Toronto - Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives have been conducting a supposed debate for four months on whether they should keep their leader who was defeated in the October election, but they must feel as uninformed and uncertain as when they started.
The process has produced no proposals for new policies, strategies or ideas of any sort except the incumbent leader, John Tory, if retained, will never again suggest funding private, faith-based schools, which cost the party any chance of winning the October election.
Nor has it put forward any possible alternative leader who could be measured against the existing one and the process is beginning to look like a waste of time.
The exercise the Conservatives are going through is not a full-fledged leadership race, but a debate on whether to vote for one at a meeting of delegates that starts February 22.
Polls by newspapers and claims by Tory and some of the MPPs who support him, not totally reliable, suggest most of the party’s caucus and executive - its establishment, influential in selecting delegates and shaping their views -- are backing him and the outcome is almost wrapped up.
The process has consisted mainly of Tory saying he will change his ways on funding religious schools and listen more to others in the party. A brief attempt was made to introduce policy discussions by supporters of former premier Mike Harris, who feel it should return to the philosophies that won him two elections in the 1990s, but this quickly ran out of steam.
A rapid succession of university political science professors, whom political reporters consult more often than they do their doctors, has pronounced Tory as deserving another chance. Some of the praise for Tory is understandable, because he is charming, mannerly, well-bred, relatively non-partisan, often too fair-minded for his own good, capable in questioning in the legislature, more effective than Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty in the TV debate between leaders in the election, when it mattered, and highly intelligent, but lacking in political cunning.
The academics say they are impressed by the way Tory has taken the blame for the election loss, although he still can be heard insisting the problem was the party did not clearly define itself, when it defined itself so clearly it convinced many residents not to vote for it. Tory also has complained some would blame him for the bad weather and remains extraordinarily reluctant to accept when he announced a program that cost his party an election, he deserves the blame.
The profs also assure Tory will be ready to lead in the next election in 2011, but they do not risk losing their jobs, unlike the politicians who, if they choose the wrong leader, may lose their seats. Full leadership campaigns usually have two or more candidates proposing policies that get tested in the debate and help decide the direction a party takes and those making the choice know what they are voting for, but this debate has none of these.
Some may argue the Conservatives already know what Tory’s policies are, but he had so few in the election different enough from McGuinty’s to catch voters’ attention this was a handicap and will need to do more. The current process also is lacking because it not only fails to encourage possible alternative leaders from coming forward, but actively discourages them.
It provides no formal place for those aspiring to be leader to announce their ambitions and the Conservative establishment, by grouping around the incumbent leader, has signaled it does not want an intruder showing aspirations to lead at this time and anyone who does so would be rocking the boat.
The Conservative establishment could argue other contenders and their views will come out if the party has a full leadership contest. But if there is no leadership race, the Conservatives will have kept a leader with baggage without considering all their options - they will not know what they have missed.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the press gallery at Queen's Park.
