National Post (National Edition)
Liberals are running for second place
Talk to any currently serving or former politician and most of them, whatever their partisan affiliation, will agree on one thing: being in opposition sucks. Government is fun. You actually get to do stuff and influence things. Opposition, though, is a slog. All the drawbacks of a life in politics, none of the perks. That's why opposition parties try so hard to escape. The grass really is greener.
At least they say they're trying. Looking at a couple of Canada's opposition parties this week, it's hard to say with any certainty that they ever really intend to move up in life.
An Ontario election kicked off just a few days ago. Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives are way up in the polls. Campaigns obviously matter and who knows what other curveballs life has in store for all of us, but at the outset, with Ford way ahead, this really seems like an election to settle who'll get to be the official opposition and who will be in third.
The NDP, to its credit, is talking about issues that matter. Housing affordability. Health care. Long-term care. Mental-health support. It's all frontand-centre for its campaign. There's all the left-wing flourishes and touches you'd expect from an NDP campaign document, but overall, it's a pretty serious effort to offer voters a choice.
And, then there's the Liberals. Yikes.
In a clear sign they have the pulse of a province ravaged by economic woes and a literal plague, the Liberals' first major announcement — they billed it as “historic” — was a handgun ban that wouldn't work and isn't really in their jurisdiction anyway. And then there was Friday's announcement of an (optional) return of Grade 13 for high-school students.
Well, OK. Education certainly is in the provincial jurisdiction. And no one denies that education was disrupted, repeatedly and badly, during the pandemic. Still, in terms of broad public appeal, it seems weird to talk about something that will only benefit high school students, who were better able to adapt to the disruptions of the pandemic than their much-younger peers, instead of tackling some of the major structural issues that are affecting everyone in Ontario, as the NDP has wisely chosen to do.
The Liberals haven't released a platform yet. Maybe when they do, there will be a lot of serious, smart proposals in there. To date, we can only really judge them based on the announcements they've been choosing to make. Class size caps and discounted transit fares? Sure, OK, that makes sense (at least politically). But the rest? Meh. They really do seem to be running for second. That's not even a shot at them. It's an analysis. It really, really does seem like their entire strategy this election is to run against the NDP and regain the official opposition gig, and hopefully official party status while they're at it, and then try to win government next time. It might work. The polls do show the Liberals ahead of the NDP. But if you actually want to get out of opposition and form a government, and if you are blessed to be running against Doug Ford, of all people, choosing to audition for the understudy is a weird choice.
You see it at the federal level, too. The Conservatives, also in opposition, were quite upset this week after the prime minister apparently said a bad word in the House of Commons. If he did, it wasn't picked up on either the audio recordings of proceedings or the Hansard record, but the Conservatives were still pretty irritated at Justin Trudeau over his alleged potty mouth.
It would hardly be shocking to discover that the prime minister had loosed a few colourful metaphors at the precious ears of the Conservatives inside the House. He has literally done exactly that before. Peter Kent can fill you in on all the details. The PM is a guy who seems to veer from overly scripted non-answers to temperamental outbursts, and back. He's probably prone to over-scripting himself precisely because he knows full well he blows his stack sometimes.
And … who cares? Civility and decorum are good. We should all be civil and courteous. But do the Conservatives really think there is a single voter whose mind will be changed if we could get definitive audiovisual proof of Trudeau saying a bad word?
Trudeau specifically, and his government more broadly, are wide open for sharp, devastating criticisms that are entirely honest, real and substantive. With the NDP now in some awkward opposition-but-not-really relationship with the Liberals, the field is wide open for the Tories to provide ruthless, fact-based opposition for a government that often seems bewildered and overwhelmed by events and its own purpose. Stop talking about the swears, guys. No one who isn't voting for you already cares.
We have real problems in this country, and in its most populous province. A good many of these problems can be fairly laid at the feet of the incumbent leaders. There is plenty of opportunity here for an opposition party to turn itself into a government.
All they have to do is talk about issues that matter, and come up with reasonably coherent proposals to address those issues. Why is that too much to ask for?