In less than six months, Ontarians will head to the polls to elect a new government. The Liberals have been in power for 14 years —11 of those with a majority. Patrick Brown is contesting his first election as Progressive Conservative leader, while Kathleen Wynne will battle in her second and Andrea Horwath will embark on her third campaign.
Here’s where things stand.
People dislike Wynne, like her policies
Premier Kathleen Wynne’s own commissioned polling indicates that Ontarians generally accept and like a number of her government’s recent policies including raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, introducing public pharmacare for children and youth, and the “Fair Hydro Plan,” which will temporarily halt hydro rate increases. But her own approval rating is considered lower than any other provincial leader in Confederation. And it’s been that way for years.
Angus Reid put her approval rating at 17 per cent in September, up from 15 per cent in June and 12 per cent in March. Mainstreet Research President Quito Maggi said his firm’s research indicates Wynne has been the least popular premier in Canada for at least two years.
“If you noticed the way (the Liberals have) changed, the message has been about the policy and not the leader,” Maggi told CP24.
While other polling firms have repeatedly come back from the field placing Wynne firmly in third place behind Horwath and frontrunner Brown, Maggi says his polls have come back with a far narrower result.
“We’re seeing a tightening up a bit but still a ten point gap,” Maggi said, with Brown in the lead and Wynne in second place.
Maggi said Wynne needs to recruit big names to contend with the recognized leaders Brown has already recruited – such as Caroline Mulroney, Denzil Minnan-Wong, Rod Phillips and Paul Calandra ¬– because it’s the only way to get voters to see past her own low popularity.
“We’ve tested 30 different ridings this year,” Maggi said. “Alone (Brown vs. Wynne ) you get Brown winning. But when you ask (the) local candidate’s name with the brand – then you get a much different result.”
Brown’s plan reveals himself as a centrist
A quick glance of Patrick Brown’s 2018 platform, The People’s Guarantee, reveals a centrist plan, with none of the explicit promises of austerity or screeds about Ontario jail inmates having it too good that former PC leader Tim Hudak included in his platforms.
His platform promises tax rebates for the purchase of winter tires, refundable tax credits for daycare spending, the largest increase in mental healthcare spending in the province’s history, and a 12 per cent rate cut on hydro bills.
There is no explicit promise to lay off or buy out civil servants like Hudak’s last platform, but there is a reference to reduce spending by $6.1 billion over three years and end the $1.9 billion per year cap and trade program. The Liberals say this will equate to civil servants losing their jobs.
But it is a far cry from openly pledging to cull tens of thousands of civil servants.
“It appeals to the middle of the road voter,” former Canadian Press Ontario politics reporter Keith Leslie said of the platform document.
As a former Harper-era MP, Leslie says the Liberals and NDP highlight Brown’s past at every opportunity in an attempt to malign him. But he says the Harper legacy is “markedly different from the policies he (Brown) is trying to pursue now.”
With Wynne professing to govern from the “activist centre,” there is little incentive for Brown to move that far to the right, as his is the only conservative option available to voters.
The NDP went to the centre in the last election with a focus on “affordability of life” issues and gained just more than one per cent of the vote from the 2011 election.
‘Pivotal’ test for Horwath
NDP leader Andrea Horwath will be contesting her third provincial election next year, after securing the leadership of the party in 2009.
“This is where most parties expect their leader to have a breakthrough,” Maggi said.
But Horwath’s best effort in 2014, backed by a platform focusing largely on the provincial government aiming subsidies to assist ordinary people with their monthly expenses, failed to get the party out of third.
Horwath’s deputy party leader, Jagmeet Singh, is now leader of the federal New Democrats.
Maggi says that although Singh can be expected to campaign for her in June, it’s not the same.
“I think it’s going to hurt her in certain key ridings.”
Maggi says the Liberals have “outflanked” them by proposing large increases in the minimum wage, and generous subsidies for low-income families with children in college or university. But he says they can still succeed in a crowded battle for the political middle of the province.
“How far left do they have to go to get any oxygen on policies,” Maggi says. “Because if they go too far left it may backfire.”
The budget is balanced ... sort of… not really.
At the announcement for the 2017-18 Ontario budget last April, Finance Minister Charles Sousa beamed that the province was ending deficit spending after nine years and the budget — thanks to a rising job market and record land transfer tax revenue — was balanced. But like everything in politics, the truth is bent based on who you ask. That same day, PC leader Patrick Brown said the budget was a “shell game (Liberals) are using to hide a $5 billion operational deficit.”
On Dec. 11, acting Financial Accountability Officer J. David Wake said that using generally accepted accounting principles, Ontario is still in a deficit this year, a $4 billion deficit to be exact. He added that the deficit could grow to nearly $10 billion in 2021-2022 if nothing is changed. Both he and the auditor general blame the Liberals’ “Fair Hydro Plan” where government borrowing will delay and moderate future hydro rate increases for consumers, for much of the worsening fiscal picture.
The Liberals contend they are using the accounting method used by the province since 2001, when PC Premier Mike Harris was still in power.
Do the verdicts matter?
Trials concerning allegations against three former political aides and one local Ontario Liberal Party organizer were heard in 2017. But experts told CP24 their impact on the vote is likely to be small.
Pollster Maggi says the Sudbury byelection trial, where a Liberal aide and a local party organizer were accused and ultimately acquitted of bribing a prospective Liberal candidate to not seek his party’s nomination, is a “non-factor” in the minds of most likely voters.
“Sudbury should have never been a trial to begin with.”
Andrew Olivier, the hopeful candidate, went public with recordings that showed Liberal aide Patricia Sorbara and local organizer Gerry Lougheed offered him jobs or appointments if he stepped aside.
The Ontario PCs called for the OPP to investigate and they laid Election Act charges.
But Premier Wynne had already decided to nominate another candidate, then-federal NDP MP Glenn Thibeault. The Ontario Liberal Party’s constitution allows Wynne to select and nominate a candidate on her own, meaning Olivier was never a prospective candidate and offering him a job or appointment wasn’t a bribe.
Charges in the case were dismissed by a judge on Oct. 24.
Leslie says the opposition’s immediate demand for police to investigate political scandals is a new tactic.
“We used to just demand a minister resign or call for an inquiry – now (parties) get the police involved. How much further ahead are we as a province after years of these police investigations?”
A judge is set to deliver a verdict on another trial — this one involving top aides in former Premier Dalton McGuinty’s office — on January 19.
The so-called Gas Plants trial stems from allegations that McGuinty’s chief of staff David Livingston and deputy chief of staff Laura Miller deleted politically contentious emails about the cancellation of two natural gas power plants in Oakville and Mississauga.
The judge in the case has already dismissed one charge against both defendants, a count of breach of trust, leaving only offences of illegal use of a computer and attempted mischief to data.
“Even if there’s a guilty verdict I’m not sure how much it will impact voter sentiment,” Maggi said.
“It could further solidify Patrick Brown’s platform when it comes to dealing with accountability and transparency at Queen’s Park.”
