parties. In Windsor and Essex County, the stakes are high.
We could leap from three thirdparty MPPs to three government members — and at least one cabinet minister. Or we could be left with three MPPs from a party that differs starkly from the government.
Early Tuesday the Conservatives and NDP were tied in popular support, with the Conservatives at 36.6 per cent and the NDP at 36.4 per cent, according to CBC’s Poll Tracker, which aggregates publicly available data. The Conservatives were projected to win because they lead in areas that have more seats. The Liberals were at 20 per cent and heading for defeat. Later Tuesday a poll by Pollara for Maclean’s found NDP support at 43 per cent, Conservatives at 32 and Liberals at 17, with the NDP poised to form a minority government.
The NDP currently hold all three seats in Windsor and Essex County and two in London. The Conservatives hold all four rural ridings between.
The only Liberal incumbent, former deputy premier Deb Matthews in London, isn’t running, and the party had difficulty even finding candidates in the region. NDP leader Andrea Horwath was in Windsor in March, before the election began, and she returns Wednesday. She’ll also go to Leamington, part of the riding of Chatham-Kent-Leamington. She has also been to London, Sarnia-Lambton and Lambton-Kent-Middlesex, where the party hopes longtime Warwick Township Mayor Todd Case can beat Conservative incumbent Monte McNaughton. Conservative Leader Doug Ford was the first leader here after the election started, coming to Lakeshore and Kingsville last week. He’s also been to Chatham twice.
While the NDP is expected to win in Windsor, the riding of Essex was considered potentially vulnerable when the campaign began.
NDP incumbent Taras Natyshak won more than 60 per cent of the vote in the last election. But the Conservatives had over 40 per cent support provincially and led in the southwest. And the federal riding of Essex was Conservative for 11 years, until 2015.
The party’s candidate in Essex, Chris Lewis, is a former Kingsville councillor who ran for mayor in 2010, and a former volunteer firefighter and hockey coach whose family owns a successful local business, LiquiForce. But now, the massive Conservative lead provincially has disappeared, and the NDP leads in the southwest, with 42 per cent support compared to 37 per cent for the Conservatives. The room at Colasanti’s, where Ford met supporters, was full, but he spent half his time in Lakeshore attacking the NDP, a sure sign he knows it’s a fight.
And some people considering voting for the party have reservations about Ford.
“I’m not sure he really has a platform,” one woman said.
“If you look at his family roots, they’re not the greatest,” said Allan Ball, a 70-year-old retired truck driver from Leamington, referring to Ford’s brother Rob, the late hard-drinking, cracksmoking mayor of Toronto. “And he’s got no experience, other than being a (Toronto) councillor.”
Now, Natyshak is expected to win, and, if the NDP wins June 7, they could wrest more Conservative seats in the Southwest. That would help Windsor and Essex County.
“Any regional concentration of people singing from the same songsheet will give us greater opportunity to raise the issues that are impacting the region,” said Kieran McKenzie, campaign manager for NDP incumbent Lisa Gretzky in Windsor West. While the talk has been about more hospital beds, fixing Highway 3 and including Windsor in high speed rail, the biggest issue across the southwest is the loss of 300,000 high-paying manufacturing jobs in the last decade. And neither party has a comprehensive plan to address that. The unemployment rate in Windsor is 5.5 per cent, lower than the provincial and national averages. But look at broader measurements of economic health, and you see the impact of that loss, says Matt Marchand, CEO of the Windsor-Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce. Household income dropped 6.4 per cent between 2005 and 2015, the biggest decline of any large city. The labour participation rate, those working or looking for work, dropped 6.8 per cent to 60.4 per cent, tied for lowest in Ontario. We have the highest rate of children living in low income households, 24 per cent. And there is still a net outflow of people ages 18 to 44.
Ford, who inherited his family’s label business, says he’ll lower the corporate tax rate and hydro rates, fight the federally mandated carbon tax and reduce regulation.
He also says he’ll eliminate the Jobs and Prosperity Fund, calling it “corporate welfare.” The fund has provided tens of millions of dollars for expansion and hiring at several local companies, including Chrysler’s minivan plant, Bonduelle Canada and Highbury Canco. The party says it will keep regional funds like the Southwestern Ontario Development Fund.
Horwath, whose father was an autoworker, says she’ll invest $57 million in skilled trades apprenticeships, create a stream within the Jobs and Prosperity Fund to promote manufacturing research and development and work with the Canadian Automotive Partnership Council and Ontario’s new Chief Investment Officer to create a “single window” for automotive and manufacturing investment. “Little tweaks here and there,” Mike Moffatt, assistant professor of business, economics and public policy at Western University, calls many of these promises. “None of the parties have any sort of public vision on what they see for the next 10 to 15 years for Southwestern Ontario, how they would move manufacturing forward, how they would accelerate jobs in other industries, how we are going to create prosperity for the region,” he said.
The issue is “more than a fund here and a fund there,” agreed Marchand.
“We need a government that understands the power of the auto sector and the manufacturing sector,” he said. “We need a dedicated auto strategy like Michigan.”
Agri-food is the other key industry in Southwestern Ontario, and Canada has a new opportunity for access to some of the fastest growing countries in the world: the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
“How do we market Ontario agricultural products to Asia and how to we actually get them to markets? How do we use that to get more manufacturing jobs or agri-food jobs?” asked Moffatt. “I haven’t heard it mentioned once by any of the leaders.” Moffatt would also like to hear what parties would do to help colleges and universities attract even more talented international students and convert more research into businesses and commercial products to drive economic development. Finally, Marchand believes cities need help addressing the blight left by the hard times. The chamber led a proposal for a government fund called Reinvest in Our Communities that would support private investment in blighted properties. It’s modelled on a fund in Michigan that has helped revitalize Detroit.