This content is restricted to subscribers
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.
Tag: Doug Ford
This content is restricted to subscribers
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.
This content is restricted to subscribers
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.
This content is only available to our subscribers!
Become a subscriber today!
RegisterAlready a subscriber?
Subscriber Login
This content is only available to our subscribers!
Become a subscriber today!
RegisterAlready a subscriber?
Subscriber Login
Mark Twain might have extended one of his celebrated aphorisms by saying Canadian political history seldom repeats itself but often rhymes in free verse.
As of May 10, 2022 there were 24 days before the June 2 Ontario provincial election. The opinion poll aggregator 338Canada.com was still projecting that the Ford Nation Ontario PCs would win a majority of seats in the Legislative Assembly on election day. But the projected majority was lower than it had been a week before.
Meanwhile, the latest individual Nanos poll (May 7-8) put the PCs at 35.4%, Liberals 30.4%, New Democrats 23.7% and Greens 4.2%. Doug Ford was still ahead as preferred premier (29%). But Liberal leader Steven Del Duca was in second place (24.1%) — “more than a seven-point gain for Del Duca, who sat at 17 per cent support when the last survey was conducted on May 2.”
All this lends somewhat greater intrigue to the question of just what might happen over the final 24 days of the Ontario campaign. And a little revealing light could be shed in this direction by the history of opinion polling over the final 24 days of the 2015 federal election campaign in Canada.
Like the Ford Ontario PCs in 2022, the 2015 Harper Conservatives went into the campaign with a majority government. Many thought they would win another four-year term in office.
During the summer of 2015 it was not the Trudeau Liberals who seemed to be challenging this prospect. It was Tom Mulcair’s unusually Quebec-friendly New Democrats. By the middle of September, however, it was clear enough that Tom Mulcair was not going to form the first New Democratic federal government in Canadian history.
The 24 days before the federal election on Monday, October 19, 2015 began on Saturday, September 26. And the Harper Conservatives finished first in seven of the next 10 polls. A Mainstreet Research poll released on October 1 put the Harper Conservatives at 37% support, and the Trudeau Liberals at only 29%. From here Conservatives placed first in polls released on October 5, 6, 7, 9, and 10!
By now the Trudeau Liberals were showing some strength. They also finished first in polls released on October 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. But it was not until October 11 — only eight days before the actual election on October 19 — that the Liberals took the unchallenged lead in all subsequent polls that would blossom into their ultimate 2015 majority government.
Liberals alone finished first in the final 22 public polls from October 11 to October 18. But even during the last week of the 2015 federal campaign there was great respect for the Harper Conservatives’ almost 10 years in office. On the eve of election day Maclean’s magazine was still contemplating the prospects for another Harper Conservative minority government — this time possibly following the fate of Frank Miller in the 1985 Ontario provincial election!
Back in the present, as of May 10, 2022 the opinion poll aggregator 338Canada.com was, again, still projecting that the Ford Nation Ontario PCs would win a majority of seats in the Legislative Assembly on June 2.
But will things still look this way eight days before the 2022 Ontario election? Is there any room for some kind of big enough surprise?
There still seems very little in the 2022 Ontario polling to suggest that any party other than the Ford PCs is at all likely to win the largest number of seats in the Legislative Assembly. And the first leaders debate on northern issues in North Bay on May 10 arguably did little to change this picture.
Yet the latest Nanos poll (May 7-8) which put the PCs at just 35.4% of the province-wide popular vote does hint at a Ford PC minority rather than majority government. And with all three major opposition leaders already having expressed their reluctance to support such a thing, there are good reasons to wonder how long it could last.
For the moment voters who find the prospect of four more years of a Ford Nation PC majority government utter anathema can take at least some heart. The possibility of a highly unstable Doug Ford minority government has still not been altogether banished from the 2022 Ontario campaign.
Beyond this the 2015 Canadian federal election may offer one final piece of advice to voters in Canada’s most populous province in 2022: Wait until the last week or so of the campaign before taking the opinion polls altogether seriously.
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.
With the start of the Ontario election, analysts apply numerous metrics to assess the relative health of each campaign beyond the horse race numbers: which party is leading at any given time.
In this 6th wave Covid period, with fewer rallies, redefined leaders tours and limitations on door to door canvassing to track, external analysts increasingly rely on sophisticated data modelling to project likely outcomes, bolstered by a daily diet of tracking polls. Based on factors ranging from historic voting patterns and the application of voter issue preferences, to an analysis of social media trends, these new prophets can play a significant role in encouraging or discouraging both volunteer support and voter turnout.
All these indicators also play a prominent role in focusing much of today’s media coverage.
From a polling perspective, indicators of momentum associated with individual campaigns, leaders’ positive/negative characteristics, the televised leader debates and the salience of individual issues framing the emerging ‘ballot question’ are all valuable tools for assessing electoral strategy.
Other ‘reliable’ measures for the media include fundraising success and third party endorsements and attacks. The Ford Conservatives have devoted significant legislative time during their first term to enhance their ability to raise large campaign donations while shrewdly limiting the spending and activities of third party critics in the year before the election.
Another metric often used is the ability to recruit high profile candidates, who can attract media attention and validate a party’s prospects, as well as ensuring a good mix of diverse and gender balanced candidates for each of Ontario’s 124 ridings. Such an analysis is a guaranteed evergreen news story in each election cycle.
Party nominations as the Ontario election writ dropped, show the PC’s with a full slate of candidates, closely followed by the True Blues. The Liberals and the Greens have about a dozen candidates to go, with the Official Opposition NDP lagging with more than two dozen candidates yet to be announced.
An inability to nominate candidates in a timely fashion usually ensures that these long shots remain long shots because they have little opportunity to build name identification or awareness; in other circumstances, parties have lost winnable seats precisely because they could not attract a good candidate in time to take advantage of an unexpected political trend.
Elections are not coronations- campaigns do matter and unanticipated issues arise- and individual candidates may have an impact on a party’s prospects in specific constituencies separate from the overall provincial campaign.
Strategic voting calls among supporters of opposition parties in individual constituencies will likely pop up again, especially if, as expected, the Ford government is seen on the cusp of a majority victory.
While it is likely too late to implement for the upcoming Ontario election, a debate brewing in the United Kingdom about the value of parties running their own candidates in every seat carries the strategic voting discussion to a different level.
The May 5th local council elections [run under party affiliation] in the UK are seen as a major test for Boris Johnson’s government, already reeling from the ‘Partygate’ scandals associated with COVID and the hapless Brexit implementation policy. Backbench Conservative politicians and media alike believe that the results may determine Boris Johnson’s future as leader of the Conservatives.
UK Tory insiders have been actively denouncing what they claim are Labour and Liberal Democratic party decisions either not to nominate candidates or not to campaign vigorously on their behalf in a number of local council contests.
Conservative Party Chair Oliver Dowden described this cooperative planning as going well beyond a handful of seats.
Dowden’s research department has found a dip in the number of Labour and Lib Dem candidates standing this May. He alleges that this is happening by design. “Finding they have values and policies in common, not just an enemy, Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens are cooperating on a local level, whether their leaders like it or not.”
As the Guardian has reported, “this breaks party rules, and so has to be done under the radar.”
These types of arrangements have been discussed in Canada as well. Before the last federal election, NDP and Green activists in Western Canada talked about uniting to support one candidate in up to 100 ridings, where their combined vote might secure electoral change.
Until we have either proportional voting or ranked balloting in Canada [don’t hold your breath], this strategy remains one of the few ways to challenge a strong incumbent government in a first past the post system.
There remain of course numerous obstacles to the achievement of this goal. Who determines who is clearly ahead in one constituency? How do you control the democratic aspirations of individuals who want to contest a nomination? Local polling is notoriously difficult and expensive; up to 40% of the electorate will not make up its mind until the last ten days of the campaign.
In the absence of such decisions, minority governments remain the primary effective tool to balance competing interests and holding governments to account.
In the Westminster system, the voters have shown a remarkable ability to achieve the balance they desire, one vote at a time.
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.
What news reports about a traffic accident can reveal about the challenges facing Canadian political reporting today.
A t-boned Silverado, a crashed Ferrari and the confessions of a contrite high profile political adviser who admitted to a mistake in running a red light are at the epicentre of this media tempest.
What started as a traffic accident story has grown to become something bigger.
But the reporting does not reflect well on the health of political journalism today.
With the Ontario provincial election looming on June 2nd, there is little surprise about the political media appetite to cover a traffic accident involving Premier Ford’s campaign manager.
Add in a flash ‘ vintage Magnum PI ‘ sports car, and all the elements of a story were in place to distract from the awful daily double news of COVID and the Ukraine.
If not for these factors, the story would likely have hardly gained much attention.
Robert Benzies , the well regarded Queen’s Park Bureau Chief of the Toronto Star, broke the car crash news to his audience in print and Twitter.
His colleague, Rob Ferguson, helpfully tweeted that ‘fortunately, he [the politico] was not seriously injured’.
While journalists repeatedly note that they do not write the headlines over their copy, the initial Toronto Star and Saint Catharines Standard stories based on Benzie’s reporting summed up the article’s contents neatly in “Premier Ford’s campaign manager crashed vintage Magnum P.I. sports car.” The sub-headline continued that the politico ‘is recovering at home’.
The politico’s perspective was covered to a depth most non-fatal traffic accident coverage fails to attract. Instead readers were treated to details about how he had bought the car, why he had misinterpreted the traffic signals and the medical issues he had faced.
Benzies was doing his job when he linked the social media post to dash cam footage which clearly showed what happened. The politico had run a red light and slammed into a truck.
That dash cam footage once again proved that a picture is worth more than a thousand words. It ‘appears’ to demonstrate to our current generation of media followers the reality of what happened, without, of course, the background context.
The Twitterati universe was quick to denounce what appeared to them to be one-sided coverage. From their reaction, they could have been in the truck that got hit.
“Really? the headline of concern is about the Ford guy and not the victim truck driver? TRY BETTER FFS!!!”, replied one shocked commentator.
Others were equally critical of the seemingly cavalier dismissal of the real story. They asked whether the campaign manager was DUI or driving distractedly [perhaps looking at a text or involved in a call]. They were asking the questions that media would also normally probe before the rush to report one side of an accident
Once launched in the media, I have heard references based on more cynical speculation, conspiratorially suggesting that the politico was a ‘valued source’ and that the media was seeking to protect him either as a quid pro quo or to gain future credit in the bank.
Or that the journalist was being spun by the politico who was following the first rule of crisis management, get your side of the story out first.
This episode is revealing about the challenges facing political reporting today.
Citizen commentators have the capacity to share their critiques of political journalists to a broad audience. They can add and shape the story- the dash cam footage. They are also quick to categorize what they have been told.
The initial coverage may have started focusing on pure and simple politics, not about an accident. One can imagine Benzies searching for any impact the accident might have on the functioning of the upcoming provincial campaign and its leadership. As a sidebar, how did a politico promoting a populist regime own such an expensive and unique vehicle?
Once the incident got treated as a traffic accident story first and foremost, was it truly worthy of uncritical in-depth attention tied to a private citizen not even running for political office?
Because journalists are human beings first, they are willing to give the benefit of doubt to those with whom they work on a regularly basis. That should be no surprise to anyone. But the need to report without fear or favour also requires that they need to step back and ask tougher questions especially with those with whom they already have a relationship.
For example, the article could have provided context about the particular intersection and whether, as the politico had suggested, it was confusing to drivers and had led to other incidents. Or commentaries from other witnesses or the police?
There also remains the overarching pressure to break a scoop quickly. The danger in the rush to judgement remains, even for the most experienced of reporters, of sloppiness and lack of balance, something that tighter editing might have prevented.
The net result has been an unnecessary assault on the credibility of competent reporters.
Once the police and the courts determine what happened at the intersection, we shall learn whether charges will be laid. There may yet be a political outcome from this unfortunate episode.
But the process will not address the ongoing consequences for media credibility. That is the equally relevant story emerging out of this fender bender.
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.
This content is restricted to subscribers
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.
Affordability is the elephant in the room as Ontario approaches this June’s provincial election and it’s time for Ontario’s politicians to address it before they get trampled.
All three of Ontario’s major political parties plan to speak to the issue of affordability in their platforms. The Ford government has been busy eliminating user fees for taxpayers. Steven Del Duca’s Liberals are promising thousands of dollars in electric car rebates. And Andrea Horwath’s NDP is talking about billions of dollars to build more affordable housing.
Every party will try to put an affordability dog in the window just in time for the election. But the best way to help Ontarians is to leave more money in taxpayers’ pockets on payday.
In Ontario, inflation is rising at more than double the rate of wage growth. That means that any gains taxpayers are making through pay hikes at work are being entirely eaten away by rising prices, and then some.
Taxpayers’ purchasing power is declining at a rate not seen since Cheers was the most-watched show on television.
Thanks to rampant inflation, Ontarians are falling further and further behind. Experts have projected that Ontario families will pay, on average, an additional $1,000 this year on groceries compared to last year. Gas prices are up by over 33 per cent compared to just one year ago. The average rental rate for an apartment in Toronto has surged by 16 per cent over the past twelve months. Three bedroom units are renting for about $2,700 per month.
Ontarians need relief, and they need it urgently.
Four years ago, Ontario Premier Doug Ford ran on a platform of affordability and tax relief. His most significant promise was to reduce middle-class income taxes by up to $1,700 a year for a family with two income-earners.
Ford’s promise tried to address the problem at its source. Rather than offering vague promises to help deal with specific issues that might impact some families more than others, Ford adopted an across-the-board approach, proposing a tax cut that could help millions of families across Ontario.
While the Ford government is now talking about leaving more money in Ontarians’ pockets through eliminating certain road tolls and scrapping the province’s license plate sticker fees, the relief Ontario families would feel if the Ford government delivered on its four-year-old income tax cut commitment would far outstrip the government’s move to reduce the number of fees taxpayers are forced to pay.
As Ontario’s 2022 election campaign is set to begin in a matter of weeks, affordability should be at the top of the agenda. But Ontario taxpayers don’t want to see election gimmicks that would only help a small portion of taxpayers or pie in the sky promises that will never be acted upon. Ontarians want to see a real plan to increase the size of paycheques. The best way to get there is broad-based income tax relief.
Ontarians haven’t seen an income tax cut since former premier Mike Harris introduced sweeping tax relief in the mid-1990s. When Harris slashed income taxes, Ontario had the lowest income tax rates in the country. Since then, provinces like British Columbia and Alberta have outstripped Ontario in tax competitiveness. Even Canada’s territories have lower income taxes.
It’s time to make Ontario a leader again. To increase the size of Ontario’s paycheques and boost purchasing power, Ontario’s political parties should present a comprehensive plan to deliver on income tax relief. Ontario’s politicians should forget the election gimmicks and offer a clear path toward larger paycheques.
Jay Goldberg is the Ontario Director at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
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.
