Provincial Politics – Page 129

Kathleen Wynne wins key endorsement.

November 30, 2012 by Peter Lowry

David Peterson is still enough of a politician to not show his preference among the leadership candidates for the provincial party. He can let his sister-in-law do it for him. That is the import of Health Minister Bev Mathews announcing her support for Don Valley West MPP Kathleen Wynne. Nobody doubts that the former Premier Peterson wants to maintain his influence at Queen’s Park.

Frankly, David might have done better for the province and himself by giving retiring Premier Dalton McGuinty better advice over the past year. Figuratively stabbing Liberal friends the teachers in the back and arguing with the Ontario Medical Association did Dalton no good. If Peterson is really behind getting his sister-in-law to support Wynne, it makes Peterson a lesser person.

What it looks like is that Peterson must be worried about how well Sandra Pupatello is doing in her very aggressive campaign. It also might explain what is going on with Babel’s provincial Liberals. If Peterson asked them to get behind Wynne, they would do it. They never seem to have a positive idea of their own.

The importance of public opinion polls is not particularly high in this type of race. The fact that Gerard Kennedy came first in recent polling shows that he has the best name recognition among the general public. The people with the clout in a delegated convention such as the Ontario Liberals are holding are the ex-officio MPPs, former candidates, former premiers and party officials. It is this coterie of about 800 people who hold the most clout with the party members elected in each electoral district.

The only problem is many of these ex-officio delegates to the convention have their ties to the past, not the future of the party. If there were a common theme to their desires it would be for control. As one of the first among these equals, David Peterson can trade on his influence with the party. If he can help keep it in power, his influence is far greater than if the party descends into the back benches of opposition. His conundrum is that he can measure his degree of influence with each of the candidates, The candidate who is best for the Liberal Party might not be the candidate who is best for David Peterson.

We have no idea how Kathleen Wynne is going to play with Liberals across the province. This exercise is one in choosing a leader. People who wish to lead, have an obligation to tell us where they want to go.

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Some Babel Liberals are more equal than others.

November 26, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Provincial Liberal leadership candidate Kathleen Wynne came to Babel last Friday. If we followed her on Facebook, we would have known she was coming and changed our plans. Maybe. And maybe we would have yawned and checked the television schedule. The one thing for sure was that the provincial Liberals were not going to send an invite.

Our provincial Liberals here in Babel—all six of them—are an example of what is wrong with the Ontario Liberal Party. To say they are mean spirited is to put it mildly. They certainly do not like criticism. They want to rule and everyone else is to do as they are told. When they tried to take over the local federal party, they made themselves a laughing stock.

The last time we attended one of their functions was during the last provincial election campaign. One of the smarter members of the group insisted that I go on a tour of the campaign headquarters. This saved us from the embarrassment of having to speak to any of the provincial members who were studiously trying to ignore us. Returning to the gathering after the tour, the guest of honour had arrived with his wife. The rest of the time we were there was spent speaking with these two guests who were friends of many years fromToronto.

Being obviously friendly with the powers that be of the party is not an immediate guarantee of acceptance by Babel’s provincial Liberals. Even being hopeful for their candidate—including voting for him—did not really impress them. It was only after the election that we postulated that his seeming arrogance might just have had a bit of a negative effect on our Babel voters.

But there seems to be no way to redeem ourselves with the provincial Liberals. Despite being a paid-up member of both the federal and provincial party, we never seem to hear a word from the local provincial party. To them, we do not exist. We have a mind of our own. We believe in a strange concept to them that has to do with freedom of speech. We have made every effort to give them assistance. They certainly seem to need it.

Just wait until it comes to the election of delegates to the Ontario leadership convention. With just six members that they control, where are Babel’s provincial Liberals going to find another ten delegates to take to the Toronto convention on January 25?

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News on the provincial campaign: boring.

November 25, 2012 by Peter Lowry

With the seven Liberal candidates for the job of Premier of Ontario ranging in age from 50 to 61, you are forgiven if you do not expect too much excitement. The fact that all of them have the McGuinty seal of approval—in that each had at one time or another served in a McGuinty cabinet—is a measure of their acceptability to party establishment. And now the party has to figure out which of them is the least boring.

You might want to bypass the Toronto Star if you are looking for help in sorting out the candidates. A news section of the Saturday Star had questions asked of the seven candidates. Anyone who faithfully read all 21 paragraphs of drivel from the candidates deserves a medal. And then the Star’s editors chose a headline saying: Economy the focus as Liberal campaign heats up. While that newspaper was being delivered, the temperature across Ontario fell more than 10 degrees and here in Babel we had more than 10 centimetres of white stuff to shovel.

And to think that these contenders paid the Liberal Party of Ontario a collective $350,000 just for the privilege of boring Ontario Liberals. That fee certainly kept out the riff-raff. And that is not all. The candidates are allowed to raise $625,000 each to spend on their campaign—provided they give 20 per cent of the money they raise to the party. It begs the question as to whether this is a leadership contest or a fund-raising campaign?

Somehow, Sandra Pupatello came first in the Toronto Star’s list but having read just her answers to the Star’s questions, does not mean you are enlightened. All you will end up with is that she is going to hit the ground running. (You have never heard that expression before, have you?)

The other front runner is Gerard Kennedy. He makes the interesting comment that this leadership contest gives all parties in the Legislature an opportunity to start again. It would, if both the other parties were to also replace their leaders.

The other five candidates also do their best with the Star’s narrow questions. Everyone seems to want to sit down with Tim Hudak and Andrea Horwath to solve problems. What makes them think that those two have any answers is a mystery.

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The provincial candidate is a traveller.

November 23, 2012 by Peter Lowry

One of our first experiences in party leadership activities was driving the candidate to riding meetings around Ontario. At first we spent the time on these journeys discussing policies and people. The candidate’s wife, who we had to take along, quickly tired of our discussions and, to keep her happy, we sometimes invited Bob Nixon and his wife to join us. The candidate was Charles Templeton and this was the 1964 provincial leadership.

The point of this is the emphasis on candidates getting out to meet potential voters. That has not changed in the past 50 years. Facebook does not replace physically meeting the candidates. In this Ontario race we find that Sandra Pupatello has been to Kitchener and Ottawa and that seems to indicate that she is serious about the race. Most agree that she is one of the leading candidates but Toronto Star writer Bob Hepburn thinks that she will win the contest anyway because she is not from Toronto or the GTA.

Meanwhile, the other leading candidate, former Toronto MPP and MP Gerard Kennedy, announced his candidacy in London, Ontario and has shown that he knows the way to St. Catharines and Niagara Falls to press the flesh and win some endorsements. It was good to see that he picked up the endorsement of Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor. An MPP since 2003, Craitor was frank about how he wanted more say for members in the Legislature and in decisions that are supposedly made by the Liberal government.

We have five also-rans in the race as the nominations close. The early birds, MPP’s Kathleen Wynne and Glenn Murray are fighting for the same votes in downtown Toronto. They are probably wasting their time. MPP Eric Hoskin’s seems out of his depth in the race and maybe needs more time in the Legislature to be taken seriously. MPP Charles Sousa from Mississauga is likely to be mistaken for a Torontonian but will also carry the can for the cancelled gas plant in Mississauga. He can also forget it. Last but not least is MPP Harinder Takhar, also from Mississauga. He is probably the best educated member of the Legislature and should know better than to go after McGuinty’s job.

Our advice to all these candidates is to rent a bus, paste some signs on it, get a few good advance people ahead of you and start driving this province. If you work really hard, you can take Christmas Day off to visit the family. If the family complains, tell them to get used to it!

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Who said Harper is an economist?

November 21, 2012 by Peter Lowry

When Canada’s premiers meet later this week to discuss Canada’s economic problems, they can do it without Stephen Harper. The Prime Minister rejected their invitation. He is letting Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney fill in for him. After all, Harper flies around the world giving economic advice, why should he waste his wisdom on Canada?

And besides, Stephen Harper might have trained as an economist but he has never shown any desire to practice that obscure science. From the time when he travelled west to join with Preston Manning’s Reform Party, Stephen Harper has remained aloof from sharing any expertise on economic matters. Even after leaving Manning to become head of the National Citizen’s Coalition, he has dealt in demagoguery and economics be damned.

What Canadians need to recognize is that all that expensive taxpayer-funded government advertising for an Economic Action Plan has absolutely nothing to do with economics. It is a name for a lame government program that squeezes money out of municipal taxpayers for infrastructure renewal programs. It has left gullible municipal councils across Canada locked into heavy debt with only the local taxpayers to pay off the long-term costs. And if the Bank of Canada ever turns loose the interest rate screws, there will be more than a few bankrupt municipalities wondering what happened.

It appears recently that both Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Stephen Harper need to get their act together on the financial direction of the Canadian government. It seems their plan to rid Canadians of the deficit of some $26 billion before the next election is not going to work. Hell, it never had a chance. Canada is far too vulnerable to American and world economic problems and ridding Canadians of the deficit by firing thousands of federal civil servants is about as stupid a solution as we can imagine.

What really bugs us on a daily basis is Harper’s friend Premier Dalton McGuinty of Ontario who also wants to wrestle the provincial deficit to the mat. He is doing it by stabbing his former friends, the teachers in the back. He thinks he can pass legislation making them work for less. Maybe somebody told him that would not work and he decided to quit in a fit of pique. At least something good came out of the mess.

But that leaves us with a premiers’ meeting in Halifax later this week with a lame-duck guy from Ontario, an already discredited PQ Premier from Quebec, people nobody knows in the East and pugnacious premiers from the West who have their own battles.

There might be some posturing in Halifax but overall, the meeting is a waste of time. We could easily end up with a couple vitriolic elections in Ontario and Quebec next year but they will hardly be a substitute for the voters getting their teeth into Harper and his crew. We have to blame somebody.

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Parsing the provincial potentials.

November 18, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Global Television’s Focus Ontario program featured two of the major candidates for the leadership of the provincial Liberal Party this week. It was our first good look at Windsor’s Sandra Pupatello since she left provincial politics in 2011. It also served as a fresh look at Eric Hoskins from Toronto St. Paul’s. Both are considered strong candidates.

Sandra Pupatello has not changed. The woman is still a stentorian speaker and her manner brooks no argument. And if she could just get away from the commercial message for a bit, you might get to like her. Her message was on job creation and was based on some success she felt she had while serving 16 years in the Ontario Legislature.

Pupatello’s message was not interrupted by any discussion of where she might try to take the Ontario Liberal Party. Her message today was only to the voters. It was a “jobs, jobs, jobs” pitch and she belted out every word as though it was a series of sound bites. Reading between the lines of what she was saying, she was just as right wing as Dalton McGuinty. With Ontario Treasurer Dwight Duncan as her principle backer, she was unlikely to ever say anything different.

Having Eric Hoskins on the same show was an interesting contrast. With his boyish good looks and artfully styled hair, Hoskins had the softer, friendlier stance of the two. The surprise though was that he was also talking in rapid sound bites. When Pupatello left McGuinty’s cabinet, Hoskins—the newby—must have got her speaking coach. He was better in his announcement for the news media earlier this week when he was more obviously reading what he was supposed to say.

Both candidates were guilty of the rookie mistake of overdoing the “I” in their remarks. In an interview show such as this, if you do not have an idea of the audience, you should talk to the interviewers. It gives you focus for your statements rather than a scatter-gun commercial for yourself.

Both candidates need to understand that the only audience they want right now is Liberals who are likely to have a vote at the January convention. Focus Ontario can help reach that audience but they have to make it clear where they intend to lead the Ontario Liberal Party. Hoskins did not even come close to making that clear. And Pupatello should reassess the tough-guy message she appears to be trying to communicate.

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Provincial Liberals: It’s all about control.

November 17, 2012 by Peter Lowry

The upcoming provincial leadership convention in Ontario stands in stark contrast to the federal leadership convention just a few months later. The provincial convention in January is a highly controlled event designed to stifle dissent, marginalize critics and to maintain the status quo. In comparison, the federal convention in April will be a wide open, democratic exercise producing a foregone conclusion. Neither approach is satisfactory.

The delegated provincial convention at Toronto’s legendary Maple Leaf Gardens will probably be the last of the controlled party conventions. Liberals will no longer allow such a degree of manipulation once they see how little it gains them. The control starts with the delegate elections just two weeks before the event in Toronto. That means nearby preferred accommodation will be completely controlled by the ex officio delegates who decide this type of convention anyway.

From what has leaked out so far, we understand that some sort of a preferential ballot will be in use to choose delegates in each electoral district. It seems that the pre-determined candidates for delegate positions will be required to declare their preference for the leadership and are locked in to voting for that candidate or ‘none of the above’ on the first ballot. Through some method, not yet described, the delegate ballot will produce four men, four women, four youth and four others(?), apportioned according to who they prefer as leader and next Premier of Ontario.

That process alone could possibly elect the new leader on the first ballot. That would delight many delegates who would then not bother to mortgage their homes to pay for a weekend in Toronto’s fabled Maple Leaf Gardens. It is not just the prospect of paying (an early bird) $299 admittance for seniors and youth or $499 for being middle-aged that will be the main concern. Have you priced food and lodgings in Toronto lately? Even on the cheap, an out of town Liberal is faced with being out of pocket at least $1,000.

And then you realize that the rules are there to ensure that the party’s managers under McGuinty remain in control of the party. They made sure that Dalton McGuinty won in 1996 and they have obviously not lost their touch—considering how they are manipulating this convention.

As we said earlier, the wide open federal leadership is another matter. Now if we could just get some more credible candidates, that one would be an interesting experiment in democracy for Canadians

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Gerard Kennedy has an idea.

November 12, 2012 by Peter Lowry

The provincial Liberal leadership in Ontario just turned into a no-brainer. Once again, Gerard Kennedy is the guy to beat. He led on all the ballots except the last when Dalton McGuinty won the leadership in 1996. It was the traditional battle of the left versus the right. The right wing rallied to defeat Kennedy, putting their favourite, Dalton McGuinty, in charge of Ontario’s Liberals. What the Ontario Liberals did was replace rabid Conservative Mike Harris (and his successor ultra-Conservative Ernie Eves) with a Conservative Dalton McGuinty. McGuinty was in sheep’s clothing as a Liberal. It worked, for a while.

But Liberals who try to ride the line between left and right can no longer do the balancing act. The world is changing and we can no longer suffer the lie of being the “good managers” of Canadian governments. Liberals who try to hide the party’s past as reformers are lying to the electorate. It was the right-wing Liberal Party managers who threw Stéphane Dion to the wolves in 2008. They are the same managers who tried to shoehorn Michael Ignatieff into “the big red tent” amalgam of right and left wing Liberals and failed so badly in 2011. They had lost touch with the Canadian electorate and so had Ontario’s Dalton McGuinty.

What saved Ontario’s Liberals in the 2011 provincial election was the paucity of their opposition. Conservative leader Tiny Tim Hudak is a pale imitation of his mentor Mike Harris and the New Democrat’s Andrea Horwath just simply missed the boat in her time of political opportunity.

But Gerard Kennedy can change the scene. He wants to bring the Ontario Liberal Party into the 21^st Century. He wants to turn Whigs into Reformers. He wants the Clear Grits of Ontario to embrace the teachers’ unions so they can face the future together. He wants the Liberal government to address job creation and forget the deficit until we have the wherewithal to do something about it.

In reviewing the scenario so far in the provincial leadership sweepstakes, Gerard Kennedy stands alone. To suggest that Kathleen Wynne shares his left leanings is like suggesting that there is a properly equipped and staffed bar at the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Sandra Pupatello takes more time to figure out but, at best, she seems to lean whichever way the wind blows at the time. And anyone who has served in the McGuinty cabinet in the past year is as guilty as he in betraying trust.

To win this provincial leadership, the convention delegates will have to know what candidates are going to do that is different. So far, Gerard Kennedy is the only candidate who understands that.

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Leadership needs a ground game too.

November 9, 2012 by Peter Lowry

For all the billions of dollars that were spent on the American election this year, in the end, it all came down to the ground game. Without his team’s skill at the ground game, Barack Obama would have lost. It remains the key to political victory at all levels of campaigning. You always have to identify your voters and then make sure they cast their vote for you. You can never leave it to chance.

The thought came up last night when Kathleen Wynne called. Wynne is the MPP for Don Valley West in Toronto. She is running for Dalton McGuinty’s job as Premier of Ontario. Her team seems to be using robocalls to Liberals in Ontario attempting to identify supporters and potential supporters. This was our first contact with her and it was her recorded voice saying she is running for the leadership and you could press one if you supported her or two if you wanted more information. There should have been a third option saying “don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

You have to admit that robocalls are cheap and she needed something to tell potential delegates that she is in the running but this is not a technique that we would ever recommend. It is presumptive, intrusive and tells us that she has no depth of support outside of Toronto. And if the Liberal Party is releasing the membership database to all candidates, we might have to eventually change our phone number.

It is not that we are opposed to all robocalls. Most people dislike them but they can be useful in a support role to build on your campaign’s basic proposition. Too many campaign managers try to hang their entire campaign on them and then wonder why the campaign failed.

An effective political campaign is a two-way communication. Whether you are into a dialogue on Facebook or talking to a voter at their door, you have to listen more than talk. You are making your proposition, you are listening to the reaction and looking for new ways to make your case. If you cannot listen, you cannot communicate.

In a political leadership campaign, you have to network across the voting base. You need to build your organization across the province (or country) and in workable areas. You need to have people the voter knows (or can identify with) do that first contact. You need a proposition that says why this person should be the new leader. You need to show direction. In fact, you have to demonstrate leadership.

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Provincial Liberals have old disease.

November 6, 2012 by Peter Lowry

There is a disease that has threatened the health of Ontario Liberals over the years. It is coming back strong with the provincial leadership contest. The disease is city-myopia. It is caused by the inability of Ontario’s Liberals to connect with any voters but those in the province’s major cities. The last Ontario Liberal leaders with real rural roots were Premiers Mitch Hepburn and (briefly) Harry Nixon.

Nothing shows the problem more emphatically than the first two candidates out of the starting gate for Dalton McGuinty’s job. Of course, they were both in Dalton’s cabinet and are tarred by his actions as Premier. To make matters worse, they are both from central Toronto. The fact that neither is as right wing as McGuinty would only make a difference to voters in their respective electoral districts.

For Toronto Centre MPP Glen Murray, he has a double disadvantage in that he is the former mayor of Winnipeg. Finding out about rural Ontario will require an even steeper learning curve for him. Not that we would think of his opponent Don Valley West MPP Kathleen Wynne of being a farmer’s daughter.

The voting dichotomy between rural and urban Ontario must have been noted by the federal electoral district redistribution commission. While everyone agrees that we are supposed to believe that the commission is impartial, there are too many artfully created rural-urban electoral districts in the recently proposed changes. If the provincial Liberals last long enough in office, they will need to go back to separate boundaries for federal and provincial electoral districts. And it would be in the interest of the provincial NDP to support the move.

This is not to suggest that the provincial Liberals could not start to win with rural candidates. They would first have to take a long step towards creating policies that can work for rural Ontario. They also need to learn to work with rural voters.

Hopefully there will be more candidates come forward to replace McGuinty. As things stand, the Liberal Party in Ontario is like an old truck running on empty on its way to the scrap yard. It needs a heck of a lot more than a new leader. This party needs a full makeover.

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