Ontario PC leadership candidates talk change
Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leadership hopefuls gathered at a breakfast meet-and-greet in Ottawa agreeing that a party that has lost four consecutive provincial elections needs a change in culture should it want to form the next government of Ontario.
Nepean-Carleton MPP Lisa MacLeod came out like a lion in her hometown just one week into the race. The breakfast on Saturday was held by the Ottawa West-Nepean PC riding association, where Macleod helped campaign for two-time candidate Randall Denley, who is now an Ottawa Citizen columnist.
“I know many people here are disappointed. We worked very hard specifically in this riding in Ottawa West-Nepean to support Randall Denley not once but twice and we lost,” MacLeod said.
It was clear to both of them in the second weekend of the last campaign that Denley wouldn’t get the seat, but it was on the Thurs- day before the election that both MacLeod and Denley found out on Twitter that then-party leader Tim Hudak had announced that a PC government would not fund lightrail transit in Ottawa.
For MacLeod, it was indicative of a party that made decisions without consulting those who could vet the ideas.
“The party platform was released specifically for our city without us having any input into that,” she told the crowd. “We need to ensure that everyday members of our party have a seat at the decisionmaking table during a campaign period so that no more surprises occur on the campaign trail, so that people like Randall Denley and myself don’t find out via Twitter or via newspaper that the party has taken a drastic decision in a policy matter in our community.”
MacLeod said no decision on party platform should be made without a strong voice from both party executive and elected members of the party in the legislature.
Whitby- Oshawa MPP Chris- tine Elliott agreed that campaign teams that decide party platforms need to be reflective of all members — candidates, caucus, members at large and youth members.
For Elliott, the party needs to look at constitutional change, but she also wants the leader of the party to commit to connecting with the voter base.
“It’s not about divide-and-conquer politics anymore. It’s not about rhetoric. It’s about getting things done that matter most for people,” Elliott said.
Monte McNaughton, MPP for Lambton-Kent-Middlesex, blamed a top-down party culture for a “disastrous” campaign run on faithbased education funding in 2007 and a promise of 100,000 job cuts in 2014 — ideas approved by the same small group of party insiders.
McNaughton said he wants to have all party members vote on a platform before it’s presented to the public, but that won’t be enough to stop the spate of bad ideas coming from a disconnected group.
“We have to fire people who have
It’s not about divide-andconquer politics anymore. ... It’s about getting things done that matter most for people.
been involved in the last four campaigns.”
Vic Fedeli, the MPP for Nipissing, said that the party has to restore pride that’s been lost by its members. He had 1,000 fewer lawn signs go up in the lead-up to this summer’s provincial election because his constituents told him they were ashamed to identify as PCs.
Barrie Tory MP Patrick Brown, the only leadership candidate who is not a member of provincial parliament, said the party alienated its voter base in the last provincial election.
“We blew an election that we should have won,” Brown said. “When every poll suggested Ontarians wanted change at Queen’s Park, we have to look at ourselves in the mirror. We became the ballot question. We scared away conservatives.”
Had the party run the last election just against the proposed Liberal pension tax or against hydro prices, Brown said, he thinks the PCs would have won.
“But we didn’t. We did a pretty good job of finding groups that we could break our relationships with,” he said.
“Firefighters, police, nurses — groups that worked their tails off to get our prime minister elected — worked against us provincially.”
Brown pointed to a discrepancy in party allegiance at the provincial and federal levels — the federal party has more than 100,000 members in Ontario; the provincial party has fewer than 10,000.
“It should all be one family. I want to bring conservatives back together.”