Limelight not the spot for Tory
Oct 03, 2007 04:30 AM
Conservative Leader John Tory has become the focal point of the provincial election campaign, and this is worrisome for him.
Opposition leaders do not usually command centre stage in elections, which more commonly revolve around the premier of the day and his government’s record.
Even Mike Harris avoided the spotlight in the 1995 election until very near the end of the campaign.
Notwithstanding Harris’s radical platform (the “common sense revolution”), the focus stayed on then-premier Bob Rae and the “social contract” imposed on public sector unions by his NDP government.
In his memoir, From Protest to Power, Rae reports his frustration at trying to get erstwhile union allies to stop attacking him, given that Harris was winning the election and was likely to implement an anti-labour agenda.
Rae called Leah Casselman, then president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, to ask her to call off the OPSEU hecklers who were dogging his every campaign appearance.
“You’re the government now,” Rae reports Casselman as saying, “You’ll have to live with the consequences.”
“No, actually, Leah, you will,” responded Rae.
Sixteen thousand cashiered civil servants later, Rae’s forecast was proven to be accurate.
I digress.
In this campaign, one might presume that Premier Dalton McGuinty would be facing most of the fire over his broken promises – whether from outraged taxpayers or parents of autistic children or drivers on the 407. But it isn’t so. Rather, it is Tory who is on the firing line, with his proposal to extend public funding to “faith-based” schools.
Tory attempted earlier this week to escape the spotlight by saying he would allow a free vote on the schools issue in the Legislature, but that simply increased the intensity of the media coverage.
This sort of attention is not helpful for an opposition leader.
Recall the 2004 federal election, during which Stephen Harper and his “hidden agenda” became the focal point, not then-prime minister Paul Martin and Liberal scandals. Harper lost, although he reduced Martin to a minority.
And recall the 2000 federal election, when Stockwell Day was leader of the opposition and became an object of ridicule. (“The Flintstones was a cartoon.”) Day lost, badly, to Jean Chrétien’s Liberals.
This is not to suggest that Tory is Harper or Day, although he might be a reincarnation of Bob Stanfield, the opposition leader who fell in the 1974 federal election when his proposal for wage-and-price controls became the central issue. Then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau effectively mocked that policy with the memorable line, “Zap, you’re frozen.”
Like Stanfield, Tory is a thoroughly decent man who combines compassion for the disadvantaged with a managerial approach to problem-solving.
Yesterday, Tory became the first provincial Conservative leader in two decades to appear before the Star’s editorial board during an election campaign – and he delivered a bravura performance.
Speaking of his concern for the disadvantaged in society, Tory said: “I don’t think my mission in life is to come here and help people who are comfortable.”
Of the attention garnered by his faith-based schools proposal, Tory said: “You’re assuming that I made it a big issue. Every single day I talked about other issues.”
Unfortunately for Tory, however, when the opposition leader is the story in an election campaign, it is usually not good news.
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Globe
Hampton eyes a northern swing
MICHAEL OLIVEIRA
Canadian Press
October 2, 2007 at 3:47 PM EDT
KAPUSKASING, Ont. — New Democrat Leader Howard Hampton says his party is poised to make gains in northern Ontario because he’s the only party leader talking to average people in working-class communities.
Mr. Hampton spent Tuesday hopping from plane to plane to visit three of the province’s 11 northern ridings.
The vast, isolated region covers 90 per cent of the province but houses only 6 per cent of the population.
It’s Mr. Hampton’s fourth visit to northern Ontario, and he says the other parties are paying only cursory attention to northern issues.
Mr. Hampton says he’s meeting directly with some of the tens of thousands of people who have lost their jobs in the region while the premier seems afraid of confrontation.
He challenged the other leaders to a debate on northern issues, but Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty immediately declined.
“I challenged Mr. McGuinty to a debate on northern issues, but since there wasn’t a photo-op in the debate he ducked,” Mr. Hampton said at his own photo-op outside the Tembec paper mill in Kapuskasing.
Mr. McGuinty has also been invited to meet with laid-off workers but has repeatedly turned them down, Mr. Hampton said.
“He was invited last summer and the summer before, as saw mill after saw mill, paper mill after paper mill, and pulp mill after pulp mill were closing down,” Mr. Hampton said.
“We believe that workers like these who care about their community and want to continue to work and contribute … are going to work for somebody who’s prepared to work with them, and that’s the NDP.”
Earlier Tuesday, Mr. Hampton spoke about autism to a group of supporters in Hanmer, about 20 kilometres north of Sudbury, where his wife Shelley Martel has been the provincial representative since 1999.
Ms. Martel has been the most outspoken advocate for families struggling to receive expensive autism treatment and has made the NDP synonymous with the cause, Mr. Hampton said.
The Liberals, on the other hand, have simply developed a reputation for failing to deliver on promises and letting kids go without the help they desperately need, he said.
“These desperate parents and these vulnerable kids have been among the most deceived and manipulated by Dalton McGuinty of anybody in the province,” Mr. Hampton said.
“People want to know what this election is about. It’s about getting justice for these parents and these kids.”
He said the parents of autistic children overwhelmingly supported the Liberals in the 2003 election, but after years of broken promises and growing waiting lists for treatment, those same voters will be shifting their support elsewhere.
Better access to autism treatment is one of Mr. Hampton’s six major commitments leading up to the Oct. 10 election.
While Ms. Martel is not running again for office, she said the NDP caucus is committed to taking on her cause.
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Ottawa Citizen
Lee Greenberg and Craig Pearson, CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 GODERICH, Ont. - One day after Ontario’s Conservative leader all but dropped a proposal to fund faith-based schools, the issue still dogged John Tory on the campaign trail Tuesday.
Premier Dalton McGuinty launched into an unprompted tirade against Tory in a bid to keep the unpopular issue alive.
“I think Mr. Tory continues to demonstrate bad judgment,” McGuinty told reporters at a health clinic in southern Ontario. “He’s demonstrated bad judgment in the past. He continues to show bad judgment.”
And at a Toronto grocery store Tory - who had hoped to talk about McGuinty’s controversial health premium - was forced to defend the controversial schools plan to an irate shopper.
Tory said if elected premier he would eliminate the health tax for one million Ontarians, those earning between $20,000 and $30,000 a year, starting Jan. 1. He stood in front of several carts of groceries worth $900 to illustrate what some families lose to the much-maligned tax.
“What’s really important is that people focus on the really important hot issues in the next eight days,” Tory said. “And that includes things like the doctor shortage, why kids with autism aren’t getting treated, why the economy is languishing on Dalton McGuinty’s watch, why millions and billions of our dollars are being wasted and spent improperly.”
That’s when 64-year-old Scarborough resident Jim Devine cut in from the sidelines at Sun Valley Grocery Store.
“What about the education, sir?” an obviously irritated Devine said, with a security official making sure he didn’t approach.
When Tory noted that a Conservative government plans to invest $1 billion in education in the first year and $2.4 billion the second year, Devine - who claims he normally votes PC - kept pushing, criticizing Tory for changing his faith-based stance and calling for a free vote.
Tory’s plan to fund faith-based schools dominated debate during the first 21 days of the provincial election campaign.
On Monday, however, Tory climbed down from what he termed his “principled position” by allowing his caucus a free vote on the issue. Observers, including high-ranking Conservatives, say the move all but kills the unpopular proposal, which was hurting them at the polls.
Liberals disagree, however.
McGuinty on Tuesday evoked the possibility of a three-year debate on school funding if Tory is elected.
“Instead of dealing with this matter in an upfront, transparent way, he is now saying that he wants to plunge this province into three years of destruction and distraction,” he said. “And now what he lacks the courage to do immediately, he plans to do by stealth.”
The comments represent a change in tone from McGuinty, who initially took the high road in responding to the Conservative shift.
On Monday he said he’d “let Ontarians draw their own conclusions about Tory and his judgment.”
Conservative campaign officials wonder why McGuinty is now insisting on reviving an issue they had hoped to scuttle. His strongly worded attack was unprompted and came at the end of a scrum where the funding issue was not raised once.
“Dalton McGuinty and the Liberals clearly don’t want the campaign spotlight to shine on them, because their record of broken promises looks pretty shabby to voters,” said Conservative spokeswoman Ingrid Thompson. “They’re desperately trying to keep the focus elsewhere.”
McGuinty spent the day on a trip through southern Ontario touting his health care record in several bellwether ridings.
At an afternoon stop in Kitchener he announced a plan to reduce emergency room wait times that will first involve measuring them.
Also on Tuesday, a feud erupted between Ontario’s third and fourth-placed parties as the Greens and the NDP scrapped over environmentally friendly voters.
Green Leader Frank de Jong accused the NDP of misrepresenting his party’s platform in a bid to retain supporters.
NDP Leader Howard Hampton has repeatedly distorted the Green position on health, electricity, and infrastructure, according to de Jong.
“You would think he is purposefully misinformed,” he said in an interview. “It’s disingenuous at best and malicious at worst.”
Hampton denies he has twisted the Green party’s positions.
“I have not mischaracterized their platform one bit,” he said during an early morning campaign stop in Sudbury. “I encourage people to read their platform and think about the implications of private water, private electricity and private roads and think about what that would mean for average working people.”
De Jong said he has no interest in privatizing public services. He said the Green platform does call for new water levies, but said that does not equate with privatization.
The NDP currently has the support of 17 per cent of voters while the Green party is backed by six per cent, according to a poll conducted late last week on behalf of CanWest News Service.
The Ipsos-Reid survey support for both parties has been stagnant since the start of the election campaign.
According to the survey, McGuinty’s Liberals have the support of 43 per cent of decided voters, compared to 33 per cent for Tory’s Conservatives.
In the final days of the election, Hampton is clearly trying to focus the debate on issues such as poverty and therapy for children with autism.
The NDP leader made a swing through northern Ontario on Tuesday, promising support for the troubled pulp and paper industry if elected on Oct. 10. He said the NDP would offer cut electricity rates for mills and forestry companies.
