Provincial Politics – Page 127

The Morning Line: Gerard Kennedy at 4 – 1.

January 2, 2013 by Peter Lowry

The reason Gerard Kennedy is third in our morning line analyses is because we expect him to come third on the first ballot, just behind Kathleen Wynne. The difference in the odds is that Kennedy’s numbers can grow on the second ballot and we expect him to pass Wynne at this point. And at four to one odds, we expect Gerard to attract the serious punters among convention attendees.

If a race really does develop under these over-controlled circumstances, expect it to be between Sandra Pupatello and Gerard Kennedy. She will be the darling of the party’s right wing and Gerard will attract the more progressive elements of the party.

It has been obvious to everyone following the debates that Gerard feels the most restricted by the rules. He has to break out of the mould in which the party is trying to lock the candidates into. It will be too late at the convention for him to throw the dice and say what he really thinks about the state of the Ontario Liberal Party.

While his campaign has demonstrated caution so far, this might be the influence of former Health Minister George Smitherman who better understands McGuinty and what has happened at Queen’s Park while Gerard concentrated his attention on Ottawa. Having been both a MPP and a MP, Gerard can offer delegates a broader view of the needs of the party. It is difficult to do that though without coming across as critical of Dalton McGuinty. Gerard is certainly the most credible of the candidates when it comes to discussing the currently strained relations with the teachers and civil servants.

Since the finale of the convention is expected to be the showdown between the right and left wings of the Ontario party, you can expect a bit of drama late Saturday afternoon. It could just go three ballots if Kathleen Wynne throws her support behind one of her competitors before she has to. If she goes to Pupatello, it is game over. If Wynne really does believe in a more progressive party and does the right thing in supporting Kennedy, we would suggest that everyone hold all tickets because we could be in for a surprise.

But it is not the role of the morning line writer to hatch surprises or suggest break outs. We can admire the solid campaign that Gerard and his team are waging. It is not extravagant. It is well-paced and effective. He has done a good job of getting out and meeting party people across the province. He will get good second vote support. He is going to need it.

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The Morning Line: Kathleen Wynne at 6 – 1.

January 1, 2013 by Peter Lowry

When did we get this rule that says a person can publicly announce their sexual preference and then the rest of us do not talk about it? Just imagine how Conservative leader Tiny Tim Hudak and the Ontario Landowners Association are chortling at the prospect of having MPP Kathleen Wynne as Premier. If you think they have built a wall of ignorance across rural Central Ontario, what do you think will happen when they get to attack a Liberal lesbian grandmother? They could potentially move that wall of ignorance south to the GTA.

Dalton McGuinty’s job is up for grabs and it is up to Liberals to decide which person out of a limited field of seven they will select. Each candidate has positives and negatives to consider. In the case of Kathleen Wynne, you can weigh the experience she brings to the job and her skill set against the negatives of bigotry. What people see wrong with being a grandmother, we do not know. It is possible though that, at 60 this year, MPP Kathleen Wynne is just too old to be a legitimate candidate for leader of the Liberal Party in Ontario. With the party facing four to eight years in opposition, age is a consideration.

But with morning line odds of 6 to 1, you do not write off Kathleen Wynne. She has some strong support and needs to be taken seriously on the first ballot. She took first place in signing up new members of the Liberal Party but it will be difficult to translate those numbers into convention delegates when electoral districts choose them on January 12 and 13. Her problem is that on the first ballot, she needs to come within 200 or 300 votes of a majority and we do not see that happening.

If she has less than 500 votes on the first ballot, Wynne can pack it in. Her problem is that she cannot grow. Unless she is close to that magic 50 per cent, her vote is more likely to drop than grow on the second ballot. This will be a reflection of some of the strong arm tactics used to get her delegates. Her campaign was much too aggressive in the beginning and she has had to soften her campaign approach.

Wynne’s most serious strategic error so far is the promise to assume the agriculture portfolio as well as the Premier’s office. The agriculture job is fulltime and while you do not have to be a farmer, you do have to know which end of a cow to admire and you have to have lots of empathy for farmers. She is a negotiator, not an empathizer.

Wynne can probably settle the pain quickly for the party. She has the votes to hang in until the fourth ballot but if she moves to Sandra Pupatello after the second ballot, the whole thing could be settled in time for the six o’clock news.

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The Morning Line: Sandra Pupatello at 5-2.

December 31, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Windsor’s Sandra Pupatello is clearly the front runner in the January Ontario Liberal Stakes. While that might not be good news for the Liberal Party, there is no denying that her aggressive and well-funded campaign is leaving her GTA opponents tangled in their struggles for dominance in that area.

Pupatello’s lack of a seat in the legislature and her statement that she would keep it prorogued until she has a by-election was a strategic error at the start of the campaign. Liberals are embarrassed by the use of what they see as a Stephen Harper/Conservative tactic to give the party time to choose a new leader. She is also confounding many Liberal Party members with her strong right-wing stance.

Despite her aggressive, take-no-prisoners speaking style in the debates, Pupatello’s campaign team have created a very personable Sandra in contact with Liberals across the province. In this type of contest, that is the ideal stance. The campaign is also beating others to the punch in using modern techniques such as a telephone town hall. Overall, hers is an innovative and friendly campaign that assumes the positive. It means that her campaign team know that her second and third ballot support has to grow. And, so far, it looks like it will.

What is difficult to assess at this stage is Sandra’s ex officio support. These party worthies tend to be more right wing and she will have a substantial share. We are assuming this could be as much as 30 per cent on the first ballot. These ex officio votes could take her up to 800 votes on the first ballot but we are assuming an averaged figure and are basing our forecast at 700 votes.

We get mixed readings from the Windsor area about Treasurer Dwight Duncan’s involvement. Dwight has alienated much of the left wing of the party in the area and it is hard to read the ultimate impact of this. The only good news is that Duncan is leaving politics and few will miss him. It is now more likely that it is his electoral district in which Pupatello will run, should she win the leadership.

There are two campaigns that could potentially upset the Pupatello express to the leadership and we will discuss those two campaigns over the next couple days.

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A morning line for the Magnificent Seven.

December 26, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Developing a morning line at this stage for the Ontario Liberal leadership is tricky. To start with, those not familiar with horse racing, might not be aware that the morning line is the handicapper’s look at a horse’s breeding, training, past performance and prospects in an upcoming race—along with some probable opening odds. Since insiders among Ontario Liberals are betting on this candidate or that, it makes sense to come out with some helpful odds.

Bear in mind that after January 13, insiders will have a partial picture of the field as chosen by 107 electoral districts in Ontario. At that time, party members in each district will have voted for up to 16 delegates and have indicated a first ballot preference. (They have eight choices because they can also vote for “independent” delegates.) The party expects as many as 1500 of these elected delegates to show up at Toronto’s historic Maple Leaf Gardens on January 25 and 26 and pay $250 to $600 for the privilege of attending the voting.

While the results of the party’s choices on January 12 and 13 are supposed to be secret until the first ballot results are announced on January 26, you have to remember that a secret is something known by just one person. The more people who know a secret, the faster it ceases to be a secret.

The further puzzle for the morning line is that there will be about 800 ex officio delegates coming to the meeting and they do not have to make commitments. As these figures include party presidents, previous candidates and sitting members of the Legislature, they carry an inordinate influence on the people from their electoral district. And the bad news is that these people do not make very good choices.

And to the surprise of those outside the party event, the front-runner on the first ballot will not necessarily be the winner. (Dalton McGuinty was fourth on the first ballot at the 1996 convention, that ultimately chose him leader.) There is even a strategy sometimes used in this type of convention where the candidate has 50 to 75 key supporters vote for someone else on the first ballot to assure an appearance of growth when they vote for their candidate on the second ballot. If a candidate does not show growth on subsequent ballots, they quickly fall by the wayside.

Voting on January 26 is quite likely to go to four ballots with the candidate with the least votes dropping off after each ballot. The smart candidate team keeps careful records of their potential second ballot support. All the handicapper can do at this stage is make some educated guesses.

Any suggestions from our Ontario network of readers will be helpful. We will publish the results of our morning line research next week. We will give you one a day for seven days. We will start with the front runner and work our way down to the really bad news. It is going to be fun.

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Christmas nonsense from an Ontario Liberal.

December 24, 2012 by Peter Lowry

With sincere apologies to Lewis Carroll

“You are old, Premier Dalton,” the young man said,
“But your province has survived despite you;
And yet you incessantly put us in dread—
Do you really think, at times, it is right to?”

“In my youth,” Premier Dalton replied to the voter,
“I feared ideas might injure the brain;
But now that I’m sure I have no political future,
Why, I have them again and again.”

“You are old,” said the voter, “No longer straight as an arrow,
And have grown most uncommonly mean;
Yet you ignored it when GM gave Michigan the Camaro—
Is it part of your plan to turn Ontario green?”

“In my youth,” said the Ontario Premier, “I kept my own counsel,
“And I voted the way I was told.
I still do—and I hope to be named to the Queen’s Privy Council.
An honour, not offered the bold.”

“You are old,” said Sandra Pupatello, “Its time to give me the reins
Ontario’s ready for a woman to run it;
Not just with a woman’s intuition—but by a woman with brains,
After all, you’re a man and you blew it!”

“In my youth,” said her leader, “I took up the law,
And argued each case with wife Terri;
I lost every case before her—but judges sat in awe,
And that’s why today I am wary.”

“You are old,” said Sandra, “one would hardly believe it
That your word is as good as it was;
You blamed the teachers for the provincial deficit—
Will you take the blame for the cause?”

“I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”
Said her leader; “don’t give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I’ll kick you down stairs!”

Drawn from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland—Published in 1865.

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Bill 115 beats right-to-work legislation.

December 22, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Ontario Conservative leader Tiny Tim Hudak will have to stop gnashing his teeth or he will need a new set of dentures. Timmy finds it tough to carry the flag for the extremists on the political right when Dalton McGuinty always seems to get there ahead of him. After all, how can you promote the American style right-to-work legislation when McGuinty tops you with legislation that is akin to slavery?

The only alternative McGuinty offers teachers in Ontario is to apply to work the drive-through window at their local Hortons. And you wonder why so many teachers seem annoyed with McGuinty and his party?

You can imagine Tiny Tim reporting to the executive of the Ontario Landowners, complaining to them that McGuinty is beating him to the punch. It leaves the Landowners with nothing other than wind turbines to fight. Timmy has probably explained to them many times that urban voters are very confused about the Landowners penchant for jousting with windmills. They simply do not understand the problem.

It is like believing that right-to-work legislation has anything to do with a person’s right to work. This was all made so much clearer to a few generations back in a wonderful 1959 Brit movie called: I’m all right Jack. With a sterling cast of great comedic actors, the Boulting Brothers did an outstanding job of sending up both unions and management.

And it was a simple task. All the producing and directing team of brothers did was show the union workers as management saw them and the management team as the union members saw them. Neither side was spared. And reality was nowhere in the picture.

It has been amusing watching the wiggles of the Magnificent Seven (provincial Liberal leadership candidates) trying to get around Bill 115. It was only five of them who actually voted for the bill. Gerard Kennedy and Sandra Pupatello were not there in cabinet at the time but even they cannot call the bill what it really is: the potential death knell of the Liberal Party of Ontario.

It was the hard work and television advertising by the teachers that left the Liberals with at least a minority government after the last election. Put in a new Liberal leader without the help of the teachers and the Queen’s Park opposition will smell the fear. Whoever replaces McGuinty in January will face the wrath of Horwath and Hudak as soon as the House convenes. It will not result in a fun election for the Ontario Liberals

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Liberal-NDP merger a must for Canada’s future.

December 21, 2012 by Peter Lowry

You look at the current crop of leadership candidates for both the federal and Ontario Liberal parties and wonder if there is a leader among them. In Ontario, there has been nothing suggested that could stop the provincial Liberals from sliding into third place in an election, that could be forced before mid 2013. Federally, there is only one candidate who has been toe-testing the waters to see if there is hope to stop a further slide. The rest deny the need for the party to merge with the New Democrats. Their goal must be to lead the party to oblivion.

The most vociferous arguments against a merger are from the extreme right of the Liberal party in the person of Martha Hall Findlay. The former MP who lost one of the safest Liberal seats in Toronto to the Conservatives in the last federal election is now running as a leadership candidate from the west. She wrote a paper against a merger back in October of 2011. Her basic assumption is that people are adding the Liberal and NDP voting numbers and using the figures to argue for joining the parties. She, quite rightly, points out that two and two do not make four, in this case.

But the problem facing us at the moment is that the consolidated Conservative vote is running ahead of the Liberal or NDP vote. And as long as the progressive vote is split between two parties, the Conservatives can gain the upper hand. There is no question but that some of the right-wing Liberals will go home to their Conservative roots if the Liberal and NDP come together as a single party. Those people have been dragging their feet for too long anyway. There are also die-hard socialists in the NDP who believe in the collective and will reject the protection of individual rights as promoted by the Liberals

But that is the balance that will give us honest elections. Hall Findlay thinks that some average Canadians want a smaller, cheaper government that is needed to provide services and social safety nets that allow for a minimum quality of life for all Canadians. That is nothing but sleazy conservative cant for the gullible.

You will be hard-pressed to find Canadians who will settle for a ‘minimum’ quality of life when what they really want is opportunity. With the strong social conscience of the NDP combined with the Liberal belief in the rights of the individual, you have a formula for success across Canada.

Surely, MP Joyce Murray is not the only Liberal politician in Canada who recognizes where the future is for the progressive parties?

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Star beer war missiles miss the LCBO.

December 20, 2012 by Peter Lowry

You can imagine the kindly old editor explaining to Toronto Star scribe Martin Regg Cohn: “Now get this right Martin. We hate the foreign-owned Beer Store monopoly and we love the government-owned liquor store monopoly. Now go give us another 800 words screwing the Beer Store people.”

And that is why Martin started this morning’s column with: “Back by popular demand. The Beer Store, part II.” He hardly needed to be very creative to come up with more reasons to get rid of the Beer Store monopoly. It is a hundred years out of date and he has found that most Beer Store customers want out.

Would it surprise you to learn that letters to the editor can prove just about anything if you decide which letters to publish and do a bit of editing on the ones you do use? This must be why Martin can write: “Surprisingly, most readers grudgingly agreed that we should leave the LCBO alone—at least for now.” Obviously “now’ must be as long as the Toronto Star editorial board think we should keep the liquor monopoly.

The difference between the two monopolies is that the Beer Stores are disgusting and out of date. The Liquor Control Board stores are just out of date.

The only real difference between the two monopolies is that the LCBO knows a bit about marketing and is not in the bottle returns business. That gives the liquor business a leg up on the non-disgusting side of things,

Martin pads his story with quotes from a former Beer Store insider whose ten-year non-disclosure agreement must have expired. This person reports that Labatt’s Blue and Molson Canadian do not sell as well in self-serve stores where all brands are available. And what else would you expect than the Beer Store pushing the larger owners’ brands?

The reality is that both beer and liquor monopolies must go. They are archaic and bad business models. Beer and wine and liquor are best sold along with food. They complement each other. Beer and Ontario wines should also be available at the corner convenience store. And there is a marketing rationale for specialty liquor and wine stores. Selling the liquor stores might be a one-time capital gain for our province but the taxes on alcoholic beverages will more than make up for the LCBO revenues.

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The mathematics of Ontario Liberal leadership.

December 18, 2012 by Peter Lowry

In the 2007 provincial election, Ontario voters firmly rejected a scheme for proportional voting. It was a non-starter. That does not mean that the Ontario Liberal Party is not about to use a similar scheme on its own party members. Imagine a voting system that can eliminate the person with the most votes in a riding from being a delegate to the January 25-26 Leadership convention in Toronto.

It can mathematically happen. The Liberal Party in Ontario has confused the voting system for delegates to such an extent that the arguments about who can or cannot be a delegate will continue until after the convention. The voting scheme is based on the proportion of supporters for a specific candidate and the age and sex of the people wishing to attend the convention. If the age and sex of the convention hopefuls is out of balance with the choice of candidate, it is going to be tough luck!

The greatest danger is bad mathematics by the people running the leadership election meetings (LEM) on January 12 and 13. Where the party hopes to find enough mathematicians for the task is a question mark.

The first error is to ask people to mark their preference for leader separate from the choice of convention attendee. Since there are seven hopefuls in the race, there will be eight options. The eighth option will be someone called “Independent.”

Of the 16 members of the local electoral district who may attend the convention and vote on the various ballots, four must be youth. Of these four youth, one must be male, one must be female and the other two can be anything at all. Similarly, of the other 12 people, four must be female, four male and four are optional.

Now overlay those demands on the eight choices and you can understand the problem. And, by the way, did we point out that it costs anywhere from $250 to $1000 to attend this convention in the heart of Toronto. If you just park your car in that area of the city while you attend the convention, you might not have the funds to buy your car back.

And you wonder why it is so important to return control of this party to the members?

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Murray wants a 21st Century Liberal Party.

December 17, 2012 by Peter Lowry

This is MPP Glen Murray’s plan. It arrived among our e-mail today. Glen is the Ontario Liberal leadership candidate from downtown Toronto. While he only has a couple years under his belt at Queen’s Park and came here from Winnipeg, his approach to reforming the Liberal Party in Ontario is bang on.

This puts Murray at the head of the list for party reform. We suspect that leadership hopeful Gerard Kennedy agrees with this approach but he has yet to articulate that message. At the same time, it appears that the other former MPP candidate Sandra Pupatella is not listening. We received an e-mail from her the other day saying that Liberals are telling her the issues are jobs and the economy. That seems to suit her right-wing approach.

Talking to MPP Charles Sousa along with some other Babel Liberals yesterday, he assured us of his support for party reform but he obviously needs to do some broader research on the subject. Meanwhile MPPs Kathleen Wynne, Harinder Takhar and Eric Hoskins have so far been missing on the subject.

What is most commendable about the Murray plan for reform of the party is that he establishes the concern and then provides a process and timetable for correcting the problems. He believes that people want to reconnect with the party. He recognizes that it is their party as much as his or any other member. This is something that young Justin Trudeau in that other race has yet to realize.

Murray believes that we can put most of the basic reforms before the provincial party at its annual meeting in the fall of 2013. There will have to a lot of brainstorming and some tough negotiations before then but we can come up with a modern Liberal Party in this province. He believes that members have to lead the way in deciding on leadership, candidate nominations, policy direction and means for more affordable participation in party events.

Murray wants a Liberal Party where it is easy for members to discuss their ideas, that listens and acts on the better ideas and makes sure that people can always participate. In such a broadly based, multi-generational party, the party would have to be much more than a social media site on the Internet.

Murray makes a strong point in asking members of the party to consider alternatives to the current system of nominating candidates in vacant ridings. He seems to disagree with the current practice of having the leader choose a candidate without a riding nomination meeting. Potential delegates across Ontario should be hammering leadership candidates on this issue alone.

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