If the Ontario’s New Democrats and Liberals were to follow the example of their federal brethren and unite in a centre-left front against the Progressive Conservatives, the Doug Ford government would be overwhelmingly defeated in the provincial election on June 2.
But that’s not going to happen just yet. The two opposition parties at Queen’s Park aren’t ready. They have been bitter rivals, each at the other’s throat, for too many years. And as much as members of both parties reject the way Premier Ford runs the province, their rejection does not approach the level of loathing that the federal Liberal and New Democratic parties share for the increasingly hard-right Conservative Party of Canada and its leader-apparent Pierre Poilievre.
Although a merger or formal association won’t be the route, there is another, simple way to remove Ford and his PCs from power. If a relatively small proportion of NDP supporters hold their noses long enough to vote Liberal on June 2, the Tories would be reduced from a majority government to a minority – giving the opposition parties the opportunity, and undoubtedly the pleasure, of defeating Ford and Co. on the floor of the legislature.
But if New Democrats are not prepared to hold their noses, the PCs stand to be reelected with a second (though reduced) majority government.
These prognostications are drawn from a scrutiny of the results of the three most recent provincial elections (2011, 2014 and 2018), the shifts in popular vote in those elections, and changes in party support revealed in recent opinion polls.
There are 124 seats in the Ontario Legislature with 63 required for a bare majority. In 2018, the PCs took 76 seats (61 per cent of the seats) with 41 per cent of the popular vote. Resignations and defections have reduced the seat count to 67, four above the minimum needed for a majority. Ford’s popularity and his party’s support have suffered in four uneven years in power, though not disastrously so. The Tories’ average in polls taken so far this year has been running in the range of 35 to 37 per cent – not great, but good enough, in the opinion of analysts, to yield a majority government of about 71 seats.
The analysis, however, rests on an expectation that Ontarians who do not choose to vote for the government party will divide their support more or less evenly between the two principal opposition parties, saving a small slice for the Green Party. That’s been the Ontario way.
Maybe not this time. The PCs and the New Democrats were beneficiaries of the collapse Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government in the 2018 election. Both saw their popular vote increase by about 10 per cent from their 2014 results. This year’s polls indicate the Conservatives have given back half of their 2018 windfall, while the NDP has fared much worse. From 34 per cent in 2018, the party has fallen to a poll average of 22 per cent this year. In other words, the NDP has regressed. It has fallen back into its accustomed range of 22 to 24 per cent, and is headed to a third-place finish.
To date, the NDP has not revealed any policies that would distinguish it materially from its election competition. And it is burdened with a leader, Andrea Horwath, who has already led it to three straight election defeats.
The only party with momentum is the Ontario Liberal Party. Left for dead – and leaderless – in 2018, it is experiencing a modest resurrection this year under its new leader, Steven Del Duca. Recent polls have put the Liberals within four percentage points (32-36) of the PCs. That’s not close enough. With just a month to go until the election, it seems unlikely that the Liberals can pull enough new supporters into their tent to disable or defeat the Tories.
Unless.
Unless they reach out aggressively to disaffected New Democrats – disaffected by the performance or style of the Ford government or by the futility of their own party – and persuade them to hold their noses and vote Liberal.
It won’t be easy. The two provincial parties don’t have as much common as their counterparts in Ottawa have. They are usually happiest when fighting between themselves.
Still, the Ford PCs are their common enemy. A shift of three or four points from NDP to Liberal would most likely reduce the Conservatives to a minority government, which the opposition parties could bring down whenever they wished.
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens is a former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail. His new book, Flora! A Woman in a Man’s World, co-authored with the late Flora MacDonald, is short-listed for the 2022 Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com