I get it. It's not pleasant to read bad news and downer commentary. People, and Canadians most especially, want to believe that better times are just around the corner.
So when you tell them, as I have been doing with regularity for what seems like forever, that the country is in a ditch and isn't climbing out anytime soon, you are greeted with a healthy chorus of "Take off, eh? Stuff yer negativity! Canada's the greatest country in da world!"
No matter how real the danger may be, suicidal optimism remains the default state of mind for most Canadians. Not only does this continue to be the raison d'être for our current Prime Minister as his government staggers from one unforced error to the next but keeps a smile on his face regardless his nearest rivals are so afraid of talking about real substantive problems or criticizing Trudeau too harshly that they try to outdo one another for simplistic blandishments.
But we can't forget that a lot of this risk-averse politicking is, legitimately, what the base asks for. As much as the CPC gets cracked on for being a bunch of rageful Trump fans, and the NDP for being revolutionary socialists, the reality is that the rank-and-file membership of both these parties at least aspire to Trudeauvian sunniness. So when either party takes a slightly darker or more ideological tone, the loudest voices calling them back to the safe zone are usually nervous party activists.
And thus the tendency to pretend as though things are fine when they aren't. Thus the repeated failure on the part of the PC Party of Ontario to actively deal with the problems that led to the Patrick Brown debacle, and the issues with the recently concluded leadership race, and the "rot" that may or may not exist within the party.
Christine Elliott tried to turn herself into the embodiment of this desire to get away from all the negativity and disunity. She ran a POSITIVE campaign with an OPTIMISTIC vision for the party and Ontario. She had full confidence in the party and the process, even as both were crumbling around her. And then, after she lost, she underwent an instantaneous conversion from playing the adult in the room to a childish refusal to accept the results.
Her optimism was unwarranted. The party's optimism about carrying off this race without a hitch was really, really, unwarranted. It caused more harm than good.
Of course, the PC's are not the only ones drinking the Kool-Aid. The architects of this mess, the Ontario Liberals, got to where they are today because of, not despite, their best intentions. They criticized the 2003 PCs for running a hidden deficit and then jacked that deficit up to record levels. They wanted to do their part to fight climate change and ended up driving up people's Hydro bills. They raised the minimum wage and turned employees and employers against one another. A decade and a half of Liberal "progress" has created a situation where Doug Ford is a serious challenger for Premier. But don't tell the Liberals that they're too busy pretending the big bad scary man from Etobicoke will melt down and destroy himself and we can all go back to sleep.
About the NDP, the less said, the better, because they have reacted to their utterly hopeless position by positioning themselves not as the next government, but as a government-in-waiting. Blinding themselves to the leftover anger at Andrea Horwath for the last failed experiment, they have in effect adopted "We're not the worst!" as a campaign slogan, hoping against hope for a repeat of the Motley miracle. Once again, they have concluded that Ontarians are just too pure of heart to vote for a character like Doug Ford.
What fuels all these people, and all the DoFo doubters, is the belief that anger and cynicism are never warranted. For all their mouthings about empathy and care, they have none for those under the populist sway. Their optimism is not only unwarranted, it quite often comes across as selfish and inauthentic.
If only they had taken off their rose-coloured glasses for a moment, things might never have gotten to this point.
Photo Credit: Global News
Written by Josh Lieblein
