The gong show that was the Ontario Progressive Conservative (PC) leadership convention this past weekend does not seem to have harmed the Tory fortunes in the polls, and pundits are lining up to point to the similarities of the recent presidential election south of the border as evidence that the great unwashed have had their fill of the elites and are ready to flush the lot of them down the electoral privy and elect…a group of populist slogan pronouncing elites.
Say it ain’t so.
They tell us that the reign of the Liberal/liberal non-gender, LGBTQ coddling politically correct lefties is fast coming to an end, sent packing in the backwash of a great tsunami of voter backlash. Time will tell.
But there is more to an election than polls taken several months away from the ballot box. Under the benighted (and sorely missed by Liberal party strategists) Tim Hudak, the PCs managed to blow 20 point leads a few short weeks before the polls to let slip the reins of power not once, but twice. Can lightning strike thrice? Well, if one takes into account the propensity of Doug Ford to make off the cuff policy pronouncements that take his team by surprise and look back at what sank the late lamented Mr. Hudak, perhaps.
Certainly the Liberal backroom crew were confident enough of victory with the Tories under Patrick Brown after gazing into their own private poll crystal balls. Mr. Ford brings with him a plethora of made to order attack points that must have the kids in the Liberal war room salivating. Pity. Premier Wynne has an enviable stable of policy decisions to her credit that should have her as one of the most popular premiers in living memory. Unemployment is at a 17-year low in the province, the powerhouse that is the Ontario economy is once again churning on all cylinders and the pernicious issues of poverty and economic despair are finally beginning to lift from the shoulders of many of the province’s undertrodden. She should be running on her policies (which polls have shown are very popular across the electoral board) and her record (despite the mud of the McGuinty years her opponents are throwing at her, mud that seems to be sticking with pernicious unfairness).
Mr. Ford has harnessed a tiger in courting the hard right social conservative wing of the party and in doing so kept the evangelical right that secured the ascendancy of Patrick Brown to thwart Ms. Elliott’s last grasp at the golden ring. But as Mr. Brown knew only too well, attempting to ride that tiger into the jungle of a general election could well prove his undoing. That is why Mr. Brown tossed the religious right to the curb at the first opportunity and attempted to haul the party kicking and screaming into the centre of the political spectrum.
With Doug Ford now at the helm, the party appears to be veering headlong into the abyss of right wing populism that has beset that once great country to the south and many of our friends across the ocean. Change for change sake seems to be driving the bus—but not all change is for the better.
We have been down this road before. Hard right-inspired changes has brought the proverbial four horsemen to the fore in the past and, in its most extreme form, even plunged the entire world into chaos. Frankly, it is hard to credit Mr. Ford with being that foolish, but that was said of others who have harnessed that tiger in the past. We see that tiger slowly devouring the reputation, and by extension the power, of the United States today and the threat of global trade war is threatening the prosperity we are only just now beginning to once again enjoy.
Time will tell.
Hopefully, Kathleen Wynne will campaign on her policies, on her integrity and her incredible iron will and determination to bring a better life to the vast majority of Ontarians, rather than the all-too-tempting path of demonizing the new leader of the PCs.
Is it too much to hope for that the electorate will look beyond paid Facebook memes and truly examine what has been accomplished these past four years? Studies tell us that lies spread exponentially faster than the truth in this Internet age of social media.
Let us not turn back the clocks to a time of hate and despair, but rather find the truth obscured by the lies and, in the words of a great Canadian songwriter, “kick at the darkness until we see daylight.”
