Got an e-mail from Ontario Liberal Party campaign director Don Guy the other day, and premier Dalton McGuinty the day before that.
No. I’m not a personal friend of either. The messages were of the standard political variety, the kind calculated to rally Grit support for the October 6 provincial election.
But I confess to having an awkward relationship with both Guy and the preem – the Liberal party in general if you want to know the truth. I remember an awkward meeting in an Ottawa hotel with the preem all those years ago when one George Smitherman used to carry McGuinty’s bags.
But it’s getting harder to hate Dalton. Compared to the guy who’s trying to takeover Ontario, PC leader Tim Hudak, McGuinty’s practically a saint. OK. I wouldn’t go that far.
But McGuinty may have hit on a winner with his green jobs pitch revealed last week for October’s highly-anticipated provincial election, at least judging by the bump its given the Grits in the polls.
Yes. We’re still almost a month away from the writ officially dropping, but the Grit war room has been buzzing with activity for months, as they try to head off Hudak’s Conservatives, who’ve been leading in the polls since last summer.
Much is at stake, not only for the Liberals, but arguably, the future course of our politics.
Not to overstate it, but a hat trick for the Cons – Rob Ford in Toronto, Stephen Harper in Ottawa and Hudak at Queen’s Park – would unalterably change the landscape for years to come, in my opinion for the worse. We’re already seeing what the Ford and Harp electoral victories have meant for the tone of public discourse.
Hudak seems to be relying, too, on the prevailing nastiness, saying just about anything he thinks will get him elected, even bending the truth a little when it suits him. Call it the new truthiness in politics. Say something often enough… It worked for Ford right?
Hudak’s shocking meanderings on the energy file is one example of this. It’s easy to knock the Grits for rising hydro rates. Only, it was privatization, deregulation whatever you want to call it, of the energy sector under the Harris government, in which Hudak was a minister by the way, that caused the ballooning rates Hudak’s trying to blame the Libs for now.
If you shut your eyes and listen to the PC leader long enough, it’s difficult not to shudder, so ramped up has been his rhetoric.
Hudak’s pronouncements, for example, on the province’s “sweetheart” deal with South Korea-based Samsung to build wind turbines, a fave target, has carried the strange whiff of xenophobia. Maybe it’s just my immigrant sensibilities running away with me.
But Hudak had been trying to give his party a more progressive face when he took over the leadership. No more. He’s seemingly smelled the hard right turn in the wind and is clearly pandering to the Reformatory crowd in PC ranks.
The party’s choices to carry the flag in some ridings reflects Hudak’s new far right bent. The selection of Kevin Gaudet, a former Reform candidate and Canadian Taxpayers Federation director, in Pickering-Scarborough East, and the ditching of Norm Sterling for Hillier disciple Jack MacLaren in Carlton-Mississippi-Mills, are but two examples.
The Grits, unlike their counterparts in the federal wing of the party decimated in the last election by years of complacency at the grassroots, have been dogging Hudak at every turn, playing up his double-talk on certain policy issues, (HST, all-day kindergarten, Green Energy Act) and getting nasty when they’ve needed to be. (See Hudak’s flip-flop on abortion George Lepp and the mystery penis).
Grit efforts seem to be paying off, with the most recent poll showing Hudak’s lead shrinking. But the odds are still stacked against McGuinty’s crew.
Some high-profile MPPs have already jumped shipped, including David Caplan in Toronto, and Sandra Pupatello out Windsor way. The HarperCons’ inroads in Toronto in the last election, where they took seven seats, offers an electoral base for Hudak that wasn’t there a few months ago.
Also nipping at the heels of the Liberals are the NDP, re-energized by the party’s results in the federal run-off and with the benefit this time around of a more likable leader in Andrea Horwath.
A three-peat would be a tall order for the Grits. Only five sitting premiers in Ontario history have tried for a third term in office. The good omen for McGuinty is that all five who tried ended up winning, a fact the Libs’ social media wire has been eager to pump.
