Brown moves to reclaim centre
Patrick Brown is rebranding. And repositioning.
At first, he seduced Ontario’s PCs by cosying up to social conservatives who oppose sex-education and gay marriage. That’s where the votes were last spring, and that’s how he won the leadership of the Progressive Conservatives — still largely a rural rump — in a romp.
This week, after winning a seat in a summer byelection, Brown is taking centre stage in the legislature. And he’s playing to a wider audience, by trying to reclaim Ontario’s political centre.
It will be a long march back from the opposition wilderness in rural Ontario to retake the big cities, notably Toronto. But Brown knows where the votes are.
Let’s see how far he’ll go to win Ontario’s next general election in 2018. And how much he’ll distance himself from the social conservatives who helped crown him leader not so long ago.
Despite his voting record as a backbencher in Ottawa — trying to reopen the abortion debate and opposing gay marriage — Brown insists he was never a right-wing zealot. Merely a right-wing pragmatist, which is a polite way for politicians to repurpose their opportunism. Now, the Tory leader is recasting himself as the personification of the post-partisan politician.
“When the Liberals act in the best interests of Ontario, we’ll be the first to applaud them,” he proclaimed Monday, posing his first question as Opposition leader. “When the government doesn’t act in the best interests of Ontario, we will hold them accountable.”
Mindful of the moderation that characterizes Ontario’s electorate, Brown is trying to remake the PCs into a kinder, gentler right-wing party. He will target the province’s political sweet spot by selling himself as the soul of sweet reason.
Gone is the tough, intemperate tone set by his predecessor, Tim Hudak, who rattled voters in the last election by warning of mass firings in the public sector. To drive the point home, Brown has banished Hudak from the front benches — an unprecedented slight for a former leader — relegating him to a seat behind him and off to the side, out of sight and out of mind.
Beyond distancing himself from Hudak, Brown is reintroducing himself to Ontarians as a different kind of politician . . . someone who can be taken at his word.
“We’re going to be sincere — I believe there is a thirst for sincerity in Ontario,” he announced at his first news conference of the legislative session.
That’s an ambitious undertaking for a politician who entered politics in his early 20s and, nearly two decades later, is still climbing the greasy flagpole. Based on Brown’s declared objective of sincerity, here is my objectively (and sincerely) non-partisan advice about how to be believable:
Don’t rile social conservatives by pretending to share their trumpedup fears about sex education, then shrug your shoulders when they take you at your word (or look the other way when your closest backer, MPP Monte McNaughton, stirs it up again). The PCs didn’t shrink from updating Ontario’s sex-educa- tion curriculum when they were in power in 1998 — the last time it was touched.
Don’t pretend to oppose the privatization of Hydro One when that’s what your party proposed before the last election. It may be unpopular, but no one in Ontario believes the Tories wouldn’t do it in power.
Don’t pander to voters who hate paying taxes when you know better. Ontario’s PCs fought hysterically against the HST a few years ago, even though they had previously backed it, and the Conservative government in Ottawa was promoting it.
Get serious about road tolls, which are the ultimate in market economics — price signals to allocate scarce resources. Don’t just talk about traffic congestion, lead the way with road pricing that any serious fiscal conservative could support.
Don’t pretend climate change can be ignored, as the Tories have until now. Listen to your role model, former Quebec premier Jean Charest, who supports putting a price on pollution so that markets can respond.
To his credit, Brown is wooing Ontario’s firefighters (firmly in the Liberals’ pocket until now). He is talking to francophones in their own language (he is much more bilingual than his rivals). He is reaching out to ethnic groups long ignored by the Conservatives (and paying attention to the police carding issue which he likens, privately, to racial profiling).
Being Opposition leader is the most thankless job in Ontario politics. People will pay him little heed until just before the next election.
But Brown keeps surprising people, and is not to be underestimated. Now is his chance to raise his game — not by posing as a sincere politician, but by proposing serious policies. Martin Regg Cohn’s Ontario politics column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn