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They could also have raised a flag on a pole that said “we’re not really so concerned about COVID; we’re just trying to exploit concerns for political gain.”
Date Posted:
June 2, 2022 • 2 hours ago • 4 minutes of reading • 154 comments Ontario Liberal Party leader Steven Del Duca fielded five candidates after speaking in Toronto on March 26, 2022, when the party launched his election campaign. Photo by Chris Young / The Canadian Press / File
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Polls strongly suggest that Ontarians will comfortably reinstate Doug Ford as prime minister when they vote on Thursday, most likely with another majority government. And one thing has been very clear since the start of the provincial election campaign: with so much genuine dismay and partisan fury over Ontario’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, liberals and new Democrats knew that would not be enough. to run this campaign as a referendum on confinement, vaccine warrants, public school ventilation, long-term care standards, or playground closures.
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Throughout the pandemic, polls showed that most Ontarians of all political backgrounds were more or less willing to follow what the government recommended, within reason. Ontario politics unfolds mostly in a snowball, but Ontarians saw the news. (Many had little else to do.) They saw what was going on in Milan and New York City; they knew things could be terribly worse; and they mostly didn’t blame Ford for making Ontario as bad as it was, or not enough to go get a different government, anyway.
The parties, having understood this, put affordability issues in the front windows where they belonged. But affordability issues have always been Ford’s helmsman: “With respect to the taxpayer” is literally the family brand. After surviving the pandemic, the sudden rise in inflation gave Ford the perfect re-election platform.
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So in short, it was always very unlikely that we would see any unrest on the part of the NPD or the Liberals. But what a strange campaign the Liberals, in particular, were preparing to try.
Leader Steven Del Duca exceeded my low expectations of him as an activist. I suspect that some debate viewers who didn’t know him before might have been a little impressed with his calm, experienced look. But there were times when the liberal law syndrome really shone, if not for Del Duca himself, although the Liberals, choosing a former cabinet minister Kathleen Wynne as their leader, certainly did not send a message of “radical change.” “, because of the general behavior of the party.
The launch of the liberal campaign, but completely without a mask, remains a classic example. The party demanded that mask warrants be reintroduced in schools and other settings; he accused the government of putting children and their adults at serious risk only for political gain. And yet, here was a very crowded room full of prominent liberals, ready to knock on the door … and you could barely see a mask. They could also have raised a flag on a pole that said “We’re not really that worried; we are just trying to take advantage of the concerns for political gain. “
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If the promise of Ford’s 2018 Buck-a-Beer campaign pushed its labor populist brand to the realm of self-parody, Del Duca’s new Buck-a-ride promise extended credulity beyond breaking point: $ 1 to go from downtown Ottawa to a Senators. game at OC Transpo; $ 1 to go from Niagara Falls to Peterborough by public transportation GO; $ 1 to go from Toronto to Thunder Bay to Ontario Northland.
After Ford was first elected, you could briefly get six packs of certain beers for $ 6. I highly doubt that anyone under a Del Duca government has ever come from Toronto to Thunder Bay for $ 1. (By the way, the card my local Liberal candidate left on my doorstep on Tuesday hinted that the plan was for these $ 1 rates to be permanent. That wasn’t the Liberal plan.)
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The most presumptuous of all, as always, has been the implicit presentation of last-minute liberals to voters. Essentially: “Progressive Conservatives must be defeated at all costs, except at the expense of cooperating with the NDP before or after the election, which we will not do at all. We, the third ranked in the legislature and roughly tied with the NPD in the polls, are the only party that can achieve this critical victory!
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It’s transparent nonsense, and normal people see it as such. New Democrats are guilty of the same thing, no doubt. But the NDP is never expected to win, even when its conditions of victory are at their peak, as they were in 2018. And frankly, it’s much easier to sympathize with the new Democrats who don’t want to cooperate with the Liberals. that in reverse. Liberals always expect to win, and reliably get baffled when they don’t.
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On the other hand, the Liberals do not seem willing to fire Del Duca immediately if he does not live up to the party’s expectations. No doubt the knives will be out if they finish third again, or if Del Duca fails to regain his seat at Vaughan-Woodbridge; surveys suggest he will. But the unique leadership phenomenon that has taken root among some Canadian parties, both federal and provincial, is really the most presumptuous of all in Canadian politics: “(Inserts Prime Minister or Prime Minister) is as objectively horrible and ineligible as any a leader who fails to defeat him must be thrown into the scrap of history. “
Clearly, this is not how Canadian swing voters think or behave. If the opposition parties really want to sell the electorate with a much better government, it should provide them with a much better government when given the opportunity. Del Duca, who is known, among other things, for trying to get a GO train stop on his driving where he did not belong when he was Minister of Transport, is not the type he would choose to make it possible. But he could well spend four years as the leader of the opposition auditioning for the role. Having made his questionable election as a leader, it would be foolish for the Liberals not to give him that opportunity.
• Email: cselley@nationalpost.com | Twitter: cselley
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