Wynne’s ‘go-bold’ re-election strategy

Let’s be brutally frank: The odds of Premier Kathleen Wynne and her Ontario Liberals winning re-election in 2018 are slim to non-existent. The reasons are numerous and obvious: Wynne’s personal popularity stands at just 12 per cent, the lowest of any premier in Canada; the Liberals trail the Conservatives badly in province-wide polls and even fall behind the Tories in their traditional key stronghold of Toronto; her handling of key issues, such as hydro is hugely unpopular; and the cry of “time for change” is powerful given the Liberals will have been in office 15 years come voting day June 7, 2018. Within the party itself, the mood is grim. Many sitting Liberal MPPs from the 905 area and suburban 416 ridings, such as Scarborough, believe their seats are already lost. Local riding organizers have virtually given up. Campaign coffers are exceedingly low.

“The fact is the numbers do not lie and the ability to win the next election is in grave, grave doubt,” Greg Sorbara, who managed Dalton McGuinty’s three winning election campaigns, said last week on TVO’s The Agenda. Sorbara said the anger toward Wynne, who he backed in the 2013 leadership race, “is palpable” outside of Toronto.

Despite all the negativity, though, Wynne plans to stick around and lead her dispirited troops into the next election. Indeed, Wynne is considering an aggressive — and progressive — policy agenda that her senior advisers have already started to quietly promote.

Their goal is to win back middle-class working people who, rightly or wrongly, feel Wynne has largely ignored them and their concerns about jobs and the economy.

As they see it, such an agenda can appeal to enough traditional urban Liberals and NDP supporters wary of seeing the Conservatives in power that Wynne might be able to eke out a minority victory.

“Go bold or go home” is how some key Liberals describe the next 14 months leading up to the election.

The initial signs of the new plan will emerge in the April budget.

First, Wynne may announce a raise in the minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2018. A Forum Research poll last fall found 72 per cent of Liberals nationally and 84 per cent of New Democrats support the idea. The current minimum wage for full-time workers in Ontario is $11.40 an hour and will increase to $11.60 an hour on Oct. 6. Alberta, which already has the highest minimum wage in Canada at $12.20 an hour, has promised to raise it to $15 an hour by next year. Second, Wynne is expected to move ahead with introducing a guaranteed annual income for low-wage workers and welfare recipients — with no strings attached. The first step would be a three-year pilot project that would set the basic income at about $1,690 a month for a single person. The non-taxable money would be available to people aged 18 to 65. Numerous studies have recommended such a plan as a way to help alleviate poverty without unduly increasing government costs.

Third, the government may announce sweeping changes in Ontario’s labour and employment laws to address issues ranging from precarious work for young people to the rise in layoffs and lost job security in today’s business environment. The changes stem from the Changing Workplace Review, a major independent report that Wynne commissioned early last year. The proposals are described as the most dramatic in a generation.

In addition, Wynne will try to convince voters she’s got a handle on the economy by tabling the first balanced budget in years in April. Finance Minister Charles Sousa has promised the budget will be packed with measures to help curb fast-rising home prices, especially in the Greater Toronto Area.

In theory, the strategy seems sounds. In practice, though, voters may have simply tuned out Wynne and are no longer listening to anything she says.

For her part, Wynne has tried to remove the most virulent criticism of her government by promising a 25-percent cut in hydro rates that kick in this summer and by flip-flopping on her initial support for road tolls on the Don Valley and Gardiner expressways, a move that panders to 905 voters.

Unfortunately, Wynne has tried several times over the past year to gain some traction with voters. She has shuffled her cabinet, offered free university tuition, put a bit more money into health care and more.

None of it has worked. All that desperate Liberals can hope for is that this latest “bold” strategy starts to break that pattern.