As I write, we are one week ahead of the Ontario election, and I have a question: How the hell is Doug Ford so far ahead in the polls?
I hate the almost total concentration on polls in election coverage – but damn, Ford just keeps gaining on the opposition.
There’s a lot at stake in the Ontario election but you wouldn’t know it watching political coverage.
With our undemocratic first past the post system, a party with the support of a minority of people could win a majority and proceed to privatize health care, selling it off to the Premier’s buddies, build unnecessary new highways destroying land and waters, and turn its back on any climate measures (unless they can make the Premier’s friends rich such as by manufacturing electric cars).
It’s as though Tammany Hall – the notorious political corruption machine of 19th and early 20th century New York city – had come back to life.
The consummate hand-shaker
Doug Ford is no ideologue; he’s just plain, old-fashioned corrupt.
Even during the only leader’s debate, pretty much all the Ontario Conservative leader could talk about was spending money on construction projects.
Ford says he plans to build new hospitals, but he has helped create a crisis in health care by freezing nurses’ salaries.
During the pandemic, more than 4,500 seniors died of neglect in Ontario’s long-term care homes, the vast majority in for-profit homes. Instead of punishing the for-profit corporations for paying their shareholders with provincial money rather than providing care to their residents, Ford is giving them more money.
Doug Ford was better than any of us expected at the beginning the COVID crisis, but now he is driving hard to privatize health care and enrich his buddies in the process.
These days, the Progressive Conservative leader is doing what he does best: Shaking hands with people and smiling.
As premier, Ford is not giving out money to individuals the way that he and his brother Rob used to when they were at the City of Toronto. Now Doug Ford does it through legislation, such as by refunding the fee for auto registration stickers.
“Get it Done” is Ford’s slogan, but he’s had four years to get it done and what exactly has he gotten done except for helping the health care system reach the point of collapse? More importantly why aren’t any of opposition leaders asking that question?
As Karl Nerenberg aptly described on rabble, only Mike Schreiner of the Green Party succeeded in putting Ford on the defensive during the only leaders’ debate. The NDP’s Andrea Horwath seemed incapable of landing any blows against Ford, or even explaining her own policies with any detail.
NDP platform good; campaign is tone deaf
I have never understood why the Ontario NDP insists on keeping Horwath as their leader. By now however, she should have learned how to conduct a debate. She consistently fails to connect with her audience, whether on TV, online or in person.
When Kathleen Wynne was leading the Liberals, I was critical of the Ontario New Democrats’ platform as being to the Liberals’ right.
This time, the NDP platform is very good.
Proposals to put mental health, dental care and drug costs under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP), paid by progressive taxation on the rich and on predatory real estate companies could be winners for the Horwath’s party, especially when contrasted with Ford’s policy of starving the system. For some reason New Democrats are not really campaigning on their program.
The NDP’s strategy is tone deaf.
They put out a ridiculous video at the beginning of the campaign showing two men playing ping pong with Horwath saying that Liberals and Conservatives are both the same. I have never voted Liberal in my life, and back in Brian Mulroney and Paul Martin’s day we could and did say that the Liberals and Conservatives are like tweedle dee and tweedle dumb. But it’s impossible to say that today.
I know the Liberals represent the interests of corporate Canada as much as the Tories, but they strongly support public health care and not-for-profit long-term care, which are both at stake in this election. Nevertheless, it is shocking how biased the media is towards seeing the race as between the Tories and the Liberals, when the ONDP currently holds 40 seats and the Liberals 7. Steven Del Duca is the furthest thing from a charismatic leader so only class interests can explain the biased coverage. The most shocking mainstream media event was the appearance of a very cuddly picture of Ford on the front page of the Toronto Star only a week before the election with an opinion piece by columnist Martin Regg Cohn telling us how much Ford has changed. I’ve been around a long time and never remember such a biased individual opinion piece featured in a newspaper that’s supposed to be giving us unbiased election coverage. Historically, The Star usually supports the Liberals but their ownership has changed and I’m sure Joseph E. Atkinson is turning in his grave.
Several well-organized groups including Lead Now, whose strategic voting campaign in the last two federal elections may have helped the Liberals to win their minority, are campaigning to get people to vote for the Liberal or NDP member in ridings where one party or the other can beat the Tories. The problem is that with the bias in the media, the Lead Now campaign is only going to help the Liberals, who are the only party now recommending strategic voting. It makes more sense to vote for the candidate you support and then pressure the Liberals and the NDP to work together if by any chance the outcome is a minority government.
Non-profit groups are working hard to put their issues on the agenda during the campaign, with a special shout out to the Ontario Health Coalition who have been campaigning against the Ford government ferociously throughout COVID. It’s even harder for social movements to get attention to their issues today than it was in the past. Most media focus almost exclusively on horse-race polls.
The labour movement, so invisible over the last two years, are speaking out against Ford’s false claim that unions are supporting him and to mobilize workers to campaign mostly for the NDP, in the context of an effective anti-Ford campaign called the Ford Tracker.
Our only hope is that the Ontarians who are demoralized, worried about their ability to afford a home or pay their bills, freaked out over climate change, and fed up with the deteriorating health care system, will, in the end decide to vote Ford out.
An inspiring New Democratic leader could perhaps have rallied those voters, and maybe some of their excellent local candidates will achieve that goal.
I’m afraid anti-poverty activist John Clarke is right when he writes, in his blog:
“The grim truth is that, after more than two years of pandemic, under harsh and worsening economic conditions, the spirit of working-class resistance is ailing. The ability of a favoured party of big business, led by a reactionary buffoon, to dominate the electoral scene is symptomatic of that malaise.”
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Nick Seebruch, editor
