Reflections on the Ontario Election

Well another election has gone by in Ontario and we no longer live with the threat of an impending election hanging over our heads.

And we messed up the pollsters again too.

Frankly, I’m a bit surprised, I really didn’t think that anyone would be able to pull off a majority in Ontario at this time.  It’s nice when the voters surprise you, unless of course your one of those pollsters who are now scrambling to explain why their numbers were in fact, more or less, pretty accurate. (sort of)

My first thoughts are about Kathleen Wynne.

Walk softly Kathleen, you have a majority, but it is not a traditional majority.  You were granted a licence by the people of Ontario to steer the ship, you were not handed a mandate.  Rather, you were granted an opportunity to steer Ontario through the next four years by a grassroots coalition made up of all parties including unhappy NDP and PC supporters.

This election was marked by a concerted effort to prevent Tim Hudak from gaining the Premiership rather than an effort to return Kathleen Wynne to that position.  Voters reached across party lines to support the candidates best able to stop Tim Hudak, not necessarily to support you.

That said, I believe that you are probably the best choice to show a willingness to listen to what the opposition has to offer and to engage in conversation with the Members across the aisle.  Let’s hope that all parties are willing to speak out in the best interests of Ontario and willing to work together and not like what we see up Ottawa way where partisanship rules the day.

My second thoughts are for those who decided to protest the election by declining their votes.

While I’ll applaud your willingness to at least show up, which puts you head and shoulders above those who can’t be bothered to go to the polls, I still think many of you missed the boat.

If none of the candidates in your riding represent you, I can agree with declining your vote.  That said, the offerings of the parties is generally pretty wide ranging and unless you are a diehard Libertarian or Communist, there should be a party or at least a candidate that meets the majority of your needs or wishes.

Maybe I should be thanking you instead.  The people who didn’t bother to vote and those who declined their ballot amplified my vote and those of every other voter who actually cast a ballot in the election.  Only about 50% of the voters in Chatham Kent bothered to vote, that’s up from the last election, and the incumbent won with only 38% of the votes that were cast.

Don’t like the PCs?  Well by staying home or declining your vote you let someone like Rick Nicholls win with just over 19% of the support of eligible voters in Chatham Kent.  Think about it, less than 1 in 5 people in my community have decided that Rick will represent us in Toronto.  Your community is likely similar.

And finally…

In the run up to Election Day, I heard that nasty old canard “If voting could change anything, they’d make it illegal.”

In case you haven’t noticed, that’s what they’ve been working on.  The party structure has warped the Legislatures to the point where unless you are a member of a major party, you don’t get to do much more than vote.  Since then, they’ve aimed their guns at the voters…

The Election Laws that the Harper people brought in were based (in part) on the laws in use in Ontario, requiring you to provide ID to be able to vote.  We never had this before, we never had complaints of voter fraud then either.

Since then we have seen (at the federal level) a move to make it more and more difficult to vote.  For people in the mainstream, with Drivers Licences and other pieces of “good” ID, these changes aren’t too horrid, but for those outside of the mainstream, those on the fringes, they’re making it harder for them to be able to vote.

Voting is a right, and it is a right we need to defend.

When you look back at the bad places in history, where rights were denied, where evil took over the governments, they didn’t make a huge change all at once.  They just make little snips, here and there in places that people really don’t seem to care about.

The homeless, the impoverished, we don’t really care about them so it’s OK that they don’t get to vote.  The young?  They never voted anyways.

I mentioned that we elected a man with less than 20% of the eligible vote.  If that plays out across the board, then it is entirely possible that only 20% across the province selected the crew that will sit in Toronto, and if we keep going the way we are going, Ottawa will be the same.

Do you really expect that people who get in on 1/5^th of the available vote actually care what you think?  Our wonderful rep blames the unions for stopping Hudak from imposing his will on Ontario.  I’m sure he’ll be very happy to help me, a trade unionist with any issues I might have.

If we really want them to pay attention, we have to make the first move.  We need to take the reins and show up and vote.  It only takes a few minutes to read a couple of newspapers in the real world or the Internet to see what the parties are standing for, enough that you can make a half way informed decision on who to vote for.  If we start to show up on Election Day, maybe they’ll show up the rest of the time?

I don’t know how true it is, but I have been told more than once that if you go to your elected member’s office for help, they check the list to see if you voted.  Keeping a voter happy may gain them a vote, a non-voter gets shuffled down the pile.  Why should they care about a non-voter?  If they didn’t vote last time, they probably won’t vote next time…

If there are a lot of dancers on the floor, the band plays what the people want.  If no one dances, the band plays what they want instead.  Politics is like that too.

That’s about it, for now…

BC

My Take on the Ontario Leaders Debate

Did you watch the Ontario Leaders Debate this week?

I did.

I watched it streamed to my computer, with instant Twitter analyses running next to it.  I kid, the Twitter analyses were mostly just pot shots at the Leaders when they made a point and one fellow calling for a drink every time things like “Million Jobs” or “bad math” were mentioned.

The first thing that happened when they had wrapped up (I didn’t watch the scrums afterwards) was the clamour over “Who won the debate?”

The party faithful were the first to jump, obviously their leader had taken the debate, wasn’t it obvious?  Secondly the experts started to give their opinions.  Thankfully experts only get one vote just like the rest of us.

So what is my take on the debate?

Glad you asked.

(Disclaimer: I admit to being somewhat biased, but I’m trying to stand back from that today)

I really didn’t see a real winner in the bunch, certainly no knockout punches as far as I could see.  No one really managed to draw blood as it were, but there will be some bruising for Kathleen Wynne.

For the most part, I though Wynne stood her ground although she was on the defensive for much of the debate.  This only stands to reason as she is the Premier and both Hudak and Horwath are gunning for her spot.  I thought that the other two were trying to goad Wynne into a fight and she took their shots without taking the bait.  Had she allowed the debate to turn nasty I think Wynne would have lost ground, instead she tried to project a strong, stable leader and for the most part looked like a Premier.

A number of people wondered why she merely apologized for the Gas Plants rather than go on the offensive since both the PCs and the NDP were willing to kill those same Gas Plants and would have ended up costing the same amount of money in the end.  What she did do was to take the wind from Hudak over this.  By accepting and apologizing she prevented him from going on about how He would have handled it and left him nowhere to go.

Hudak gains some points for staying on message for the whole evening.  One Million Jobs was in almost every answer he gave.  However, his attempt to look folksy by sharing his personal stories left me cold, take a bunch of points away for that.  It is not easy to act personable, especially if that is not a natural trait, I don’t think Hudak is very personable, nuff said.

Horwath was a bit more entertaining, her barbs especially at Hudak (the Buckley’s reference for example) stick out most in my mind.  Unfortunately, other than a few notable moments Horwath was relegated to the background, had she gotten a rise out of me either in a good way or bad she might have earned a few points from me.  It’s too bad, I do like her but she just didn’t have the right plan for the debate.

So if no one won, who lost?

Ontarians?

I joke again, depending on your point of view each of them could be consigned to third place, but no one really lost.

It is hard to lose when the game plan is to try and topple the sitting Premier and no one really took aim at either Hudak or Horwath with a serious game changer.

I found the debate to be rather boring to be honest, which is unfortunate.  No one was swinging for the fences, the knockout blow because there is always the risk of getting opening yourself up to a hard shot.

It is a shame since Provincial politics touches us much more than Federal politics, but we spend so much of our time watching (and complaining about) the crew in Ottawa.  Almost everything we do (in Ontario) in our day to day lives is touched by the decisions made in Queens Park and yet we hardly pay any attention to the people we put in there.  Municipal politics is the same thing.  Other than election time, we really don’t have much interest about the goings on in Council unless of course you live in Toronto, but that’s a horse of a different colour altogether.

So what to do about Ontario?

If the polls have anything to tell us it’s that come June 12^th we’ll probably have another minority government and either Wynne will hold on to the Premiership or Hudak will replace her.  A minority means that whoever forms the government will only be able to govern with the support of one of the Opposition parties.

We’re basically saying to them that we don’t trust any of you to run the joint on your own.  It’s pretty much the truth isn’t it?  We’re not too happy with the Liberals, but Wynne is a new face who really hasn’t had a chance to do much other than to answer for the sins of her predecessor, and we don’t appear to trust the other two whether it’s memories of Mike Harris or Bob Rae.  (To be honest, Rae did a pretty good job considering the cards he was dealt.)

Anyhow, since we don’t seem too interested in giving the keys to the car to any one of the parties, maybe we should try something new.

Let’s tell them to act like adults.

But we need this to resonate with them.  Sending a message to the Leader you like the least (or dislike the most) is pointless, you’re just going to be partisan and that is the problem we have at both the Provincial and the Federal level.  We don’t need more partisanship, we need less.

I propose drafting a letter that says in effect:

 “Dear Leader, I voted for your representative here in _______ and I support your party.  What I am requesting of you and your MPPs is to act in an adult manner in the upcoming session at Queens Park. 

“When you debate, do so respectfully.  Please argue your points forcefully, but listen to the counter arguments as well.  The point is to make legislation that is good for me and the rest of Ontario and not to try and further your political goals.  We can only have good legislation if the parties act in the best of interests Ontario and that means that sometimes the other people may be right.

“All the parties in the Legislature believe in what they stand for, this is why we have elections, but none of those policies are cast in stone.  We have seen good things come from minority governments in the past, we would like to see good things come from this government as well.

“Sincerely, BC

“PS There will be a test later.  My next vote will go the people who acted with Ontario in mind.  Don’t blow it.”

Hello Ontario, Some Poll-erizing Thoughts on Polls.

I’m having a bit of a conversation with someone who appears to be a supporter of the PC party of Ontario.

Currently the polls are showing the Ontario PCs and Liberals to be in a dead heat in terms of support.  However the seat count favours the Liberals by 5.

Now the person I’m talking with thinks this is terrible, and thinks that there is some kind of scam taking place here.  He has convinced himself that Ontario has some special electoral system that is changing the numbers in the Liberal favour.

Sorry Bud, it’s not.

It is part and parcel of our First Past the Post (FPTP) system of electing representatives.

I have no doubts that if I offered to change the electoral system in Ontario to a Proportional Representation system or a Ranked Ballot my new friend would throw a fit.  For some reason most PC supporters have a blind allegiance to the FPTP system that we’ve used for the last, well who knows how long we’ve used it.  It’s the system we know, it’s the system that some of us love and some of us hate.

The conversation that I walked in on was about the recent polling numbers showing a lead for the Liberals and my friend was saying that there was something going on.  The seat count, in his opinion should be the same.  I pointed out that the ridings in Ontario were the same as the ones that put the Harper Party into power in Ottawa in 2011.  He doesn’t believe this.

Since the last seat assessment in 2005, Ontario has had 106 seats in Ottawa, but when the redistribution occurred, the Provincial government of the day opted to maintain the same number of seats in Northern Ontario which lost one seat Federally due to declining population density in the North.

So basically, the counts for the rest of the ridings are about the same as for the 2011 National Election.

What my new friend can’t see, or refuses to see is that in order to win a riding, a candidate does not need to win 50%+1 of the vote, a candidate needs to carry just one more vote than his or her nearest competitor.

FPTP.

I doubt that it would ever happen, but if a constituency consists of 100,000 people (all voters in this case) you could win your riding with 33,334 votes.

That’s 33.334% of the vote.  Most people would call that 1/3^rd.

Here’s how it works.  Just about every riding in Ontario will have at least 3 candidates on the ballot, one from each of the major parties.  Some ridings will have more, but let’s just ignore them for the time being.  When Election Day rolls around, the three candidates in this imaginary riding are in a dead heat.  When the ballots are finally counted, Candidate A has 33,333 votes, Candidate B also has 33,333 votes, and Candidate C wins the day with a whopping 33,334 votes.

Now this is the extreme case, but it has happened that elections have been decided by differences in the double digits. I think the closest race in 2011’s National Election was 26 votes.

If this imaginary scenario happened across Ontario, we could have a party theoretically sweep every seat in an election with nowhere near the majority of the vote.  This is what the supporters of Proportional Representation are going on about.  And they are right.

The thing in Ontario is that if you can win the seats close to Queen’s Park, say within a one hour drive of QP, you don’t need to win another seat to take a majority.  The population density in the Toronto/GTA/Hamilton region is enough to carry the day.

Any you only need to win them by one vote.

Taken to another extreme, if a party wins those seats close to Queen’s Park in squeakers and another party romps through the balance of the remaining constituencies we could (again in theory) have a majority government that came in second place in the popular vote.

Is this fair?  It must be, it’s what the rules allow.

Is Ontario special in this regard?  No, not really.  A number of provinces have “vote rich” major cities and if you can carry the seats in the biggest city and a good chunk of the second largest you’ll likely rule the roost in those provinces as well.

***

I’m no fan of Tim Hudak.  I remember when he sat on the government side in Queen’s Park.  When the ruling PCs sold off our assets to pay for their plans and in the case of Ontario Hydro, they just left the debts owed in a drawer for someone else to deal with later.

That debt repayment that you see on your electric bill each month?  That was Mike Harris and Tim Hudak that saddled us with that.

The other two leaders leave me cold as well.  Sorry folks, just the way it is.

I won’t tell you who to vote for, I’m not sure who I’m going to vote for.  I won’t even tell you who to vote against, that’s a decision you get to make for yourself too.

***

We’re closing in on Election Day.  I want you to think about one other thing.  There are people who are fighting for the ability to vote, there are people dying because they want to vote, get your butt out there and do those people proud and cast your vote.

Don’t like any of the candidates or any of the parties?  Go to the polling station and decline your ballot.  Or take your ballot and spoil it.  This tells the powers that be that you bothered to voice your opinion on them and their policies.  Staying home tells them that you are either too lazy to bother or that you just don’t care.

Thus endeth the sermon,

Peace

BC