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.
by Geoffrey Stevens
This United States presidential election has been dominated by two emotions, both of them negative. One is disappointment in Barack Obama. The other is discomfort with Mitt Romney.
It’s been a nasty election, one singularly devoid of intelligent substance. So perhaps it is appropriate that disappointment and discomfort should be determining factors.
by Geoffrey Stevens
Looking back, it seems clear that Dalton McGuinty would be carrying on as premier of Ontario if only his Liberals had won that darned byelection in Kitchener-Waterloo last month.
by Geoffrey Stevens
Anyone who had predicted even a few weeks ago that Mitt Romney would be president of the United States after November would have been laughed out of the Venerable Guild of Pundits, Pollsters and Political Hangers-On.
They are not laughing today.
by Geoffrey Stevens
In every political race, there are two key elements: expectations and momentum. Both are at play in the United States in the wake of last week’s surprising debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.
by Geoffrey Stevens
What a difference a generation makes!
A generation ago, Pierre Trudeau, father of today’s dauphin, burst on the political scene, “like a stone through a stained glass window” (in the memorable simile of the late journalist Gordon Donaldson).
by Geoffrey Stevens
Everyone knows that the pensions for members of Parliament are far too rich.
MPs can draw their pensions too soon (at age 55), after too few years of parliamentary service (just six), and they receive too much money (up to 75 per cent of salary, with more if they served as a cabinet minister or committee chair). And they contribute far too little to their pension fund. The C.D. Howe Institute reported last year that taxpayers contribute $6 for every $1 put in by MPs; this year, the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation put the disparity at $24 to $1.
by Geoffrey Stevens
Robert Stanfield was often described as the best prime minister Canada never had. He was a great premier (Nova Scotia), became leader of the federal Progressive Conservative party, but had the ill fortune to appear on the national stage at the same time as Liberal Pierre Trudeau, to whom he lost three general elections in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
What about Peter Lougheed? Lougheed, who died last week at 84, was also a great Tory premier (Alberta). Earlier this year, a panel of eminent Canadians, assembled by the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP), a Montreal-based think tank, voted Lougheed Canada’s best premier of the past 40 years, ahead of Ontario’s Bill Davis and Saskatchewan’s Allan Blakeney, among others.
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.
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.
The NDP victory in the Kitchener-Waterloo byelection this week sends a message to all three Ontario parties and their leaders.
For Dalton McGuinty and the Liberals, the message is clear and simple: smarten up. The voters of Ontario told you in the provincial election last October that they were fed up. They didn’t like you very much, not any more. They thought your government was off-track and inept, if not corrupt. They took away your majority. The electors of Kitchener-Waterloo underlined that rebuke by re-electing Progressive Conservative Elizabeth Witmer in October.
What possessed you, Mr. Premier, to think you could regain a majority by sneaking in through the byelection back door? You assumed the riding would be easy plucking with Witmer gone? You ignored two political dicta: never assume anything, and never underestimate the electorate.
You nominated a capable candidate in Eric Davis. His third-place finish is a wake-up call. That back door has been slammed shut. The people meant what they said in October: no majority.
The people meant what they said in October: no majority.
For Tim Hudak and the PCs, the message is: give your head a shake. You will never have a better opportunity than you had last fall when the aging, gaffe-prone McGuinty Liberals went for a third term. You couldn’t do it then and you couldn’t do it in K-W on Thursday. The painful truth is that voters like you even less than they like McGuinty. You are too negative, too strident and too far right – too Mike Harris – for most Ontarians. “Moderation” and “cooperation” are foreign words to you.
Your byelection nominee, Tracey Weiler, was not a very strong candidate, but that doesn’t matter. She could not have won even if she’d had years, rather than months, of political experience. No Tory was going to win this byelection. It was as much a referendum on your leadership as it was on Dalton McGuinty’s. Both were found wanting. Maybe it’s time for both of you to consider a career change.
Your statement yesterday blaming an influx of “troops” from the public service unions for your party’s defeat is self-serving sour grapes. In byelections, all parties recruit volunteers from wherever they can get them. If they can, they flood the riding with eager supporters. It’s what byelections are all about. It helps make them exciting, and unpredictable.
But union “muscle,” as you call it, did not win Kitchener-Waterloo for the NDP. It won because it was better organized than the others, because it had a message that resonated among voters – and because it had the best candidate. Make no mistake: Catherine Fife was a very good candidate, as impressive as any I have seen in byelections over the years.
For Andrea Horwath and the NDP, the message is: savour your victory but proceed with caution. You won a byelection. Don’t read too much into it. You did not launch an orange wave. Winning a byelection on the crest of a protest vote is one thing. It is quite another thing to establish ownership of a riding the way Elizabeth Witmer did, for 22 years.
There are still more Liberals than New Democrats in Kitchener-Waterloo, notwithstanding the popular vote on Thursday. And these days, there are more Conservatives than Liberals (or New Democrats) both in K-W and in other ridings across the region (with the exception of Guelph).
Byelection results are often reversed in subsequent general elections as voters, having registered their protest, return to the party where they feel most at home. That could well happen to Fife and the NDP.
The other two parties will regard Thursday as an aberration. They will redouble their efforts to knock Fife off and return Kitchener-Waterloo to what each regards as the riding’s rightful owner.
Catherine Fife was a good candidate. She will have to invest all her effort into becoming a very good MPP. She may remind voters of Liz Witmer, but she is not Witmer. She will have to earn her own popularity – and her re-election.
by Geoffrey Stevens
If ever there were a time when conditions have conspired to create a political upset, that time would be this week in Kitchener-Waterloo. Voters in the provincial riding go to the polls on Thursday in a byelection to choose a successor to Elizabeth Witmer. She held the riding for 22 years, from its creation in 1999 until last April, when she resigned to accept a patronage appointment from the Liberal government.
