A question — perhaps a rhetorical one — for Ontario politics watchers: just what do the Progressive Conservatives need to do to lose?
There’s an ironic twist to that question, and I’ll take that on in a minute, but for a quick moment, let’s just reflect on the sheer insanity of how the party is still, according to the polls, on track to form the next government in Canada’s most-populous province.
In the last month, the party’s leader, Patrick Brown, has gone down after a party revolt brought about, at least superficially, by allegations of sexual misconduct against two young (!) women. The party’s president quit after Maclean’s reported that he’d been accused of sexual assault four years ago. A series of top officials in the party were also let go in the chaos.
The people running to replace the now-deposed Brown are abandoning a huge chunk of the party’s campaign plans, namely the carbon tax, leaving a gigantic fiscal gap. The party is frantically trying to figure out exactly how many of its members are actual human beings and which nomination contests it needs to go all over again due to shenanigans under the prior leader. The interim leader has devoted himself to rooting out the rot in his own organization — that’s an interesting choice of words.
And, oh, yeah, the prior leader has declared himself vindicated and is trying to run for his old job again, less than a month after quitting it, while a member of the caucus, Randy Hillier — a guy who worked for the former leader, like, 30 seconds ago — is filing complaints with the province’s integrity commission, alleging his former boss is, to use the technical term, crooked.
And just to put the cherry on top, Hillier also casually slipped into his complaint to the integrity commissioner that Brown was apparently sleeping with an intern he brought with him on unauthorized travel, paid for by persons unknown, all over the world.
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WATCH BELOW: Patrick Brown says complaint by MPP Randy Hillier is ‘garbage’
Like, seriously, folks. Take a minute. Read that all over again. Try to hold it all in your head. This is absolutely insane. This is a meltdown of epic proportions. I cannot begin to think of a parallel in modern Canadian political history.
And yet … the party still seems poised to win. Repeat that thought. Take another minute, everyone. But it’s true.
A series of polls, taken in the midst of the meltdown, have shown the PCs with margins of victory ranging from comfortable to overwhelming. It would seem that for Ontario voters, a leader going down in a sex scandal and then immediately trying to get his old job back even as members of his own party accuse him of being a dirty politician while simultaneously ripping up a well-costed platform is … acceptable. Or, at the very least, not a deal breaker.
Nothing happens in a vacuum. Certainly not politics. So we need to acknowledge the other realities at play in Ontario politics.
The provincial NDP is led by the affable and competent Andrea Horwath, but there is no real sense that the party has much upward mobility. The die-hard Dippers will come out for it, but no one else will.
And the provincial Liberals, under Kathleen Wynne, have some popular policies but have been in power for virtually 15 years and have accumulated more scandals and barrage than a cargo hold. Pollsters have been warning the Liberals about the strong “desire for change” among voters, and I guess that desire for change is strong enough to leave voters willing to overlook the virtual meltdown of the most-likely party to form the next government.
Speaking just as an Ontario voter now, and not as a journalist, that actually makes a certain amount of gut-level sense to me. There is a bone-deep weariness of the Ontario Liberals in this province among a huge part of the electorate, and even many senior Liberals seem to know it and have decided to move on.
Even while my political instincts are telling me that the Ontario PCs have shot themselves repeatedly — and not confined those shots to the foot — my gut level instincts still tell me that the PCs can win this thing because people really are that sick of the Liberals.
It’s anecdotal, obviously — put what stock in my guesses you will — but it’s true. I’m not sure people outside Ontario can comprehend the fatigue with the Liberals that has set in in so many quarters.
And that brings us back to the irony alluded to above.
It wasn’t that long ago that the Ontario PCs couldn’t catch a break. They’d lead in the polls month after month, then an election would be called, and poof, that would be it. They’d fly apart under the combined pressure of internal mistakes, Liberal campaigning, and public skepticism about the party and its leader during the last two campaigns, Tim Hudak. Columnists such as myself lamented the party’s lack of direction, poor decisions and unforced errors.
How silly we were back then. How much more we know now. Something that would derail a party’s chances at election in 2014 honestly and probably wouldn’t even make the cut for a headline summary package at Queen’s Park today.
The last month has been absolutely remarkable. More remarkable still is how little the voters seem to care.
Matt Gurney is host of The Morning Show on Global News Radio 640 Toronto and a columnist for Global News.
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