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Also why the Conservatives continue to support Freedom Convoy, even though everyone hates it
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May 12, 2022 • 2 hours ago • 6 minutes reading • 43 comments Ontario Prime Minister Doug Ford speaks at a May 5 campaign event. Photo by The Canadian Press / Frank Gunn
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Ontario Prime Minister Doug Ford has spent surprisingly much of his term as one of Canada’s most hated provincial leaders, but is still ready to win re-election for the simple reason that Ontario residents seem to hate the opposition even more.
In a new Leger study for Postmedia, Ford’s progressive conservatives enjoy a double-digit lead over their liberal rivals. With 39 percent of the vote (and with the stipulation that it is early days and anything can happen in an election campaign), this is a virtual guarantee that the June 2 vote will bring them back to office.
There has not been a single poll conducted in 2022 to show computers anything other than first. Even the Toronto Star – not a fan of the Ford government – said this week that they were “on track to win another majority”.
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All this despite the fact that the people of Ontario have never been particularly in love with the leadership of Rob Ford’s older brother.
As early as 2019, a Mainstreet Research poll showed support for the PC government falling off a cliff. Just months after voting for Ford as their leader, only 19.9 percent of Ontario residents approved of the work he was doing.
The COVID-19 pandemic did not help. Although Ford saw a brief burst of support for the “gathering around the flag” enjoyed by other rulers in the first months of the pandemic, in the first weeks of 2022, 55% of Ontario residents believed that Ford’s leadership of the pandemic their province on the “wrong path”
The ranking of prime minister’s approval, maintained by the Angus Reed Institute, consistently shows Ford as one of the most unpopular provincial leaders in the country. One of Ford’s best testimonials was in their recent poll in March, and even then it ranked at the bottom of the provincial leaders with only 43 percent of Ontario residents giving it a thumbs up.
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In general, it is not a good sign to run in an election. Photo by the Angus Reed Institute
Compare this to other recent provincial elections in which incumbents were similarly preferred to win. The Prime Minister of British Columbia, John Horgan, was almost certain that he would retain the post of Prime Minister when he rejected the order in October 2020, but he entered the election as the most beloved Prime Minister in the country with an approval rating of 63 percent.
In Ontario, progressive conservatives were first introduced to the government four years ago. With a vote of 40.5 percent, it was enough for Doug Ford’s computers to add an incredible 49 seats to the group; enough to take a majority with 13 vacancies.
And the party would probably have done even better if it had been led under different circumstances by its former leader, Patrick Brown. Brown was ousted just weeks before the 2018 election on charges of sexual misconduct. (Brown recently filed a defamation lawsuit against CTV News, the network that first aired the allegations).
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The accusations did shake public confidence in the Progressive Conservatives and put an end to a long period in which Brown seemed an untouchable prime minister in anticipation. At one point, his computers enjoyed a charming 50 percent approval rating.
Supporting progressive conservatives is above all a wave of popular resentment against the current liberals.
Under Prime Ministers Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynn, the Liberals spent 15 consecutive years at the helm of Ontario, the longest period of liberal rule in more than a century. Although tormented by a series of scandals for at least half of that period, they continued to win re-election so easily that, according to the National Post’s Chris Sally, the party could justifiably develop an “invincibility complex.”
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But Win entered the 2018 election after a month-long series with an approval rating below 20 percent.
Kathleen Winn is dancing on stage after announcing her resignation as leader of the Ontario Liberal Party after its historic loss in 2018. Photo by Ernest Doroshuk / Toronto Sun / Postmedia
The election proved to be the worst showing for an incumbent government in Ontario history and the worst election result for the Ontario Liberals since their founding in 1857. The Liberals claimed only seven seats, giving them a far third place after the NDP.
This is an explosion from which the party has not come close to recovery and from which the NDP has failed to take advantage. NDP leader Andrea Horvat, now the longest-serving leader of a political party in Canada, failed to increase voter support long after the mid-1920s.
New Liberal leader Stephen Del Duca – who served in Win’s cabinet between 2014 and 2018 – took the helm for the first time just days before the COVID-19 pandemic began. Two years later, even the Liberals are not very sure that he will be a good prime minister. Less than half of Ontario’s Liberal voters in the recent Leger poll believe he is the best choice to take power.
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In addition, as it happens, Del Duca lost his place in the 2018 elections.
CONSERVATIVE LEADERSHIP COMPETITION
Last night was the first official debate for the Conservative leadership (there was one last week, but technically it was not a debate sanctioned by the party). It starts at 18:00 in Edmonton (this is 20:00 for you, Ontario and Quebec) and you can watch a live broadcast here.
One of the emerging themes of the Conservative race so far has been how candidates stumble upon each other to talk about how much they love the Freedom Convoy, a protest against the mandate that has plagued downtown Ottawa for several weeks. At last week’s debate, Jean Charest was the only candidate to openly condemn the protest, for which he was immediately attacked with boos from the public. Data analyst Philip J. Fournier noted in a recent article for Politico that all this is a bit strange, given the clear majority (63 percent) of Canadians who hated the convoy of freedom in the end. But conservative voters still share much of the truckers’ protest. Fournier wrote: “This helps explain why last week’s debate seemed intended not so much for the general public as for domestic CPC consumption.”
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Another emerging topic in the race is how vicious the candidates are to each other: in particular, Pierre Poalievre happily rejected his opponent Patrick Brown as a “liar” and Charest as a secret liberal. The rhetoric is so heated that the main idea of the candidate Scott Aichison is that he is the “respectful” choice. But in a recent column for The Hub, former Stephen Harper employee Howard Anglin objected, arguing that it’s actually good when politicians shout at each other. Politics is more angry, yes, “but much of it is a reasonable reaction to the harsh reality: for the first time in several generations, there are a significant number of Canadians who do not believe the system works for them.”
Not to think that Canadian politics has become inescapably strange and hopeless, the Philippines has just elected Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (son of the former dictator of the same name) as the next president. Marcos will replace Rodrigo Duterte, who is known in part for campaigning to exterminate drug dealers in the country through extrajudicial killings, while boasting that he personally killed three people. Photo from Photo of JAM STA ROSA / AFP
IN OTHER NEWS
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Overall, Canada seems to be doing a good job on Ukraine’s dossier; Ottawa was relatively competent in sending planes loaded with weapons and receiving the few Ukrainian refugees who reached our land. But Vancouver Sun’s Daphne Brahm would like to remind everyone that Canada has completely given up on the Taliban’s response to the takeover of Afghanistan and that it has not improved in the interim eight months. Former translators for the Canadian Armed Forces are still hiding from the Taliban’s retaliation as Ottawa ignores or delays their requests. “Even heavy law firms could not help save former Afghan officials,” Bramham wrote.
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