Harper’s road to power runs through Ontario
But Premier Wynne sets out to thwart Tories with demand for provincial pension plan
The route to victory and a fourth term for Conservative Leader Stephen Harper lies through “battleground” Ontario — if he can get past a roadblock set up by Premier Kathleen Wynne.
She’s accusing him of “blatant disrespect for the people” by refusing to help establish a provincial pension plan her Liberals campaigned on in last year’s provincial election.
Harper portrays the plan — to be funded by mandatory contributions from workers and their employers in firms without private pension plans — as a job killer the middle class and businesses can ill afford.
“You’re bloody right,” he told reporters this week. “The Conservative government is not going to help bring in that kind of tax.”
Just like the Blue Jays in their playoff quest, both sides are swinging for the fences in this feud with Thomas Mulcair’s resurgent New Democrats watching intently.
“Right now we have the three parties really, really close in Ontario,” pollster Lorne Bozinoff of Forum Research Inc. said of the province, home to 121 of the 338 seats in the House of Commons.
“Just by simple definition it is a major battleground. It is hard to do well without doing well in Ontario just through the sheer math.”
After nine years in power and under fire for the sliding economy and allegations of corruption in his regime, Harper’s own job is on the line.
Wynne’s administration, eager to aid federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, has nothing to lose since the province’s relationship with Ottawa “couldn’t get worse,” as one insider puts it.
But the Conservatives have more at risk in a war of words with Wynne, even though her popularity is flagging, says Bozinoff.
“If she gets blamed, what does it matter? She’s not running.”
Wynne repeatedly notes she was elected on the pension promise and that the Canada Revenue Agency already helps Quebec and Saskatchewan with provincial pension plans.
Her effort, the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan slated to begin in 2017, enjoyed support from 59 per cent of 2,415 Toronto residents polled recently by Mainstreet Technologies.
The Conservative strategy
“Hold what we’ve got” Conservatives are confident they’ve charted the right course.
They see “two Ontarios”: the urban one, particularly Toronto, where Wynne’s Liberals are strong, and the rest, where they are not.
“It’s about getting the 40 per cent of people who don’t like Kathleen Wynne on board,” said Jason Lietaer, a Conservative strategist who headed the party’s war room in the last federal campaign.
“Her criticizing Stephen Harper outside Toronto probably helps him.”
“We’re probably not going to pick up any seats in the 416 but you never know with the vote splits. The target is, hold what we’ve got in the GTA and maybe win a few of the new seats,” added Lietaer.
The battlegrounds are Scarborough, Brampton, Mississauga and Etobicoke, particularly in ethnically diverse ridings that will be “dogfight territory.”
“Everybody thinks they’re competitive,” said Lietaer. “It’s tooth and nail.”
In the 416, the Conservatives are watching to see how the NDP fares on the campaign trail under a confident Mulcair.
“If they’re stronger in Toronto this time, it opens up possibilities for them and for us,” Lietaer said. “You never know with the vote splits” between the Liberals and New Democrats, which could draw enough voters from each other to allow Conservatives to squeak through, he says.
He contends that the feud between Wynne and Harper is being “overblown” in the early days of the marathon campaign, because “in almost every election there is some kind of federal-provincial sniping.”
He doesn’t think Harper, who has also taken shots at Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley, will be seen as going too far by picking on Wynne.
“I think she can handle herself. I don’t think people think of her as a shrinking violet. She’s shown an ability to mix it up,” Lietaer said.
He adds that Wynne’s strength could backfire on her federal counterpart.
“With an especially weak leader like Justin Trudeau, she’s stepping into the void. Wynne, by comparison, looks tougher and more ready, and I don’t think that helps Justin.”
The Liberal strategy
Win the “ground game” Liberal Party of Canada national director Jeremy Broadhurst says voters are going to write off Harper as a “grumpy malcontent” more bent on fighting than problem-solving if he continues attacking Wynne.
As Ontarians would expect, Wynne is sticking up for the province and standing up to the Harper Conservatives, who, Broadhurst said, “put zero effort into getting a working relationship with Ontario.”
“It’s only natural that the premier would say, ‘I’m looking for something better,” he added. “They now know that she is a fighter . . . and she is not going to back down or be bullied when it comes to her province.”
The Liberals, fuelled by polls showing a desire for a change in government, see all parts of Ontario as being “wide open,” and feel they can win 140 to 160 seats nationally, with a large percentage in Ontario.
The party says its “ground game” has been going for more than a year with volunteers and candidates knocking on thousands of doors.
Target ridings include Eglinton-Lawrence, where the Liberals want to defeat federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver, and the new seat of Spadina-Fort York where Liberal MP Adam Vaughan is facing New Democrat candidate Olivia Chow, who quit federal politics to run for mayor in Toronto last fall.
The Grits are also eyeing new ridings in Ottawa, recapturing seats in eastern Ontario and the Hamilton area. They insist the Conservatives are vulnerable in the GTA and 905 and southwestern Ontario, where Harper put a heavy emphasis in the closing days of the last election.
“They (the Conservatives) will throw everything they can (into the campaign) and, quite frankly, I think it is going to backfire because folks are going to smell the desperation. This is a government that is tired, it is out of energy . . . so they are in fear and attack mode,” Broadhurst said.
The NDP strategy
Put daycare in the spotlight New Democrats see the fighting between Harper and Wynne as helping their leader, Mulcair, at a time when polls suggest two-thirds of Canadians are looking for change.
“The average Canadian wants to see the prime minister and their premier treat each other with respect and trying to get along,” said NDP strategist Brad Lavigne.
That said, he acknowledges Harper’s dismissive attitude toward the provinces has been problematic, along with “the tone of his leadership.”
There are dangers for Trudeau’s
Liberals in aligning too closely with Wynne, Lavigne maintains, because of widespread concern about her plan to sell off a 60 per cent stake in Hydro One, the province’s transmission utility — an issue the government’s own internal polling has recognized.
“We’re hearing a lot about it at the door. A lot of people may want to use the federal election as a way of sending Wynne a signal. If you’re a non-Conservative voter, that will help New Democrat candidates,” Lavigne said.
The NDP will continue to frame the ballot question as a choice between four more years of Harper and Mulcair’s plan, which includes $15 daily daycare.
Lavigne doubts Harper’s Conservatives can summon the numbers for another majority.
“He would have to hold every seat he currently has and win more. We’re going to be focusing on Conservative ridings.”
The areas include southwestern Ontario and Toronto, part of precampaign swing by Mulcair last month, Oshawa — where the provincial party took a seat from the Conservatives in last year’s Ontario election — Peterborough, former riding of disgraced Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro, and Perth, where the NDP candidate is a former Liberal.