Three lessons that need to be learned from Ford’s victory
An early political mentor used to say, “There are important lessons to be learned from surprising elections. Study them. You’ll know how to do better the next time.” This surprising election has at least three.
In a first-past-the-post system with more than two parties, even when more than 60 per cent of voters oppose the winning party, they can lose. In more than nearly 20 ridings, Liberals or New Democrats lost to Ford Nation by less than 12 per cent — a not insurmountable gap in a change election.
We would have a different government if progressives had not fought each other harder than they fought a premier wannabe whose brother’s widow alleged he defrauded her children to fund his extravagant lifestyle. Some premier, some role model.
It is not clear how this can be remedied. When Stephen Harper was elected with a majority made up of 38 per cent of voters, it was galling. For some, proportional representation is the answer; for others it is consolidation on the centre-left. Each would be hard.
Perhaps a pilot project might be shared nomination contests. New Democrats, Liberals and Greens could vote together on candidates selected by each tribe, on condition they agreed to support the winning candidate. California is using a similar system this year.
The second surprise is how bitter and disengaged are 4-out-of-10 voters. The stay-at-homes appear as a greater number of “a pox on all your houses” voters, not simply the lazy. Refusing to participate in an election is a troubling sign in a healthy democracy. If the good and disillusioned leave the battlefield, the irrational, the angry and the hateful choose the governors.
When Doug Ford chuckled at his angry young men bellowing “Lock her Up!,” it surely sent a frisson down the spine of everyone who today prays for the survival of American democratic institutions. The parties are to blame for dumbing down political discourse so it appeals to the vulgar and the bewildered. Time to up the collective game.
The final surprise is how parties in government have contributed to this slide in our politics from civility, intelligence and an understanding that an opponent is not a blood enemy. The Harris government ripped the brains out of the Ontario public service very deliberately. As one veteran of the era reflected to me sadly, “We went from thinking and advising to being shouted at and marked on task implementation. More of us should have quit.”
The Liberals continued the dumbing down, replacing policy expertise within the OPS with kids from local campaigns anointed as “senior policy advisers” in ministers’ office, often paid six-figure salaries.
The McGuinty government increased the “short pants set” significantly after firing most of those it inherited from the Harris years. The Wynne government took the process to the lowest level ever, with 578 tax-paid, politically exempt staff members at the time of its defeat. There were ministers being served by no less than 25 kids carrying hilariously grandiloquent titles for people only a few years out of school.
This is not only an abuse of taxpayers dollars, it is a dumb way to run a government.
You do not get continuity, or the best advice. You do not get well-researched options to choose from. You get communications strategies for launch day that in granular detail ensure that the premier will shine.
This premier’s own communications staff were the laughing stock of their peers across Canada for their obsession with backdrops, and colour and guest diversity over content and meaning.
So let’s take these three lessons: how to ensure the majority get a government they want, chosen after a campaign on values and ideas more than insult, then a program executed by a public service proud of the respect in which its professionalism is held.
Let’s go back to the future: Bill Davis was the last premier to do it well. At 89, he is still more than willing to offer counsel to those who ask.
Robin V. Sears, a principal at Earnscliffe Strategy Group, was an NDP strategist for 20 years.