Glenn Thibeault says he's a little less popular at Queen's Park these days, and that's just fine with him.
Nine months into his tenure as energy minister, the Sudbury MPP says his announcement of a summer cut to hydro rates has meant the media and the Opposition parties are less interested in him.
"Every since we did the Fair Hydro plan, I'm not getting as many questions in Question Period,” Thibeault said this week, as he drank his morning coffee at a New Sudbury Tim Hortons.
“Yesterday, I walked out of Question Period, and the media looked at me and said, 'Hey Glenn! We don't need to talk with you today.'
"It was like that IKEA commercial. I was like, 'Start the car!'"
These are tough days for Ontario's governing Liberals. Premier Kathleen Wynne has a shocking approval rate of just 12 per cent, and Thibeault himself has been in the cross hairs for critics since he left the federal NDP to run in the February 2015 Sudbury byelection.
Switching parties is controversial enough, but the well-documented – and ongoing – scandal surrounding the byelection has dogged a party already associated with other scandals.
With an election just more than two years away, Conservative Leader Patrick Brown is sending a more centrist conservative message and is pummeling the Grits in opinion polls.
Voters are angry, and any online news story about the Liberals inevitably attracts harsh comments from bloggers, who don't hold anything back. What does he hear from the public in coffee shops and when he's out and about?
"I'd say 95 per cent of the people I talk to, even if they disagree with me, are respectful,” Thibeault said. "For me, it comes down to this. If you want to disagree over politics, or my stance on an issue, tear it to shreds. That's totally fine with me. We should be able to have that debate and that conversation.
"I've made choices in my political career that have cause a little bit of controversy. And fair enough. There are people who are respectful of that and there are people who disagree with that. That's fine if you want to have a conversation about it."
But those five per cent, he said, they can get a little scary. They don't want to talk or debate. They want to attack.
"In my nine years in politics, I've had two death threats, I've been spit on numerous, numerous times, and I've been called every name in the book," he said.
"There are times when I'm just walking by, and you get the catcalls. There are days when you're like, why do I want to continue to do this? I could find another job where I'm at home with my kids, not missing basketball practice and all those other things.”
To keep himself “grounded,” as he puts it, Thibeault said he looks for other ways to engage residents to find out what people not commenting online have to say. Canvassing is still his favourite, but that can be hard to do on a weekend when he's home.
"We canvassed a few weeks ago, but it's hard to do that in Sudbury on a Saturday when everyone is out at the Kivi Park festival,” he said. “When the sun is out, Sudbury disappears."
So on March 15, he held an electronic town hall, where he says about 3,000 people took part over an hour, asking any questions they wanted. A company he hired uses the old-fashioned phone book, calling a random sample of people who still have land lines or have their cell phones listed in the book. The company doesn't know the political affiliation of the people who took part.
"We inform them that we're doing this with a call to everyone a few days before,” Thibeault said. “This one was done on a Wednesday night at 7 o'clock. We take calls and talk about issues. None of it is scripted, it's wide open."
The results weren't overly flattering, he said, but were informative. For example, only 40 per cent said they were satisfied with the job he was doing, with the rest unsure or unimpressed. See the full report here.
What surprised him was there wasn't more concern expressed over hydro prices.
"I was expecting a load of questions on electricity prices, as the minister of energy and that being such a popular subject,” he said. "But I got a lot of questions about health care, poverty, education, ODSP, those types of things. So this allows me to say, OK, people are really concerned about poverty in Sudbury. So what are we doing as a government to address poverty.
"It really helps me focus on what the issues are in the riding, rather than just basing it on what I think it is. It's good to connect. In a way, it's how I get my job evaluation. It keeps me grounded."
While being a politician in the social media age has its challenges, Thibeault said he still enjoys the job.
"Politics is a great profession, one where you can really make a difference and help thousands and thousands of people,”he said.
“That's the way I look at it. I've got lots of people yelling and screaming all the time, telling you you're doing a horrible job. But then you have people who come into your office looking for help and you can get them their money faster, or their certificate or whatever it is. Doing that, that's what keeps me going."
