Did you hear that Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is staying in her job? We were in Ottawa last week during the bye-election in Ottawa-Vanier. It was no surprise that the Liberal candidate won. These are happy days in Ottawa. The malaise at Queen’s Park appears distant and of little consequence.
Yet these are the drabbest of days in the Niagara region. Former Conservative Leader Timmy Hudak’s electoral district also stayed true to its gothic conservatism in a bye-election. “And a little child shall lead them.” (Yes, we know that the Bible verse referred to a child leading the animals of prey who laid down with their lunch. Give us some license here!)
But the bye-election stand-off solves nothing. The Liberal majority at Queen’s Park is safe—for now. Conservative Leader Patrick Brown added another straw to the load of his burden of leadership. Now he has another reminder of his narrow social conservatism in the party caucus. He can run (he is a marathoner) but he cannot hide from his own narrow-minded past.
It is the dichotomy of Ontario politics. Rural and small-town Ontario is Conservative. The urban majority are more progressive. You see it so clearly from the spiralling towers of the condominiums of city life. It is the advances of higher education, the forced mix and accommodations of city life, and the realization that the person from a land far away is not so different when you live side by each.
But bigotry blooms where the pseudo politicians pander to ignorance. In the same way as Trump marched across the farming states of America, we see a band of Ontario Landowners flailing at progress across central Ontario. We see a conniving and determined Conservative leader like Brown feeding on the failings of Ontario’s right-wing Liberals at Queen’s Park.
If Wynne tries to win Ontario in 2018, she will fail us. A true leader serves. A false leader commands. There is no leadership today from any Ontario political party. It will be a sorry election in 2018 with Brown, Horwath and Wynne. They are nebbish. They are not leaders.
There is no solace for Ontario.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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