Tories choose new leader in Ontario

By Mark Wegierski
web posted September 13, 2004

Ontario is Canada's most populous province, with over ten
million people (Canada's population is around 31 million), and is
the destination for over half of immigrants to Canada. Toronto
has especially become a cosmopolitan megalopolis, with over
half of its population (according to the 2001 Census) consisting
of "visible minorities" (a term of official usage). The so-called
Greater Toronto Area has a population approaching four million.
In the current federal Parliament, 106 of 308 total seats are from
Ontario, giving that province enormous clout. It could be argued
that the federal party which holds the majority of Ontario seats is
likely to be the government of Canada.

Ontario's provincial politics have followed a somewhat different
course than federal politics in Ottawa. In 1942, the federal
Conservative Party changed its name to the Progressive
Conservatives, in an attempt to attract the support of the
Western-Canadian-based Progressive Party – although the name
was also convenient in a society which largely looked with
disdain at right-wing politics. All the provincial wings of the party
followed suit in the name change.

From the 1940s onward, the provincial Progressive
Conservatives successively won elections as the government of
Ontario. However, the Progressive Conservatives under Premier
Bill Davis (in 1971-1985) had been largely hostile to any
manifestations of social and cultural conservatism – they were
pragmatic managers in a period of massive social upheaval and
transformation – which was mostly generated by the Liberal
federal government in Ottawa. Frank Miller, Bill Davis'
successor, was only briefly Premier, and was characterized by
the media, the opposition parties, and even by some members of
his own party, as a political dinosaur. Miller's defeat in 1985
ushered in two years of a Liberal-New Democratic Party
coalition (1985-1987). The NDP were Canada's (and Ontario's)
comparatively small but highly ideologically energetic social
democratic party. In 1987, Liberal Premier David Peterson
turned on his coalition partner, and won a majority government.
In 1990, the NDP rather unexpectedly won a majority in the
provincial election which Peterson had imprudently called early.
The NDP endeavored to push through a rather extreme left
program, which resulted in its wide unpopularity.

In 1995, Progressive Conservative Mike Harris was elected
Premier of Ontario. The provincial Progressive Conservatives
were decidedly more right-leaning than the federal wing of the
party, partly because of the reaction to the five years of NDP
government in Ontario. Indeed, the unpopularity of the NDP
brought in Mike Harris and his so-called Common Sense
Revolution. Mike Harris won a majority government in 1995 as
well as 1999. However, he resigned in 2002. Although Harris
claimed to resign for personal reasons -- the controversy over
Walkerton, where a number of people died from an infected
water-supply -- and for which the main blame was firmly placed
in many people's minds on Harris's privatization policies – was
certainly a factor. The Progressive Conservative party leadership
race between Ernie Eves and Jim Flaherty brought the decidedly
more moderate Eves to the Premiership. However, in the
October 2, 2003 provincial election, the Liberals, under Dalton
McGuinty, won 72 seats (with 46.5 per cent of the popular
vote), the Progressive Conservatives, under Ernie Eves, 24 seats
(with 34.6 per cent of the vote), and the NDP (under Howard
Hampton), 7 seats (with 14.7 per cent of the vote). (As in
federal elections, the provincial election operates under a system
of "first-past-the-post".)

Upon coming to power, Dalton McGuinty's Liberals have
broken a number of major promises to the electorate, in a
fashion more egregious than usual – for example, raising taxes,
running the provincial budget into a deficit, and re-introducing
healthcare premiums for the strained healthcare system.

The winner of the upcoming Ontario Progressive Conservative
leadership contest will therefore probably be fairly well-
positioned to significantly challenge the provincial Liberals in the
next election – although it is a number of years away, and the
situation could obviously shift repeatedly during that time.

The three candidates for the leadership are Jim Flaherty, Frank
Klees, and John Tory. John Tory is a professed "moderate" and
had an opportunity to build up his base in Toronto when he ran
in an energetic but ultimately unsuccessful campaign for Toronto
Mayor in 2003.

Whatever the outcome of the Ontario Progressive Conservative
leadership contest, and the eventual provincial election in
Ontario, Canada has certainly been marked by massive social
transformation and upheaval since the 1960s, and it is likely that
these trends will continue. For example, Canada was the third
country in the world (after the Netherlands and Belgium) to
recognize "same-sex marriage." At the same time, it has
embraced multiculturalism, affirmative-action (called
"employment equity" in Canada), and programmatic "diversity"
with a great intensity. Indeed, the federal Liberal Party (assisted
by the incredibly ideologically energetic New Democratic Party)
has been practicing "activist", "transformational" politics in the last
four decades, decisively transforming the social and cultural
landscape to maintain itself perpetually in power.

During the Quebec referendum crisis of 1995, it was said that
the failure of current-day Canada would tend to extinguish much
hope in the world of creating successful multicultural societies.
Indeed, Canadian traditionalists and conservatives might well be
looking to various forms of "provincialization" or regionalization
to challenge the federal government behemoth. Perhaps Ontario,
with its longstanding, local Conservative Party traditions, can
play some role in the direction of this de-centralization. A
Progressive Conservative government in Ontario may also assist
the recently reconstituted federal Conservative Party (formed in
December 2003 out of the merger of the Canadian Alliance and
the "ultra-moderate" federal Progressive Conservatives) in
winning a larger share of Ontario seats in the federal Parliament,
thereby finally offering a chance of displacing the federal
Liberals.

Mark Wegierski is a Canadian writer and historical researcher.

Enter Stage Right -- http://www.enterstageright.com