There hasn’t been a week in provincial politics like this last one for some time. From Patrick Brown’s stunned press conference to the strange spectacle of the Tories seemingly celebrating his downfall, with six months to go until the provincial election, Ontario is suddenly anyone’s for the taking.
A week ago, I would’ve considered putting money on the Tories forming a slim majority government. Not on the strength of Brown as a leader, mind you, but based on the Liberals’ extreme unpopularity after 15 years in power and the fact voters have a 20-year hate-on for the NDP.
Now, I’m not so sure. I think Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals have a shot of holding onto the wheel of the Good Ship Ontario, and that’s something I would’ve considered unlikely a week ago.
Wynne is a heck of a campaigner, and she took the news of Brown's downfall as an opportunity, lobbing attacks at the party disguised as support for victims of sexual assault. That she managed to secure a majority in the last election while mired in scandals is a testament to the Grits’ skill at running an election campaign. Not the sole reason though; you can’t discount that Brown was new, untested and virtually unknown at the time, nor can you discount Ontario’s lingering dislike of the Dippers.
The playing field hasn’t been leveled exactly — it’s been blown up.
I never particularly liked Brown, but nor did I dislike him. Brown was very, well, beige. Vanilla. Neither hot nor cold. Blandly handsome in an inoffensive and uninteresting kind of way. A career politician who never held another career.
He was also, apparently, a cad (a word that isn’t used much anymore but in the wake of #MeToo should be making a comeback). It isn’t illegal to be a cad; it’s just kind of pathetic. Unless you’re a politician. Fifty years ago, John F. Kennedy could be a cad and no one faulted him for it (and the media ignored it). Today, politicians’ private lives are not given the same deference.
If Brown’s penchant for picking up young women in bars is true, it means he was either supremely dense or wildly ignorant about the world in which we live. Someone so unable to control their own sex drive that they're willing to risk their political career to get a little action needs to grow up.
If the two incidents CTV reported happened as described, Brown committed no crime, beyond having poor judgment. He’s not a rapist, committed no sexual assault. But he did put his own animalistic desires ahead of his constituents (whose trust he violated by behaving like an idiot) and his party (by putting himself into situations that he should’ve known would tarnish the party’s name if they got out).
He had to go, there’s no doubt about it. Of course, the Tories didn’t have to gloat about it. The press conference in which North Bay MPP Vic Fedeli was announced as interim PC leader — complete with high fives, much back-slapping and big beaming cat-that-ate-the-canary grins — was a sight to behold.
Had Brown been liked by his own caucus, the affair would have been more somber, I would imagine. As there was a definite celebratory vibe to the event, it certainly appears the Tories took Brown’s bad press as an opportunity to stage a coup. I don’t think they organized a coup, as such, but I do think they took advantage of the situation to oust a leader who wasn’t particularly well-liked.
That they used the atmosphere created by the #MeToo movement to their political advantage is pretty gross though.
The Tories can still win the election. Despite the looming June vote, they have time to choose a new leader — several are in the wings, including possibly Caroline Mulroney, daughter of Brian (yes, that Brian) — and mount a decent campaign.
Ontario voters are hungry for change after 15 years of Grit rule anyway. After that long in power, a party accumulates skeletons, scandals and voter fatigue that eventually drag it down. This is a boon to the treading-water Tories. Voters are willing to be somewhat forgiving.
Don’t count the NDP out either. John Ibbitson had an interesting column in the Globe and Mail this week. In it, he compared Ontario's current political circumstances to those of 1990, an unpopular election that saw voters punish the Liberals by voting NDP because the Tories were in a shambles, ushering in one of the most unpopular governments in Ontario’s history.
The NDP has never really recovered from that, as Ibbitson points out. He’s right, though, the situation today has definite echoes of 1990.
Elections are full of surprises. Virtually anything could happen. Voters are definitely fed up of Wynne and her Liberals (a government under which Sudbury has prospered immensely, mind you), but are they fed up enough to crown Andrea Horwath (who consistently polls as the most popular party leader in Ontario) as premier? Could she be more than a new Bob Rae? Can the Tories right the ship fast enough and win the election with a new leader who resonates with voters? Can the Liberals pull another victory from the jaws of certain defeat?
If you thought this past week has been wild, the next six months might hold even more suprises.
Mark Gentili is the managing editor of Sudbury.com and Northern Life.
