LP_468x60
ontario news watch
on-the-record-468x60-white
and-another-thing-468x60

On June 8, we're going to wake up in a completely different province.

Forget polite, reserved, stiff-upper-lip Upper Canadian Ontario.  Quaint remnants of that province will remain, certainly, but whoever wins will usher in a sea change not just politically, but culturally- for Canada's most populous province.  Our institutions will be forced to adapt, and fast….and keep on adapting.  Where harmony and consensus once reigned, competition and struggle will now prevail.

If you can't tell, I'm pretty happy about this development which, it must be said, I did predict a few times.  Though I'm not sure exactly what will come about yet, I can already predict a few ways in which the politics of the province will change:

Dirt-Digging Becomes A Feature

I cannot count the number of times in elections past where we had clear kill shots on candidates, and yet we took a pass, out of some sense of propriety (and more likely, worry that pulling the trigger on one situation would lead to a mutual assured destruction-type situation).

Clearly, though, those fears were overblown.  As I type this the Liberals are openly running ads featuring allegations of Doug's drug dealings.  It turns out that you can knock opposing candidates for things they've said and done without "the key message" being lost, or without the really damaging personal life issues for all three party leaders becoming too much of a distraction from the already chaotic main race.

Still, Canadian politics being what it is, the parties are drawing from set lists of doings and sayings they have deemed to be controversial and sticking religiously to them rather than engaging in a creative and organic back-and-forth.  For example, this hilarious ad from the NDP, circa 2010, where Andrea Horwath is being advertised as a leader who can "balance a budget in heels" could have proved useful last week when Horwath's shopping habits briefly became an issue on the campaign trail, and her party condemned the attacks on her clothing choices as sexist.  Oh well …..

One Kind of "Radical" Is OK The Other Kind Is Not

While all the parties are trying to slam one another as being off-side with that mythical golden moderate mean, the most eyebrow-raising development of this election is that NDP candidates are apparently allowed to get away with saying questionable things with the full-throated endorsement of their leader.

We can argue forever about what constitutes a firing offence and what isn't, but until we reach an agreement on that score, here's how it stands: Scarborough-Agincourt NDP candidate Tasleem Riaz posted the infamous Hitler meme, for whatever reason, has not apologized and remains a candidate while Tanya Granic Allen isn't one.  Not only that, but there are calls still for Andrew Lawton and Merilee Fulton to be tossed as well.

You can make fun of Conservative whining about this double standard all you like, but the result is going to be that, win or lose, the PC Party is going to nominate and run more candidates that resemble Granic Allen as a result, if for no other reason than to own the libs.

Less Emphasis On Costed Platforms (Or Doing Away With Them Entirely)

"Fully costed" policy platforms are the cruelest joke in Canadian politics, and that's saying something.  We've heard a lot of bleating about how Canadian voters can't possibly be expected to cast their vote if they don't have a clear idea of what the parties are promising, which is quite humorous considering that the financial estimates in these platforms aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

Let's leave aside the fact that these things are written by people for whom a couple hundred thousand dollars constitutes a "rounding error" (because that's what they say every time they are caught having wasted that much money).  The fact that the parties have all admitted to using the Liberal numbers should invalidate them immediately, as per the Auditor General's repeated admonitions of the government's creative accounting.

Truth be told, doing away with platforms (and press junkets on the campaign buses, too) may force Ontarians to pay closer attention to the campaign so they can discern the truth of the platforms for themselves.  And that's certainly consistent in an election where norms are being broken faster than you can say "sorry, not sorry."

Written by Josh Lieblein

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


If you listen to the pundit class in Toronto, Doug Ford's campaign has been nothing short of a complete disaster.  From breaking the law under the Elections Finance Act to his supposedly poor debate performances to his refusal to present a costed platform (if the other two parties' platforms can really be called "costed") to the recording of him dubiously signing up PC members to his promise to axe the carbon tax ("It's cap-and-trade, you boneheaded cretin"), Ford's blunders, they say, have put the PCs' cake walk to victory in serious jeopardy.

How do these so-called experts know this?  Because the polls, confirming their biases, tell them so.

But even the average layperson could tell you you can't trust the polls these days, remembering President Trump or many of Canada's last election contests.  Unlike the echo chamber that is Twitter (apparently 7.4 million Canadians are active Twitter users, but I'd bet the real numbers are much lower), where journalists and political junkies cheep incessantly about the latest polls at one another, while normal Ontarians largely ignore them.

Polls are only for the twittering birds to seize upon.

But what does the average Ontarian know?  Political keeners know best.  This time the polls are certain to be accurate because: Ford, pundits and journalist are smarter than you, trust them on this.

The eminent Paul Wells, of Maclean's stature, wrote a breathless report on an online poll from Pollara Strategic Insights on Tuesday that surveyed 802 Ontarians.  The poll found Andrea Horwath's NDP have 43 per cent of the decided vote, while Ford's PCs have only 32 per cent.  What a change in fortunes!  The rest of the report essentially let Pollara Chief Strategist Don Guy give colour commentary to explain why the shocking numbers from his poll truly reflect the sentiment of the electorate.

"Ford's positives have dropped considerably since he peaked in the spring and have continued to drop in the campaign as voters are exposed to him," Guy told Wells.

At the end of Wells' report, there was a disclaimer on the shaky methodology that's worth quoting in full.

Pollara conducted a 10-minute online survey of 802 Ontarians who self-identified as eligible to vote in the Ontario Elections on May 27 and 28, 2018.  Because the sample is based on those who initially self-selected for participation in the panel rather than a probability sample, no estimates of sampling error can be calculated.  All sample surveys and polls may be subject to multiple sources of error, including, but not limited to sampling error, coverage error, and measurement error.  A probability sample of equivalent size would have a margin of error of ± 3.3 per cent.

The data are statistically weighted to ensure the regional composition province wide and within region to ensure age and gender composition reflects that of the Ontario adult eligible population using information from the 2016 Census and accounting for older Ontarians' increased propensity to vote based on an analysis of Ontario's election performance relative to federal elections.  Based on our analysis, the composition of the electorate over the age of 55 would range between 43 and 48 per cent.

In this report, results are expressed as percentages unless otherwise noted.  Results may not add to 100 per cent due to rounding or multiple responses.  Net results cited in the text may not exactly match individual results shown in the charts due to rounding.

If you read that carefully you realize Wells has wasted the reader's time.  The polls accuracy is unknown and is thus a shot in the dark — i.e. junk.  But this didn't stop some Dipper-loving journalists from sharing it, and the CBC and other news organizations from re-reporting it, without pointing out its dubiousness.

Next Thursday, this and many other polls are almost certainly going to be proven spectacularly wrong (unless they get lucky).  Don't expect pollsters and pundits to confess failure.  I'm sure they'll blame a slew of negative headlines as the reason the NDP didn't do as well as they predicted.  And then they'll carry on and sell and report the same snake oil when the next election season rolls around.

Perhaps some accountability is in order.

Photo Credit: Global News

 

Written by Graeme C. Gordon

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.