Ontario provincial election: The Return of Ford Nation, Part II

Politics & Elections
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Ontario has a provincial election next month, June 7th.

The current Premier, Wynne, is fighting for reelection. She’s been in office since she replaced Dalton McGuinty as Premier in 2013, and led the Liberals to a fourth majority government in 2014. The Liberals have been in power since 2003.

The main contender opposing Wynne and the Liberals is Doug Ford, brother of the late Rob Ford, who enlivened Toronto municipal politics and provided job security to numerous late night talk show hosts four years ago, before dying of cancer. Doug Ford just became the leader of the PCs in a snap leadership contest triggered six weeks ago, caused when sexual misconduct allegations were raised against the previous leader, Patrick Brown, who is now suing CTV for millions for defamation.

The leader of the New Democratic Party is Andrea Horvath. The NDP was third party in the now dissolved Assembly.

Polls indicate that Ford and the PCs have a substantial lead heading to the election, and will likely form a majority gouvernement. The real question may be who will be Official Opposition? Current projections give the NDP a slight edge, with the Liberals reduced to third party.

Question for Ontario Dopers: there is a lot of hostility expressed towards Wynne, both in interviews and polls, and right here in our own Canadope thread. How come? Why the strong opposition to her? Malaise caused by leading a party that’s been in power for 15 years? Policies she’s adopted? Personality?

And Ford: he always struck me as the less affable but smarter of the Ford brothers? Is he just riding a wave of hostility towards the Liberals, or does he have a lot of personal popularity?

Horvath? I know nothing about her.

Not that I have a dog in this fight, two provinces over, but what happens in Ontario has impact in Canada, so I’m watching with curiousity.

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It’s mostly a reaction to the perceived incompetence and corruption of the Liberals.

In Canada, a party that has been in power for a long time inevitably becomes complacent, corrupt and incompetent (or, at least, is seen that way).

As far as I can see, Ford has a small dedicated following, but that’s not why he (may) be elected - it is purely a ‘throw the bums out’ vote.

The NDP are unknowns, so most of the ‘throw the bums out’ vote will go to Ford.

Thing is, he’s perceived as a Trump-lite blowhard. His brother’s ‘lively’ rule as Mayor is also remembered, and not fondly.

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I just want to say that I’m interested in responses to this topic, though I can’t contribute much since, sad to say, I don’t closely follow Ontario politics. But I do see Doug Ford (as you say) as a sort of Trump analog, and Wynne is actually somewhat Hillary-like: she’s very bright and ambitious but carries a lot of baggage. I was quite impressed by interviews I’ve heard with her, but man, Ontario Liberals have a sordid history of corruption, incompetence, and overspending. I hated Dalton McGuinty with a roiling passion, and Wynne inherited much of that culture, including the fact that she can’t shake off being implicated in the iconic symbol of Liberal corruption, the gas plant scandal.

I’d love to see Andrea Horvath with a minority government, not because I’m particularly leftist that way, but because it’s the only rational choice left. But I just don’t think the NDP has that kind of support right now.

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I agree, this seems like a “throw the bums out” vote. And honestly, that’s ok, the bums probably should be thrown out every now and then because ruling parties do tend to become complacent and corrupt when in for too long (or at least it seems that way, it is probably just that they accumulate more stories over time and there’s no actual increase in rate of corruption).

Doug Ford is just such a terrible replacement in my view. He’s at least a little bit friendly to the alt-right, which is very concerning. Plus, this latest faux news ad. He’s going to win, that seems fairly certain, but I’m very much hoping he’s a one-termer and that the way he’s choosing to run becomes the cause of his downfall. I do not want the alt-right gaining political traction here and any governmental level.

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Frankly, I thought choosing Ford was the only way the PCs could screw up their victory but apparently it hasn’t really made a blip in the polling. We’ll see how it goes in the last month when people start paying attention.

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What was the gas plant scandal? Is that the one where a Liberal back-room guy got convicted recently?

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Yes, but it took down many others, including Premier McGuinty. Good summary here:

In brief, the McGuinty government opportunistically committed to canceling two gas-powered peak power plants already under construction when it turned out that it would help their election prospects because of opposition to the plants in the regions where they were being built. This despite the fact that (a) at least one (maybe both) were already substantially built and there were binding contracts to build them, so the cancellation costs would be huge, and (b) they were, in fact, actually needed, so it went against the public interest to spend vast amounts of money to NOT build them. The scandal began with a public statement that totally lied about the costs of the cancellations, and then proceeded into a huge quagmire of coverups to hide the evidence.

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AFAIK, all the parties “opportunistically” promised to kill those projects. The “scandal” seems to mainly be that they really downplayed the costs.

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In today’s National Post, Coyne talks about the six billion dollar accounting dispute on this year’s provincial budget and problems with adding billions of dollars of interest by borrowing money to lower hydro bills now.

Wynne has thrown a lot of money at groups without a commensurate benefit. After fifteen years, the Liberals now propose dental care, child care subsidies, more pharmacare. Not necessarily bad ideas, but mentioned largely due to an election and since the NDP discussed them.

Ford can be a crass blowhard. But also loved in Etobicoke and parts of Toronto (I was surprised how much and with what sincerity). A successful businessman and direct speaker — but no Trump. Is genuinely supported by many different ethnic groups. Talks a lot about fiscal responsibility. A hard worker with some knowledge of politics and public policy. The election is his to lose.

Horvath deserves more coverage of her policies. The Ontario NDP history has its flaws, and though people like her, Ontario (and especially in the suburbs and countryside) remains a pretty conservative place.

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Ontario has massive debt problems, and the Wynne Government has been terrible on this. Ontario’s debt is $311 billion, projected to be $348 billion at the end of this fiscal year, beating California handily as the largest non-federal government debt holder in the world, and with a debt larger than 75% of the world’s countries. In fact, in terms of debt to GDP, Ontario’s bonded debt is five times bigger than California’s. Interest on the debt is the 4th biggest line item in the budget (12.3 billion this year). It takes almost all the corporate taxes (88%) to pay the interest alone.

Wynne is responsible for about a third of that debt, and Liberals overall for about half of it. With that as a backdrop, she has proceeded to invest in boondoggles like a Universal Basic Income pilot program, and her government’s alternative energy program has resulted in by far the highest energy prices in Canada and a grid that is becoming unstable.

A trained seal would be a better premier.

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Well, I am not going to call Ford a bad business man but the bulk of his success was inheriting his dad’s business.

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Well, it looks like we’ll soon find out!

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This is the latest crap that Doug is putting out. The “interviewer” is a former journalist that works for him.

My MPP, Eric Hoskins, resigned to be Pharmcare Czar for the feds so the riding is in play.

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The part that really annoys me is that they had three other potential leaders to choose, any one of which would have been better than Ford, and at least one of which I would have actually wanted to vote for, but they went and picked the worst candidate available.

And even if he doesn’t win, he’ll end up as leader of the opposition, so we’ll still have to spend years listening to his stupid crap.

Honestly, I used to be a Conservative voter, but with the stupid crap they’ve been endorsing the last few years, I’m going NDP. It’s clear they don’t want the old Red Tory vote any more.

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Same here, although I’ve been tending towards the Liberal party lately in elections. The various conservatives parties, especially the federal party, has taken a noticeable right turn on social issues and it is just something I cannot support. I miss the PC party so much.

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I was never PC federally, but if you’re talking mainly about the Ontario conservatives, I agree. I miss the Bill Davis years, which culminated some 40-odd years of careful and responsible conservative governance in Ontario. Then things started going to hell, Wynne’s tenure being preceded by the triple horror of Mike Harris, Ernie Eves, and lyin’ Dalton McGuinty. The Ontario PCs have had a hell of a time trying to find a decent leader, and this time they really hit rock bottom.

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I am socially liberal and economically conservative. In Canada, the difference between the liberals and conservatives is often small — Canadian conservatives are moderate by international standards.

I don’t know much about Horwath, maybe since the media seems to ignore her. I’m not terribly impressed with the NDP — I don’t know how these expensive ideas will be funded. There are reasons Wynne is not leading the polls, and her policies are even more spendthrifty. Ford is not my favourite conservative candidate, but he will win a majority government in all likelihood. I like some of what he says.

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Why does the media ignore her? Is it that Wynne and Ford are such target-rich environments and she’s just too staid?

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For non-Canadians, the Liberals are often referred to as Grits, and the Conservatives as Tories. A decade ago the Conservative leader was John Tory (that’s his real name), and he is currently the mayor of Toronto.

The NDP has to fight for attention. Horwath not very charismatic, nor is she as well-known as Wynne or Ford. Plus, her views are similar to the Liberals.

In fact in the 2014 election this similarity caused her to make a huge mistake. At that point, Wynne was the minority leader in Queen’s Park; she allied with the NDP rather than the Conservatives to hold power. Wynne is left-leaning even for a Liberal, plus the NDP could pressure the Liberals into passing left-wing legislation. For the 2013 budget the NDP was mad about the gas plant scandal but still passed the budget (which is a confidence vote; there must be an immediate election if the budget fails to pass). But in 2014 Horwath decided the gas plant scandal was suddenly important… even though the Conservatives looked like they would win the election, and even though the new budget was basically an NDP budget pained Liberal red. Had the Conservatives won, not only would Horwath’s NDP be out of power, their true mortal enemies would be in power. The NDP’s chances of winning an election are approximately zero. (Former NDP premier Bob Rae did a really good job making his NDP party really unpopular.)

As it happened, the Tory election strategy really sucked, and Wynne won a majority government, which meant she didn’t need the NDP at all. (The NDP kept the same number of seats but lost some experienced MPPs in some seats while gaining new MPPs in others, often seen as a “net loss”. Many people said they didn’t vote for the NDP because Wynne was giving NDP supporters what they wanted.) So the NDP’s alliance breaking cost them four years of a share in power. The Liberals prompted passed the exact same budget afterward.

For Wynne’s unpopularity…

It’s time for a change, or so many believe.

She is not charismatic.

Scandals have built up over time. Wynne survived before because she wasn’t really linked to any of the scandals. Now scandals are cropping up on her watch. The gas plant scandal happened before she was premier, so I don’t blame her for that. But there are actual scandals to tar her government with now.

Wynne didn’t win the last election, rather, Tory Leader Tim Hudak lost it by shooting himself in the foot. (Hudak’s plan to create “1 million jobs” would start by getting rid of 100,000 civil servants, mainly through attrition. His 1 million jobs were actually 125,000 one-year contracts over 8 years, so net gain of only 25,000 jobs, assuming you believe letting go of 100,000 people would somehow create 125,000 jobs of equal value. Plus Wynne claimed Hudak would fire all those workers, a good chunk of Ontario’s working population. A dumb plan plus some scare-mongering tossed Hudak out.)

Wynne hasn’t been efficient with public spending. The Tories usually have good ratings in this area (although in practice they often don’t cut much, or sometimes cut way too much).

She changed the sex ed curriculum, which was decades out of date. I personally support the new curriculum (or at least most of it).

I think Google might not have existed the last time it was updated before; certainly smartphone sexting didn’t exist. There’s a lot of homophobia when it comes to opposition to the curriculum (Wynne is a lesbian, and the Liberals will not pretends that homosexuals don’t exist so the topic is discussed in sex ed classes).

Unfortunately Wynne put in a few “gimmes” that make it really easy for the curriculum to be attacked. For instance, the new curriculum teaches about masturbation (and I doubt I could find a non-biased source that would describe that part of the curriculum). Why teach about that? Maybe it’s a one-paragraph discussion, but it seems far less important than teaching about consent, avoiding STDs, etc. Common sense would tell you some parents would get really irate over that; it’s an instant-rage button.

Wynne cannot rely on Trudeau’s popularity. They have little in common beyond left wing views, and Trudeau is not so popular now anyway.

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In the several years of Liberal rule, how many billion dollar blunders have they made? I can think of at least 3 - the gas plant, e-health and Ornge.

Then there is Hydro One. People watch their hydro bills go up, almost monthly, and the Liberals don’t do anything smart. But once it starts getting close to an election, they start to subsidize the bills.

Just giving the legal cannabis concession to the same conglomerate that runs the LCBO shows the government has no interest in small business and accept a degree of cronyism that would make Trump take notice.

All that said, I can’t ever see myself voting for either a Doug Ford or the NDP. I will probably refuse my ballot.