#onpoli Post Election SIDEBAR - What happened???
My hot take on the 2022 Ontario provincial election
Welcome to a special issue of #munipoil Matters, where the dust has now settled on the 2022 Ontario general election and voters have elected their government, or in this case reelected the Progressive Conservative government of Premier Doug Ford to another four years at the helm of Canada’s largest province.
Here is the breakdown of the results of the 2022 election, as shown on iPolitics.ca
The PCs increased their seat count from 2018, when they dislodged the 15 year long Liberal government by winning 76 seats four years ago. Bucking conventional analysis, the NDP managed to retain Official Opposition status, losing a few seats from their previous total of 40 but managing to retain most of their Northern base, while picking up one extra seat in Ottawa.
Voter turnout was an abysmal 43%. That’s the lowest turnout in Ontario’s history for electoral participation. By contrast, 58% of voters cast a ballot in 2018.
For the Liberals under Steven Del Duca, it’s going to be another four years of soul searching and reflection for the once mighty Ontario Liberal Party.
The Grits only managed to win one extra seat from their 2018 result but did not manage to regain official party status. A political party in Ontario needs 12 seats in the Legislature to be recognized as such in order to have access to Legislative resources and allotted time to question the government in the House.
Del Duca himself was unable to get elected in the riding of Vaughan-Woodbridge, where he once represented as an MPP from 2012-2018. He lost to PC candidate and cabinet minister Michael Tibollo for a second time, as Tibollo beat Del Duca in the same riding in 2018. The Liberal chief resigned his leadership on election night, as did NDP leader Andrea Horwath, a former Hamilton city councillor who retained her riding of Hamilton Centre.
Green Party leader Mike Schreiner was the only leader to seemingly come out unscathed, winning personal reelection in Guelph with an even larger margin but unable to expand his caucus to an extra member. The Greens put up an extremely strong showing in Parry Sound-Muskoka due to the lack of a Liberal candidate, but the Tory base turned out and kept this riding blue.
Who are the municipal politicians that got elected…or didn’t?
As with the theme of #munipoli Matters, I had previously penned a list of those currently in municipal office, had been in and who sought election to a municipal council seeking election to the Ontario Legislative Assembly.
If you missed them, you can go back and read up on the candidates from the Ontario PC Party, the Ontario Liberals and the Ontario NDP and Greens.
Now let’s take a look at some of these winners and losers.
Brampton certainly delivered for the Tories, as the party swept all five of the city’s ridings. Wards 7 and 8 Councillor Charmaine Williams scored a huge win, defeating the NDP’s deputy leader Sara Singh in Brampton Centre. Four years ago, the NDP scored a beachhead in Brampton with three seats; now they have none.
Williams’ ascension to Queen’s Park allows City Council to appoint former councillor Elaine Moore as a placeholder until the municipal elections. This move may have violated the Municipal Act, which states only when a vacancy occurs can council initiate the process of either an appointment or a by-election. This decision was made in council recently while Williams is still the Councillor.
Ford’s outreach to private sector unions has also paid off in ridings with traditional working class populations that voted NDP in the past. Tecumseh councillor Andrew Dowie scored an upset in Windsor-Tecumseh, edging past the NDP’s Gemma-Grey Hall and Liberal Gary Kaschuk, a Windsor City Councillor. In neighbouring Essex, former Amherstburg deputy mayor Anthony Leardi snatched the riding from the NDP, who held it since 2011.
The Tories’ recruitment of mayors with strong local ties mostly worked. Bracebridge Mayor Graydon Smith held Parry Sound-Muskoka for the PCs, fighting off a strong challenge from the Greens. Collingwood Mayor Brian Saunderson held the traditional Tory stronghold of Simcoe-Grey.
One minor blemish is Haldimand-Norfolk, where Haldimand County Mayor Ken Hewitt was trying to keep this traditional Tory riding in PC hands. Independent candidate Bobbi Ann Brady (a former PC riding president) managed to eke out a win over Hewitt, after a local political controversy splintered the usually solid Conservative vote.
Despite the NDP maintaining most of their Northern ridings, the PCs managed to pick off a few. Conmee Township Mayor Kevin Holland is the new PC MPP for Thunder Bay-Atikokan, defeating the previous sitting NDP member, Judith Monteith-Farrell.
In Timmins, Mayor George Pirie romped to victory with 64% of the vote over Gilles Bisson, who had been the NDP MPP in that riding since 1990. Not having a Liberal on the ballot in Timmins also helped consolidate the non-NDP vote around Pirie.
In Chatham-Kent-Leamington, where a Liberal candidate stepped down and was removed from the ballot a week before the election date, the real contest came down between Leamington councillor Trevor Jones and Chatham councillor Brock McGregor, with Jones retaining for the Tories.
For Premier Ford himself, he must be personally elated to see his nephew and Toronto City Councillor Michael Ford elected in York South-Weston, wrestling a riding from the NDP. In just a span of 8 years, Ford (the younger) has gone from being a school trustee to a Member of Provincial Parliament.
The silver lining is that there are some new members joining the Liberal rump, such as former Toronto city councillor Mary Margaret McMahon, who snagged away Beaches-East York as the previous NDP MPP opted to retire after one term. McMahon’s former colleague Mary Fragedakis was less successful, unable to take Toronto-Danforth from veteran NDP Peter Tabuns.
Barrie Mayor Jeff Lehman’s run for the Liberals in Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte seesawed back and forth the entire election night. For a good chunk of the evening, Lehman was ahead of PC Attorney General Doug Downey by anywhere from 114 to literally just 2 votes. Unfortunately, the last few polls benefited Downey who retained the riding by about 600 votes.
Other municipal politicians who ran under the Liberal banner were also unsuccessful. Dipika Damerla, the former Mississauga East-Cooksville MPP and current City Councillor who sought a return to Queen’s Park, couldn’t leverage her local credentials over Tory candidate and now returning MPP Kaleed Rasheed.
The NDP’s beachhead in downtown Toronto held, proving that 2018 wasn’t a political fluke. Former Toronto city councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam kept Toronto Centre in the NDP column, after taking over as NDP standard bearer from the riding’s previous member Suze Morrison. Toronto-St. Paul’s, University-Rosedale and Spadina-Fort York, once Liberal strongholds, all stayed orange.
Other notables
The NDP likes to boast that they created the first ever Black Caucus (consisting only of NDP MPPs) in the Ontario Legislature. Ironically, based on my unofficial count, the PCs may end up electing more black members on their side.
Aside from Williams, the Tories also got Patrice Barnes (Ajax) and David Smith (Scarborough Centre) elected, both of whom are school trustees. That makes the Tories having three black candidates elected, versus the NDP’s two (Laura Mae Lindo from Kitchener and Jill Andrews from Toronto-St. Paul’s).
Perhaps going forward if the Legislature needs a black caucus, it should be a multi-party group. Liberal Mitzie Hunter also won reelection to Scarborough-Guildwood. That is a total of five black women and one black man elected to Queen’s Park, a historic record.
Liberals actually picked up a seat from the NDP in Kingston and the Islands, which was won by former federal MP Ted Hsu. On the other side, the NDP won Ottawa West-Nepean from the PCs, as Chandra Pasma defeated Tory Jeremy Roberts. Roberts only won the seat in 2018 by 175 votes.
Final thoughts
This election began, as a number of people believed, to be a referendum on Ford’s leadership during his first foray in provincial government. While COVID-19 may have defined a good chunk of his term, Ford’s team managed to brilliantly redefine the narrative of who he is.
He went from the bombastic, “my way or (his) highway” political leader to a calmer, moderated (almost) statesman-like guide during the pandemic who now advocated for “getting it done”, whatever that really meant.
The four years of cuts in various sectors didn’t seem to affect wide swaths of Ontarians, leaving them either content to let things be or unmotivated to vote Ford out, and judging by the narratives set by the opposition parties, it’s not like they gave us a good reason.
As accomplished as he was during his time in the previous Liberal government, Del Duca was a charisma vacuum, but there is more than leadership at play here. What does it mean to be a Liberal in 2022? The policies that propelled them to victories in 2003 to 2014 may be not what’s modern and in vogue anymore.
“Buck a Ride” and removing the HST on “prepared food” sound more like sloganeering than serious policy ideas designed with long term solutions in mind.
Under the leadership of Andrea Horwath, the NDP managed to retain Official Opposition status but voters clearly told her she was not the person to lead that party to government. A healthy dose of misogyny and sexism may have also factored into people’s opinions of her, even if the party’s policies had more substance.
It’s going to be a long four years until the next time voters can render their verdict on this re-elected PC government.
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