NDP's K-W victory puts the party on a roll.
from Inside Queen's Park, Bulletin No 18 September 7, 2012
It was just 11 months ago, on October 6, 2011, that Dalton McGuinty's provincial government won its third consecutive election. But by contrast with 2003 and 2011, the Liberals failed to win with a working majority of seats in the 107-member Legislature.
Premier McGuinty brushed off talk of defeat, instead boasting that winning 53 seats entitled him to claim to have won a "major minority". The LIBs showed little inclination to revise the often high-handed behaviour they had exhibited when managing legislative business as a majority. He and his colleagues did not hesitate to disparage opposition MPPs, asserting that several would shortly cross the floor.
The government soon found it very difficult to secure backing from one opposition party or the other to pass its 2011 Budget or push through key legislative measures. The government therefore opted to roll the dice both with respect to public sector compensation and to grab another seat to edge closer to a working majority of seats at Queen's Park.
Both McGuinty and Hudak face internal grumbling and the latter can expect increasing vocal dissent.
Hence Premier McGuinty's April scheme to induce veteran PC Elizabeth Witmer to resign to take a patronage job in hopes of gaining her Kitchener-Waterloo riding as well as of further undermining PC Leader Tim Hudak's supposedly shaky standing.
To sweeten the pot, in August the Liberals also called a by-election in Vaughan to allow Greg Sorbara to lay down his burdens as an MPP. And the teachers' federations were dishonestly depicted as endangering the school system and threatened with a legislative drubbing — in a speedier case of creating a crisis than anyone can recall since John Snobelen was Education minister. However, apparently Laurel Broten's Bill 115 did not appeal to parents of school-age children, making the NDP victory in K-W possible because many voters made common cause with the teachers and other public sector workers, not with the government.
Holding the Vaughan seat, as universally anticipated, does nothing to bolster the Liberals' current situation. To win from his throw of the dice, McGuinty had to gain that seat, formerly in the PC column. He can take little comfort from the fact that Witmer's former party leader could not retain her seat for the PCs, for it is very much more damaging to the government that it was the NDP which snatched Kitchener-Waterloo. PC Leader Tim Hudak's pre-by-election position can fairly be judged as shaky.
But with the NDP having now snatched so unlikely a prize as K-W from a standing start (the party hardly drew enough votes in 2011 to qualify for public subsidy), the most widely approved provincial party leader is Andrea Horwath. Both McGuinty and Hudak face internal grumbling and the latter can expect increasing vocal dissent. Thanks to a superlative candidate and an excellent campaign which effectively exploited LIB and PC vulnerabilities, it is Horwath who is on a roll.
About Inside Queen's Park
This article was first published in Inside Queen's Park, which is published twenty-two times per year by GP Murray Research Limited. IQP offers widely respected analysis of, and insight into, the inner workings of Ontario government and politics. Its contents are copyright and reproduction, in whole or in part by any means without permission of the editor, is strictly forbidden.
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