Ontario’s opposition must look within
The new year is shaping up as a dismal one for the many critics of Ontario Premier Doug Ford, not because they will find themselves short of things to complain about, but because there is no real alternative on the horizon.
Ford has been his own worst enemy at times, although not nearly as often as his detractors would have you believe. Luckily for him, the opposition parties have been his best friends.
The NDP is discovering that being the official opposition isn’t as easy as it looks. For years, party leader Andrea Horwath was considered personally likable but not enough voters backed her party to let her form government. Her angry, constant personal attacks on Ford have ended that dissonance. A recent Campaign Research poll had her party declining to 25 per cent support, putting the NDP behind the leaderless Liberals.
The Liberals themselves are in such bad shape that disarray is a stretch goal. The party has only seven seats in the legislature, no obvious leadership saviour, weak fundraising and a debt of at least $7 million. A recent tweet from the party showed five party workers sitting at tables in what looks like a basement, and the message was, “This is what rebuilding looks like.”
Ford has acted on so many files, so rapidly, that the other parties can’t mount a sustained attack. As they would see it, one outrage follows another so quickly that it’s hard to keep up. Ford has kept campaign promises to end cap and trade, reduce the tax on gasoline, eliminate provincial income tax for low-wage workers and approve more long-term care beds. It’s his side projects that have gotten him into trouble, things like reducing the size of Toronto city council by half and championing an old family friend as OPP commissioner.
Ford can take comfort in the fact that the mistakes he has made so far have occurred a long time before the next election. In 2019, he needs to focus on the big stuff and dial his outsized personality back a bit. Still, Ford has a big majority, solid party fundraising and a reasonable record of achievement. He has been criticized for not yet having a plan for everything, but his themes of making life more affordable, balancing the budget and encouraging business growth are easy to discern.
The Liberals and the NDP, by contrast, both face major challenges of leadership and direction, problems that will not be easy to overcome in time for the next election.
Some Liberals are pressing for a spring and summer leadership race, with a winner chosen before this fall’s federal election. That could help with the fundraising problem, but it’s difficult to imagine who might run. None of its current tiny roster of MPPs seems an overwhelming choice.
Alternatively, the Liberals could wait until after the federal election and hope that an MP of some substance is culled by the voters. Leading a rebuilding party is not an appealing job, unless you happen to be unemployed. Former leader Kathleen Wynne could do the party a final service by resigning and creating a byelection opportunity for a new leader from outside the provincial caucus.
Then there is the issue of what the Liberals stand for. Last year they ran on an NDP platform and were blown out of the water, so that’s out. There is room in the political centre but the Liberals’ recent history of profligate spending and social program expansion will make that a tough sell.
The NDP is in better shape, but it’s a long way from electability and the party’s post-election sag in the polls should be worrying.
Andrea Horwath has now fought and lost three elections. Earning official Opposition status in 2018 seems like something, but it came at a time of historic Liberal collapse. Horwath could have won last year’s election, but she failed. If the NDP ever sees itself as being in power, it will need a new leader and a consistent policy approach.
The former heir apparent was Jagmeet Singh, now failing spectacularly as leader of the federal NDP. If he was regarded as the provincial party’s brightest light, it tells one a lot about the luminosity of his former colleagues.
It’s difficult to say what the NDP believes in. In the 2014 election, the party ran a cautious campaign based on minor pocketbook issues. Last year, they desperately tried to best the Liberals’ scheme of unaffordable social programs and deficit spending. Where does the NDP go next?
In 2019, both the Liberals and NDP would be well advised to worry a bit less about Doug Ford and quite a bit more about getting their own parties back in form.