Why Kathleen Wynne is deceptively unpopular
Mid-term blues have hit Ontario’s Liberal government hard.
Voters are giving the opposition a second look. Kathleen Wynne is waning in the polls. At the midpoint in the premier’s four-year mandate, a planned cabinet shuffle to give her tired front bench a fresh face will look skin deep.
So what happens when time’s up in two years?
The predictions are not as predictable as they might seem. Despite her sagging popularity, no one is counting Wynne out, least of all the Tories trying to replace her.
Interviewed for a column last week, Wynne insisted she would run again in 2018, and that Liberal support should not be underestimated as her policies take root. Such self-serving rhetoric is commonplace for politicians, but her comments may be more than mere bravado.
To understand how Wynne’s Liberals could possibly make a political comeback, recall that between elections few voters pay attention to Canada’s second-biggest government. Despite the unrivalled power and influence of Queen’s Park in their daily lives — hospitals, schools, policing, transportation, energy — people remain oblivious to the big picture.
In ordinary times, Ontarians are in referendum mode, rendering judgment on the incumbent alone: Ask about the premier’s performance, and they tend to give him or her a poor grade because it’s just a question asked by a pollster. But ask voters in the polling booth if they are ready to swap in a Progressive Conservative or NDP government and they shift from a referendum mindset to an election dynamic.
Will they be ready in 2018 to support the newish, youngish, PC leader who is slowly, painstakingly, making himself heard? Impossible to say, for Patrick Brown remains an enigma more than a year after taking over the job. Voters are giving him high grades even though most can’t even name him.
Although Brown remains a blank canvas — unknown but unthreat- ening compared with his unloved predecessor, Tim Hudak — the same cannot be said for Wynne as premier. What to make of her embarrassingly low approval ratings?
A recent Forum Research poll found a mere 20 per cent of Ontarians approved of her premiership, with two-thirds disapproving. Brown had better ratings, but more than half of respondents didn’t know enough about him to offer an opinion.
Those numbers suggest Wynne is a polarizing figure, but she is being measured against a phantom opponent in polling terms. Her low approval rating might be bruising for Wynne’s ego, but it’s not all bad news.
Pollsters know that white, male, rural Tory voters detest her far more than they disliked Dalton McGuinty before her — dragging down Wynne’s ratings. But if these Tory men were never going to vote Liberal in the first place, their stronger antipathy to the premier will be irrelevant on voting day.
What counts is whether prospective and progressive voters stray from the Liberal fold to the NDP. Will Wynne’s controversial decision to privatize Hydro One be a votedetermining issue in 2018? Despite my own opposition to the sale, it’s hard to imagine it enduring three years after the decision was made, given how smoothly (and profitably) it has proceeded to date.
As for Brown, he is rapidly repositioning himself — embracing samesex marriage (despite opposing it as an MP under ex-PM Stephen Harper), carbon pricing (despite past opposition), and an expanded CPP (opposed under Harper). The challenge for Brown, however, is not just remaking himself for centrist voters, but retaining his right-wing base on voting day.
His newfound support for carbon pricing has caused more internal PC tumult than expected. The more Brown shows his modern, moderate face on climate change, the more he digs himself into a hole among bedrock Tories. Global warming is an unwelcome wedge issue within the party, and could worsen by 2018.
By then, the Liberal budget deficit will have disappeared as a target, and a new provincial pension plan (which tests well among all voters, as opposed to business owners) could be in place. A weak NDP is also starting to worry the Tories, depriving them of three-way races in which they often squeak through. Redistribution of riding boundaries to reflect urban growth will also be unkind to the PCs.
At mid-term, there is little doubt the Liberals are feeling blue. Whether that translates two years from now into the province voting blue — the traditional Tory colour — is an entirely different question. And impossible to predict.
In my Tuesday column on reconciliation with indigenous people, I described legislative Speaker Dave Levac as a former high school principal. The Speaker has called me out of order: In fact, Levac is a former elementary school principal — an even better training ground for keeping recalcitrant MPPs in line. Withdrawn, Mr. Speaker . . . Martin Regg Cohn’s Ontario politics column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn