Prior to Thursday's provincial by-elections, I had been viewing Ontario politics in the light of a notorious precedent. There was an easy comparison ready at hand, from the federal domain: Former premier Dalton McGuinty, much like the great scrapper Jean Chrétien, had won a few easy elections, been a bit of a hero to his fellow Liberals, but then — like Mr. Chretien — he slipped a time bomb onto the desk of his successor on the way out.
Scott Stinson: Ontario byelection split means consolation prize for all parties
For the Progressive Conservatives, the evening was decidedly mixed. A weak showing in London and Ottawa takes a lot of the air out of what looked to be a big win in the Toronto riding of Etobicoke Lakeshore.
Yes, leader Tim Hudak finally gained a foothold in the big city for the first time, but as with the two byelections held last fall, his party has curiously underperformed.
Byelections are supposed to be an easy mark for the Official Opposition, but in the seven that have been held since the last general election, Mr. Hudak has only managed to pick up one.
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Connoisseurs of the fine art of political revenge will recall that in Mr. Chrétien's case, the bomb was auditor-general Shelia Fraser's report on that epic binge of misdirected funds and wild patronage known far and wide as the Sponsorship scandal. In retrospect, Paul Martin never had a chance: He was blown out of the water before he even left the dock.
Now, Dalton McGuinty has none of Jean Chrétien edginess and flair, none of Mr. Chrétien's love of showing-off how tough he could be with his foes. Mr. McGuinty played a quieter game. But beneath the ex-premier's nerdish camouflage was a partisan thoroughness every bit as intense as that of Shawinigan's grab-your-opponent- by-the-throat brawler.
Like Mr. Chrétien, Mr. McGuinty made a truly grade-A mess, potentially a party-destroying scandal, and left it not-so-neatly for his successor to deal with. Day by day since the last election in 2011, and even more since Mr. McGuinty's own departure shortly after that minority win for his party, the Ontario Liberals have been battered and ripped with every new installment of the gas-plant-cancellation story.
For those who live outside of Ontario, or who have not been following the story: The scandal involves two gas plants that were shelved abruptly by the Liberals, for nakedly political reasons, in a bid to win the anti-power-plant vote in the affected ridings. The current estimate is that the decision costs the taxpayers of Ontario $585-million in cancellation fees, relocation costs and legal penalties. What's worse, emails pried out of Liberal computer accounts (which staffers unsuccessfully tried to delete) betray a grubby and dishonest campaign to cover their tracks and hide the true cost of the cancellations.
As late as a few days before this past Thursday's byelections, there were fresh details: We learned that Mr. McGuinty's staff were seeking to pressure the Speaker of the Ontario legislature — someone from their own party — to change his mind on an important procedural issue related to opposition demands for information about the scandal.
So going into Thursday, the Liberals — and their new leader, Kathleen Wynne, in particular — were looking at a grim prospect. By any standard of political accounting, she and her party should have had their clocks cleaned on Thursday night — much as the federal Liberals eventually did in the elections that followed the Sponsorship Scandal. Yet the Liberals held on to two seats — one, indeed, being that formerly held by the impresario of all this mischief and cynicism, Dalton McGuinty himself. The NDP also won two. And the Conservatives won just one.
Hudak has demonstrated his ability to take a winning hand and still walk away from the table a loser
What happened? National Post columnist John Ivision gave one reading in Friday's edition. He saw, particularly in the case of the McGuinty riding (Ottawa South), sad evidence of the wilting or disappearance of the accountability principle.
Mr. Ivison is right as far as he goes. But perhaps a stronger reason why the Liberals avoided full collapse, why the gas-plant scandal did not disqualify them from victory in all five ridings, was the ineffectual performance of Progressive Conservative opposition leader Tim Hudak.
Mr. Hudak is a curious phenomenon. He showed this week, as he showed in the last Ontario provincial election, an ability to take a winning hand and still walk away from the table a loser. Politically, he has no presence, no electricity — he is a void in a suit.
Now, Kathleen Wynne does deserve some credit. The Ontario Liberals would hardly be standing at all if her personable manner had not won them something of a reprieve. In a very short time, she has done what Paul Martin found impossible to do over a longer one: She has at least partially distanced herself from her predecessor, and walked a little from under the shadow of an awful legacy. Mr. Martin was immersed and stayed immersed. Kathleen Wynne has shown more buoyancy.
But Mr. Hudak is her prime enabler. There are those that are still amazed the Progressive Conservatives lost the last general election under Mr. Hudak. Indeed, it is a good question whether Toronto Mayor Rob Ford did more in winning the riding of Etobicoke-Lakeshore for the Progressive Conservatives on Thursday than Tim Hudak did. After all, the winning candidate was Ford's former deputy mayor, Doug Holyday.
There really is only one great message from these by-elections for the Tories: Not even a legacy as politically poisonous as the gas-plant scandal is enough to give them an automatic ride to power under their present, now doubly-demonstrated, non-leadership. Is this really the guy the Progressive Conservatives want leading them into the next election?
National Post
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