North frozen out?

Toronto – Ontario’s north is in danger of being frozen out of a race for leader of the provincial New Democratic Party on grounds that skate on thin ice.

Some Toronto-based news media have suggested the NDP will opt against choosing another leader from the north, because it has been spectacularly unsuccessful in winning seats province-wide under Howard Hampton, the MPP for Kenora-Rainy River, who is stepping down.

They also suggest the party would do better without a leader from the north, because only a dozen of the province’s 107 ridings could be said to be in the north and this is a small base from which to expand across the province.

The NDP would get off to a better start, the argument goes, if it picks a leader from a large urban area with many ridings. Toronto and the built up-area around it have 38 ridings.

Gilles Bisson, one of four MPPs running for leader, is from Timmins-James Bay and reporters invariably ask him how he can win coming from the north, as if he is from outer space.

Bisson replies he knows the rest of Ontario and its issues, having been an MPP working and living partly in Toronto for 18 years, but what matters is his abilities, not where he was born. To take these issues in order, it is difficult to make a case Hampton was handicapped in winning ridings across the province because he came from the north. The former Progressive Conservative premier, Mike Harris, from North Bay, won seats in all areas when he swept the province in 1995.

There were many stories about his being a small business owner running a golf course and part-time golf pro. But none of this deterred voters in all parts of the province from electing him premier. Where he came from was never an issue. What mattered to voters were his ideas that matched their concerns for reducing the size and cost of government and therefore reducing taxes. Harris dominated particularly the dormitory areas around Toronto, where he was more popular with voters than Tim Hortons.

For decades the NDP has won more than its share of ridings — under leaders from Toronto including Stephen Lewis and Bob Rae — in the north, where workers in such industries as forestry and mining have to labour particularly hard to make a living,. The NDP won fewer ridings in the north under Hampton, but this was part of a general decline in support, because it piled up deficits and failed to keep promises in government under Rae in an economic recession, and Hampton could not be blamed.

A current example of how being a local boy does not necessarily win votes is that of the current Conservative leader, John Tory, who is from Toronto, ran a business that is a household name here and won unusual praise when he ran for mayor, although he lost.

The Liberals chose a northerner, Lyn McLeod from Thunder Bay, to lead them in the 1995 election and lost resoundingly, but this is does not make a case against picking a northerner. McLeod failed because she ran up against Harris at his most formidable and was persuaded by mostly male advisers to keep her party’s platform secret until days after the election was called on the dubious ground this would prevent other parties criticizing it. By the time she announced it, voters had already seen and embraced with open arms Harris’s call for tax-slashing. It was no proof a northern leader is a handicap in an election.

Bisson has produced ideas and energy so far that show he deserves to be in this leadership race. There may be reasons not to choose him, but they should not be because he comes from the north.

Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen’s Park press gallery.