Listen Up! Will provincial party leaders reveal what they really stand for in their first debate of the campaign?

Hugh Mackenzie
Huntsville Doppler

Sit Back and Watch the Bun Fight

Well, it’s crunch time. Monday night will see the first televised debate of the Ontario election campaign, even though the writ will not be officially dropped until later in the week. It will be interesting to see the three leaders take each other on, although given the paucity of the choices we are being given, it is a shame that the leader of the Green Party is not allowed on the stage with the other party leaders.

There are a number of things I will be watching for. For one thing, I want to know what Doug Ford really stands for beyond the buzz words and core Conservative principals such as less government and fiscal accountability. A couple of things that happened this week make me wonder.

A few days ago, Ford reversed himself on a commitment he apparently made to open up for development part of the Greenbelt (known as the Oak Ridges Moraine) around the Greater Toronto Area. The reason he provided for doing this was that “he listened to the people” who did not want the moraine touched. That is all well and good, but it does not tell me where Doug Ford really stands when it comes to preserving green space in all parts of Ontario. Did he reverse his position because he really believed it was the right thing to do or did he do so because he misjudged the importance of environmental issues to many Conservatives? I want to know precisely where the Conservative leader stands on maintaining and promoting a clean environment in Ontario.

On Saturday, Doug Ford fired Tanya Granic Allen as the nominated P.C. candidate for the riding of Mississauga Centre. You will recall that Granic Allen was also a candidate for the Conservative leadership earlier this year. Firing her was exactly the right thing to do. The woman is an embarrassment to the Conservative party. The question that is already being asked however, is why now? Why only after painful videos featuring Granic Allen were released by the Liberals did Ford take action? He has known about her extremist views from the get-go, and while in April he distanced himself from some of her comments, he has never asked her to retract them. So, I want to hear Doug Ford say loudly and clearly that while diversity of opinion is encouraged, there is absolutely no room for homophobia, antisemitism or Islamophobia in the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party.

What I really want to hear from Kathleen Wynne on Monday night is a detailed plan as to how she will bring the Ontario economy back from the brink of disaster. Will she admit that the Provincial auditor has a much better handle on the enormity of the provincial debt than she has? Will she acknowledge that the debt really matters when it comes to the well-being of future generations and that some day the money to pay for the goodies she is so freely promising just won’t be there?

Wynne is a fierce campaigner and it will be fascinating to watch her attempting to justify her government’s performance, under her leadership, against a tide of negative polling that rates her as one of Ontario’s most unpopular Premiers. The debate on Monday evening will disclose the Liberal campaign strategy. Will they defend their record, or will they attempt to convince voters that it is better to support the devil they know than to risk the leadership of Doug Ford? One way or the other, it will be an interesting bun fight between Ford and Wynne.

Andrea Horwath, in my view, will try to rise above all of that. She has been the leader of the New Democratic Party for nine years. She ran a tough campaign in the last election, but it did not result in a large increase in seats. What I expect to see from her on Monday night is an attempt to distance herself from both Ford and Wynne, as an effective leader whose time has come. She may well turn out to be the dark horse in this race. Her problem, however, is that she has allowed Wynne’s Liberals to outflank her and the NDP on the political left. There is little to differentiate the two parties, including their lack of concern for the huge debt load carried by the Province.

Eric Grenier is a poll tracker for the CBC. He aggregates all publicly available polling data to estimate the outcome of the June 7^th election. His latest effort in this regard was on April 30^th and his tabulation shows that as at that date, the Conservatives were at 43.6 per cent, the Liberals at 26.7 per cent, the NDP at 23.3 per cent and the Green Party at 4.9 per cent. He believes that this would result in 90 seats for the Conservatives, 20 for the NDP and 14 for the Liberals. He suggests that although the Liberals have a higher popular vote than the NDP, the manner in which this support is distributed would give the NDP more seats. If Grenier’s predictions are correct and remain so, the Conservatives will form a strong Majority Government and the New Democrats would become the Official Opposition.

My own sense is that even since the end of April, the numbers are beginning to tighten and that they will be affected again by Monday’s debate. I have been through too many election campaigns not to know that political fortunes can change dramatically, sometimes overnight, before the finishing line is reached. In my view, anything is still possible, from a majority government to a left-wing coalition.

There will be a lot of nasty stuff thrown around over the next 30 days, from both sides. It will be interesting to see how much of it sticks.

Hugh Mackenzie

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