With ballots up in the air, Ontario will feel leaders’ love
Canada’s most populous province is the toughest battleground in the federal election that kicked off Wednesday. Not because Ontario is so vote-rich (it is), or its voters so very rich (as the rest of Canada wrongly believes).
What makes the Greater Toronto Area and Southern Ontario so irresistible is that they are so unpredictable at election time. If we are ground zero, it is because our ballots remain so up in the air.
Hence the stopovers by the rival leaders on their first day. And coming soon to a campaign stop near you in the GTA.
Decades ago, Ontarians were loyally Liberal federally, and predictably Progressive Conservative provincially. Recently, they have been more mercurial in their choice of premier, turning dramatically from a Bob Rae to a Mike Harris, and from a Kathleen Wynne to a Doug Ford.
As for the truism that Ontario voters like to alternate between one party at Queen’s Park and another on Parliament Hill, it isn’t always true. Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberals won a majority in 2015, mere months after Wynne achieved the same feat provincially in 2014.
Today, Trudeau is trying to harness antipathy toward Ford’s Tories at Queen’s Park, hoping it will translate into fear of Andrew Scheer’s federal Conservatives. While much election commentary focuses on the Ford factor, it may be a misreading of our premier’s potency — and visibility.
Ford is now lying low, hiding in the shadows in hopes of being overshadowed by his federal counterpart. He has delayed the legislature’s customary September recall until after the election and dialled down his public appearances to stay out of the headlines.
After being booed in public — notably at the Raptors victory parade where Trudeau was cheered — Ford is reluctant to be seen and heard in midcampaign. Nor can Scheer afford more anti-Ford fallout.
The premier has only himself to blame for becoming such an obvious target. Within weeks of taking power last summer, he took aim at Trudeau by unfairly blaming the federal government for an influx of refugees. And he crusaded against the federal carbon levy with a doomed court challenge and a provocative public crusade, culminating with his government’s botched effort to impose anti-tax stickers on every gas pump in the province so as to “stick it to the Liberals.”
By taking so many shots at Trudeau’s government, Ford opened the door to a counterattack. But hostility to an unpopular premier only goes so far in a federal election.
It is hard to imagine a federal PM dwelling for very long on Ford’s foibles in a six-week campaign devoted to national issues, having already spent much of the summer lamenting Ontario’s government. Moreover, Trudeau has his own Ontario baggage going into this campaign — quite apart from his federal record — for the provincial Liberals remain very much on probation, leaderless and rudderless.
At some point soon, Fordbaiting will peter out. Or Trudeau will look like he is running away from the demands of his own job description as a national leader putting forward a positive vision for the country.
As unpopular as Ford is personally, the federal Liberals should also remember the hard lesson their provincial Liberal cousins learned a year ago: People were willing to hold their noses while overlooking Ford’s faults, in order to punish an unpopular incumbent.
In any case, Ford’s name is not on the ballot next month, nor can he be made the ballot question. More to the point, Scheer’s public persona couldn’t be less Ford-like — he is polite, agreeable, well-spoken and modulated.
Consider that while Ford is in the witness protection program for the campaign’s duration, one of his provincial counterparts is being put on prominent display: Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has been asked to visit suburban GTA ridings in Peel, where he first made his mark as a federal minister of multiculturalism, wooing and winning over new Canadians with his own brand of conservatism.
That Kenney remains in high demand while Ford is in hiding is a reminder that policies matter as much as personalities. As a Conservative — and also as a social conservative — Kenney understood that he spoke the same language as many recent immigrants who might share those cultural values, not to mention thrift and entrepreneurialism.
Scheer personally, and the Conservatives politically, remain a clear alternative to the Trudeau Liberals. Stephen Harper, lest we forget, carried the day for the federal Tories in this province with a prime ministerial vision that proved to be congruent with the values of many Ontarians.
That is the formula that led to a Progressive Conservative victory in Ontario a year ago, and to Harper’s past victories for the federal Tories. Expect Scheer to revive that traditional approach in the 905 — with an assist from Kenney — while hoping voters forget Ford’s bombast, blunders and baggage closer to home.