Ontario's Political Tidal Wave

Ontario politics is amid a sea of change. After disgruntled Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty decided to call it quits and resigned his post, the future of the provincial government is in limbo. While the centrist Liberals will most likely remain in power for the remainder of their term, their prospects of winning at the polls for an unprecedented fourth time are low.

Premier Dalton McGuinty, leader of the Ontario Liberal Party

But is this really much of a surprise? After all, Mr. McGuinty and his party have been in government since 2003 and have weathered two economic downturns in the process. Failure to deliver on campaign promises, like tackling the province's ballooning budget deficit, has also taken a toll on his party's support. Just a year ago, the Liberals saw their parliamentary majority vanish at the polls as the centrist Progressive Conservatives (PCs) and left-leaning New Democrats (NDP) took advantage of a poor economy to propel themselves to a combined majority. Still, the two opposition parties weren't able to reconcile their differences and the Liberals were forced to form a minority government.

One year and one federal election later, the Ontario Liberals are even worse off. Current polls have them behind both the PCs and NDP by a whopping fifteen points. Worse yet, their bastion of support has been broken in the 416, better known as inner-city Toronto. Could this be a realigning election if there's even such thing as one in Canada? If it is, what has caused this huge shift in support?

Well, barring any considerations about Canadian political culture, there is one possible explanation: the rise of the federal NDP to prominence. With the late Jack Layton putting the social democratic party on the map, progressive-minded people in Toronto and other areas of the country have come to see the NDP as more representative of their interests than the Liberals. They have translated this federal support into provincial support and have provided Ontario NDP with the insurance of national party coattails, something all too foreign to any Canadian citizen.

Winning a large amount of support in metropolitan areas is certainly a first for the Ontario NDP, who have always focused most of their efforts on winning in the northern, more rural areas of the province. These areas are far from progressive in the cosmopolitan, forward thinking sense. Rather, they are filled with rabid rural populists who carry culturally conservative tendencies and abhor elitism.

Up until now, the PCs have failed to capitalize on this cultural conservatism and have seen themselves shut out of the north in practically every election. Much of this stems from the fact that they never absorbed the grassroots populism of the overtly anti-tax Reform movement that swept across Canada during the 1990s. Even under the likes of Premier Mike Harris, who once called himself "Ontario's Margaret Thatcher", the PCs stuck to their 'Red Tory' roots of appealing to a Rockefeller Republican-like constituency of upscale urbanites. 

But the tides are changing, and just a year after the PCs failed to secure more than two ridings in the north, they've now jumped out to an early lead. There are two possible explanations for this. The first is that well-to-do Liberal voters in the north have simply defected to the PCs in desperation. Aside from that, there's also a chance that some overtly populist voters disgusted with what has become more of a court party than a country party have jumped the NDP ship and have joined the PCs. My guess is that while the PCs have benefited more from their Liberal rivals, some former NDP voters have also joined their caravan.

Hours south in Toronto, the PCs and NDP are knotted up in what will be a close race. Of course, the Liberals are in a squandering third with the NDP picking up much of their vote.

Still, beyond any support the NDP will pick up, what effect will Ontario's next provincial election have on their party? Well, if the party comes to increasingly rely on a progressive-minded Toronto constituency for its support, there's a very good chance that its platform, and more importantly, its Program for Government will change.

Let's just look at one area in particular: environmental policy. At the moment, the Ontario NDP depend on the support of blue collar northerners whose economic well being is centered around exploiting natural resources. These northerners are particularly hostile to any form of environmental regulation and see any encroachment of government in this manner as endangering their way of life. The NDP have been highly sensitive to these fears and have made every effort to avoid environmental issues altogether. During the 2011 campaign, they didn't even mention climate change once and neglected to put forward any plan to protect the environment whatsoever. Compare that to the Liberals and PCs who had entire sections in their manifestos highlighting the hallmarks of renewable energy and controlling climate change. 

But alas, when it comes to the Ontario NDP and climate change, no one gets it better than Hugh Mackenzie:

The Ontario NDP has essentially turned its back on the environmental movement to go for the populist hit.

Still, political parties are fluid institutions, especially in Canada, and with the NDP picking up a large chunk of support from forward-thinking, environmentally-friendly Torontonians, there's little doubt that the party will have to change when it comes to climate change. But change will come in many other policy areas as well and could remake the NDP altogether.

This could spell trouble in the future should the party want to continue to be the perennial standard-bearers of the forgotten north. Recent polls indicate that their stranglehold on the north is already starting to crack and could all but fall apart in the years to come.

But regardless of what happens in the north, Ontario's next provincial elections are likely to be highly contested by all major parties. While only the PCs and NDP stand a realistic chance of winning and going into government, the Liberals could find themselves as power-brokers able to make or break any new government. Still, with the Liberals on the way out, Ontario might not be approaching a political tidal wave, but it's certainly going through a sea of change.