Ford has no chance as a minority premier
One after another, Ontario’s opposition party leaders denounced Doug Ford.
Then they did something they hardly ever do.
After first vowing to displace him as premier, they then promised to replace him — by working together, despite their rivalries, after June 2.
It’s rare to see the NDP’s Andrea Horwath appearing at the same event as the Liberals’ Steven Del Duca. It’s almost unheard of to hear them talk of setting aside their bitter competition to co-operate in any future scenario.
But at a Ryerson Democracy Forum that I hosted this week, they tried to answer the overriding question from hundreds of people who watched Tuesday’s event via Zoom: Who can defeat Doug Ford?
They also grappled with the inevitable followup question: Can the New Democrats and Liberals — who can’t seem to stand each other — ever sit down together to work it out and make it work?
In close elections, opposition leaders typically play their cards even closer. But time is running out for politicians to play coy in Ontario.
Where once the rival politicians each would have insisted they are running to be premier and refused to entertain any “hypothetical” scenarios, they are facing facts: After nearly four years in power and two years of pandemic politics, Ford is still remarkably resilient.
His Progressive Conservatives are still leading in most polls. That’s highly unusual for a governing party with voting day barely 18 weeks away — and thanks largely to the New Democrats and Liberals essentially splitting what’s left (and centre) of the vote.
But it’s complicated for Ford’s Tories. They are leading and trailing at the same time.
The latest trend lines, updated this week, show the current premier likely winning the most seats while losing his commanding majority, according to 338Canada.com, the highly respected online “survey of surveys.” When all the votes are counted — not just on election day, but in the legislative non-confidence motion that follows — Ford’s Tories could be unseated if the opposition joins forces.
Which makes it a whole new election. In a minority legislature, no one party can hold power on its own.
And that’s a problem for Ford’s Tories for three simple reasons: The NDP, Liberals and Greens.
All three opposition parties now say they can’t and won’t work with him under any circumstances. And they are publicly confirming that they can, and will, work with each other to form an alternative government.
A formal coalition with cabinet seats for all three parties, or merely an informal voting alliance? Precisely how, they won’t say, but enough said.
“I don’t see any scenario where I would support a Doug Ford government,” Horwath, the leader of Ontario’s Official Opposition, said at the Ryerson event (where, full disclosure, I am a visiting practitioner in the Faculty of Arts).
“If Steven Del Duca is prepared to support the kind of things that we want to see happen to fix what’s wrong in Ontario then I would welcome that and I would be prepared to have that conversation,” she added — reconfirming in a public forum what she had first telegraphed in a Star interview last year.
“I don’t believe that I’ll be able to support Doug Ford,” Del Duca replied when I put the same question to him. “What people want to see in this province is leaders confident enough to work across party lines.”
Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner later echoed that sentiment. “No, I wouldn’t be able to support Mr. Ford,” he said, adding he’d “collaborate and co-operate” with the NDP and Liberals in a minority legislature.
That’s their shared goal. But individually, who has what it takes to be the dragon slayer?
Any fair reading of the polls over the past year — snapshots in time, and in the past, not predictions of the future — shows the New Democrats and Liberals in an ongoing fight for second place, trading places monthly and weekly. Both parties are anxious to persuade voters that their party is best placed to defeat a polarizing premier.
An audience question from Tim Larry put Horwath on the spot: After 13 years and three general election defeats as NDP leader — notably in 2018 when the Liberals were especially vulnerable — this will be her fourth attempt, so what’s the “missing ingredient” needed to “improve” her performance?
What some see as a liability, Horwath calls an opportunity.
“I am the leader right now in this race that knows Ontario the best, I have a great deal of experience, and so I don’t see my time at the helm as something that’s a problem — quite the opposite,” she replied.
Del Duca, who lost his Vaughan seat in the anti-Liberal wave of the last election, recalled how defeat humbled him.
“Look, when you go through the experience that I went through in 2018, when you lose your own seat when there are other challenges that you face in your personal life” — Del Duca lost his brother — “it does definitely change you,” he began. “It gives you that time to reflect …. It’s made me a stronger leader, and a person who is humble enough to know what I don’t know.”
The big unknown is whether these NDP and Liberal antagonists can ever be allies. Watching Del Duca on the Zoom screen, I was reminded of NDP attack ads that use video clips from his news conferences, featuring unflattering closeups of the Liberal leader blinking in slow motion.
When I put it to Schreiner — the Green Party leader has a proven knack for getting along with all the parties — he predicted the rivals won’t have any choice.
“Politicians will be compelled to honour what Ontarians have voted for, and in a minority situation, we will be forced to work together,” he said after watching Horwath and Del Duca dance around the question. “I think we need more collaboration and less hyper-partisanship in politics.”
My own take on whether they’d truly co-operate — something they hardly ever do? Only if Ontarians make them.