Was Catherine Fife's win a harbinger or aberration?
by Geoffrey Stevens
Let’s return for a moment to last week’s provincial byelection in Kitchener-Waterloo. Does the outcome — an upset NDP victory — have real implications? Is it a harbinger of things to come in Ontario politics? Or is it an aberration, an oddity to be filed at Queen’s Park under the heading, “Weird Things that Happen in Byelections?”
Certainly, all three leaders wanted the seat, and wanted it badly, which is why they made, in total, an estimated three dozen visits to the riding during the campaign.
Liberal Dalton McGuinty wanted to show that he has not worn out his welcome after nine years as premier, 16 as party leader and 22 as MPP. He would prove that by winning K-W and regaining the majority government he lost a year ago.
Newly heightened expectations mean that anything short of second place in the general election would be devastating the NDP.
Tory Tim Hudak wanted to demonstrate he was not just another failed opposition leader, that he was not, as his critics contend, a dead weight on his party’s prospects. Winning the byelection would make his detractors sheath their stilettos.
New Democratic Party leader Andrea Horwath wanted to prove that the great orange surge that began with Jack Layton in the May 2011 federal election did not die with Layton and was not entirely dissipated in the Ontario election last October, when her party made gains but fell far short of the breakthrough the federal party achieved.
As the most popular provincial leader (or, as some might argue, the “only” popular leader), Horwath knew her job was not on the line. But she needed K-W to demonstrate that the NDP still has momentum – enough to carry her and her party into the next provincial election (which seems likely to happen sooner than later) and to make her leader of the opposition or, just conceivably, premier.
The byelection has heightened expectations. Anything short of second place in the general election would be devastating the NDP.
Glancing beyond Ontario’s borders, certain parallels to McGuinty’s and Hudak’s situations can be seen. Hudak has something in common with Mitt Romney (something aside from political ideology). Like the Republican nominee, Hudak suffers from a “comfort deficit” with the public. Where Romney is criticized for being cold, aloof and humourless, Hudak is seen as being angry, negative, mean and forever in search of a scapegoat for his own failures (union bosses being his chosen scapegoats in the byelection).
In McGuinty’s case, Quebec offers a parallel. Jean Charest overstayed his welcome. After nine years and three terms in office, voters cast out his Liberals last week in favour of a minority Parti Québécois government.
It is often said that the most difficult thing in political life is knowing when to get out. Pierre Trudeau stayed too long. So did Brian Mulroney. So, in spades, did former New Brunswick premier Richard Hatfield, whose majority Tories wound up with no seats at all in the legislature when he led them to the well once too often.
Affluent, educated Kitchener-Waterloo is exactly the sort of seat that all three parties need to win in the belt of ridings that stretches from the outskirts of the GTA in the east through Halton, Guelph, Waterloo Region and London to Sarnia and Windsor in the west.
If nothing else, the results in the byelection – the Conservatives losing a seat they had held for 22 years; the Liberals running third in race they could have won; the NDP, an afterthought in past elections, winning by a comfortable eight-point margin – suggest that similar seats in this belt will be up for grabs in the next election.
To this extent, I think the byelection was a harbinger of things to come. However, the great thing about politics is that anything can happen. If the Liberals and/or Conservatives rearm themselves with new leadership and attractive policies – and if they start listening to electors instead of talking at them – K-W could prove to be an aberration.
Harbinger or aberration? It will take a general election to answer that question.
About Geoffrey Stevens
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He welcomes comments at the address below. This article appeared in the Waterloo Region Record and the Guelph Mercury.
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