Doug Ford got another majority – now what？
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Summary
Coming up, what does yesterday's Ontario election mean for Ontario and for conservatism in Canada? Plus, a little bit of personal news to end the show. The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now on The Andrew Lawrence Show, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
Transcript
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This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by TrueNorth.
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Coming up, what does yesterday's Ontario election mean for Ontario and for conservatism in Canada?
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Plus, a little bit of personal news to end the show.
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Hello and welcome to the Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on TrueNorth.
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It is Friday, June 3rd, 2022, the day after the Ontario provincial election
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and perhaps the beginning of a big reckoning of where the political parties in this country
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actually sit on the political spectrum, if they sit anywhere at all, which isn't necessarily a given.
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Now, I promise you, I know we've been doing Ontario overload lately,
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but I promise you we're going to be moving on from this.
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After today's show, I do think it's important to talk about, though,
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because we are right now looking at the re-election with the majority government of Doug Ford,
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a leader who is not a conventional conservative by any stretch.
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But it is important when you look at it in the context of what his opponents say he is,
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because they all view him as being this far-right demagogue
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when conservatives are looking at him and saying,
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you know, I would be OK with far-right, but I'm not actually seeing far-right.
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So that's the complexity that you tend to get out of this.
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But the reason I bring this up now is because he won.
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And it's interesting to see all of the fawning and adoration he's tended to get from very unique places.
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Like we remember during the COVID pandemic how he and Chrystia Freeland and Justin Trudeau
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had this sort of buddy comedy romance thing going on.
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And then he wouldn't campaign for the conservatives, for the federal conservatives.
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So he's kind of been in this little bubble of his own here.
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the COVID file has dramatically changed what his first term would have looked like.
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I think Doug Ford elected in 2018 with a majority government without COVID
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I, you know, would have been great to have seen a bit more of this.
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But ultimately, it wouldn't have been eventful.
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It wouldn't have been a raucous affair, his tenure as premier.
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And with COVID, it's a bit different because now he has to defend against his right flank and his left.
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He's had an exodus of caucus members that he kicked out.
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There were others that were not running again that were not officially kicked out,
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but we know were forced out or resigned because of pressures they were getting.
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People like Toby Barrett and Jeff Urich and Christina Midas.
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So you've got a large number of MPPs here that just didn't get along with the premier's office.
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And one of those incidents, Toby Barrett, who is a longtime MPP in Haldeman Norfolk down in southwestern Ontario,
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his riding is quite a fascinating one because Toby Barrett wasn't seeking re-election,
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but his longtime executive assistant was seeking to run.
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She wanted to run for the PC nomination and she wanted to run in his riding.
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Now, she was, for whatever reason, not allowed to.
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And I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but the party didn't give her a chance.
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She actually just didn't get a chance to run at it.
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So she decided she was going to run as an independent.
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That is about four and a half points above the PC candidate, Ken Hewitt.
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But she won that seat as an independent and she had the backing of Toby Barrett.
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She had the backing of a lot of people that had been longtime conservatives in that riding.
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It is very, very difficult in Canadian politics and within that Ontario politics to get elected
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So this speaks to how there is some, and again, you may say it's an isolated case,
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but it speaks to how there is very much some frustration with the status quo right now
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and frustration from conservatives, from people on the right with Doug Ford.
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And if at the end of it, he's got a majority, he's increased his majority,
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he did it without running on a particularly conservative platform.
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I understand the concern there that he's kind of proving the concept
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that you don't need to be a conservative and offer anything specific to conservatives to win.
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And I think that there are two reasons why that's wrong.
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Number one, provincial politics and federal politics are different animals.
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The other thing that I would add that I think is important to keep in mind here
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is that low voter turnout generally favors the incumbent
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because change is a significant motivating factor.
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So if you've got a high turnout election, that means that, okay,
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Whereas this was an election where it almost became a punchline,
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the Seinfeld election, the election about nothing,
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So in that, I mean, through that perspective, right now,
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what we see is an election in which no one was really motivated to come out
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But similarly, Doug Ford supporters weren't really all that motivated to come out.
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I mean, I look at the riding in which I ran four years ago in 2018
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and the number of votes that I got, it was just, I think, about 30% of the vote.
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And the candidate who ran for the PCs this time around won fewer votes,
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but a slightly higher percentage of the voting share.
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And that's just because so many, so few people were voting this time around.
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I think this was the lowest turnout of any provincial election in Ontario's history,
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That's not an endorsement of Andrea Horvath and the NDP.
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It's not an endorsement of Stephen Del Duca and the Liberals,
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They've resigned because they realized they don't really have futures leading their parties.
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So right now we have three parties that are not grounded in any particular ideology.
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They're not grounded in anything that is really rallying their base.
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No one's excited to be a provincial progressive conservative.
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No one's excited to be a provincial liberal in Ontario.
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No one's excited to be an Ontario NDP supporter.
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And in fact, the Ontario NDP is getting a lot of the same criticism from the left
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that Doug Ford is getting from the right of like, you know,
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a party that's just chasing votes instead of truly advancing a cohesive, solid vision.
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Now, their vision is, of course, one that's a lot further left
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than the vision that small C conservatives are pushing on Doug Ford.
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But I share that with you just so you know that no one right now in Ontario politics
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And I think that's why you had an independent, Bobby Ann Brady, who was able to win.
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And if you look at New Blue and Ontario Party, two parties that we focused on a fair bit,
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not because I was predicting they were going to come in and form government,
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They were a part of the story of the conservative movement.
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They were a part of the story of the Ontario election.
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And combined, I'm just looking at the numbers here.
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I think they're combined at like 4.7% of the overall vote.
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So Ontario Party had 1.8% of the vote, so not huge.
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So between the two of them, that is 4.5% of the vote, which is not nothing.
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the Green Party had 6% of the vote province-wide.
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And New Blue and Ontario Party combined two first-time parties
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that no one had ever heard of before this election combined have about 4.5%.
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And that's more than the PPC got in its first election in 2019.
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But again, I'm just going to show that these things are,
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they're small numbers and they may be electorally insignificant,
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but they're not politically insignificant in terms of what it is they represent.
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Now, I spoke to Jim Carajalios and Derek Sloan both,
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and I know that Derek has said he doesn't know what he's going to do.
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no, no, no, he is focused on building the New Blue,
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building this party as an alternative to Doug Ford and the PCs in Ontario.
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And they had Belinda Carajalios, who was originally a PC MPP.
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which speaks to the leadership challenges that the PC party had internally with Doug Ford.
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So I don't know how much of that is going to be a thing moving forward.
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I mean, certainly a lot of people who were the so-called problems
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But I think there is something to be said about how, for the most part,
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this is still going to be a situation where Ford's got to provide something for his base.
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Because for the people that just decided they were going to grin and bear it,
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that certainly weren't happy with the last two years,
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but understood that, well, the Liberals and the NDP wouldn't have done anything better,
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they'll say, okay, I don't want them in, so I'll vote PC.
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And I don't know if you want to call that strategic voting
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or if it's just prioritizing electability over anything else.
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That's the calculation that a lot of people made.
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And I heard from people that genuinely were struggling.
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They're like, you know, I would have said three months ago,
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I'm never in a million years voting for Doug Ford.
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But, you know, now that it's coming and now that it's a little less theoretical,
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I'm thinking, well, do I want to let a Liberal or a New Democrat win?
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So I think the danger here is that after the last two years,
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when you had vaccine mandates and vaccine passports and lockdowns
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the only opposition was coming from people like Andrea Horvath and Stephen Del Duca
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that said we need more vaccine mandates, more mask mandates, more vaccine passports.
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But the only reason, the only reason a lot of people voted for the Conservatives
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is because they didn't see there as being a viable alternative.
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And I know that New Blue was running candidates in all ridings.
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But people know it takes time to build these things up.
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I mean, just look at the Green Party as a great example of this.
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The Green Party didn't win a single seat in Canada until, I think, Elizabeth May in 2006,
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which was, you know, more than 20 years after this party had been started fielding candidates.
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And the same courtesy has not been afforded to upstart right-of-center parties,
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But I think it's something that people need to pay attention to.
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So the media likes to just create this myth that the Green Party is a thing.
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And then once they finally elect someone, it, like, justifies to them,
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Everyone was wondering if the Green Party in Ontario would pick up a second seat.
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They were behind the PCs in Paris-Stale, Muskoka.
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And Mike Schreiner, the leader, won his seat again in Guelph.
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But it's not a party that is this game changer that it's often presented as.
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So that, I think, is where we have to understand that the media has a direct role
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in deciding which things are taken seriously, which parties are taken seriously,
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And that's a significant agenda-setting role they have.
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I want to bring into this discussion Sue-Ann Levy, who, like me, has had the misfortune
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of running as a PC candidate in a provincial election and losing.
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I mean, I can't say it's all that surprising what happened.
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I think that everyone at the beginning of the election, as I said earlier, knew what was
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And the question was really just about what the numbers were going to be.
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And, you know, were they going to pick up this seat or not?
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Not in terms of the PCs winning a majority, but my own riding of St. Paul's in Midtown Toronto.
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I really thought the Liberal candidate had it, but the NDP candidate won on the backs of
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anti-Black racism, unfortunately, because I didn't think she did a good service for the
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However, we are in that woke culture, you know, and we're in the midst of all of that.
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And, you know, it's a runaway train that we can't quite catch yet.
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Yeah, and that's, I think, the big thing here, because there's been a lot of hand-wringing,
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And I think Conservatives can and are justified in asking the PC party, are you really a Conservative
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I think the Liberals are justified in asking their party, what do you really stand for?
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The NDP seems to be grappling between, okay, do we try to be this centrist, liberal alternative,
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or do we try to be the uber-woke, critical race theory party?
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And, I mean, it seems like that side's winning out, that latter side is winning out.
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She's had four runs at it, and, you know, I remember chasing her in 2018 when she had
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a series of questionable candidates running for office, particularly in Toronto.
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But I think with her gone, she kind of kept the party in line that way, and I fear that
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with some of the people who have been elected, particularly my own MPP, and Kristen Wong-Tam
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in downtown Toronto, that there's going to be fight.
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And I think that they are going to veer further to the left and become more woke.
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Kristen Wong-Tam is a real radical, radical lesbian feminist.
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So, let's talk about leadership contenders then.
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Because do you think, I mean, I saw someone, I think, on Twitter this morning, not that
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Twitter is always the, you know, the oracle of truth, but I saw someone suggesting that
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Kristen Wong-Tam might be a contender for a leader.
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And otherwise, who else do you think is on deck to really try to take the reins of this
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Well, that would be a big mistake if they put Kristen Wong-Tam in as leader or Jill
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Andrew, because I also saw the same thing for her.
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I liken it to what's happening with the Democrats in the states, you know, in terms of that,
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And I guess so far, Biden and Kamala Harris have been able to keep them in check, although
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they have moved further to the left, that party itself, but not entirely crazy on the Bernie
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I think that they need somebody who is moderate.
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I really think that they, you know, have to look at somebody who, like Andrea Horvath, tried
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Matthew Green was one name that I heard bantied about, but I don't know.
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But to put the radical left lefty feminists, lesbian feminists in charge, and I say that
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because I'm gay so I can get away with it, would be a big, big mistake.
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Yeah, and I guess the big question, too, is what the future of the Liberal Party is, because
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right now, it doesn't look like they have much of a future.
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They had a dismal showing in 2018, and a lot of people were prepared to say, well, that
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was just because they were still paying for the crimes of Dalton McGinty and Kathleen Wynne,
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and maybe they would, with a new leader, rebuild, so they get that new leader in, Stephen
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I mean, just a complete wet blanket, no charisma, no momentum, no original ideas.
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The Liberals, you know, picked up a little bit of support from 2018, but hardly any.
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If the Liberals continue to not resonate with voters, I mean, the NDP could do quite well
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in the future, but again, not if they decide to be this really far left party that you're
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Well, the problem is that every party is moving further to the left, and Ford, in order to
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win, I believe, has sacrificed some of his conservative principles and, you know, has become
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Woker, he did not take on the education file, which is a big issue, and which I write about
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The pandering to the woke, critical race theory, gender ideology, doubt very much he'll do that.
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So everybody keeps shifting a little further to the left.
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They certainly seem to be searching for a purpose.
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And yes, you're right, with Stephen Del Duca was a huge mistake.
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You need somebody with, you know, a little bit more charm, less baggage, and I don't know
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There was talk, Mitzi Hunter was asked last night about that.
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I mean, I think that also would be a huge mistake.
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She has considerable baggage herself, and I don't happen to think she's that sharp or
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I mean, you can say what you want about Kathleen Wynne, but she was sharp and personable.
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She just made a mess of the finances and did some really awful things.
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I mean, with bad leaders, they always tend to, in hindsight, look better and better, and
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Like, you look at how so many American leftists now think George Bush is like the gold standard
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for what a president is supposed to be when, you know, he spent eight years being Hitler,
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She always took the time to come on my show.
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I always had amiable conversations, but I just fundamentally objected to everything that
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she was doing as leader, but she is also considerably more moderate than what I fear is coming down
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I mean, this is a broader problem that isn't just about the so-called progressive parties.
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The PCs are facing this as well, and I guess I'll ask you then along that vein about the
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conservative offshoots that we saw this time around.
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The New Blue and the Ontario Party didn't elect any members, but combined, I think they had just
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I mean, do you think that is a win for these parties?
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I think that, you know, they made some traction.
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I actually spoke at the New Blue conference, and I think they were desperately searching
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for a position on the spectrum, and they were trying to appeal to people who feel that they
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have been abandoned by the progressive conservatives.
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And some people I saw on social media last night were saying, well, you might as well
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And, you know, when the, I'll tell you the true test is when the MSM, the lefty mainstream
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media and people like, you know, the people on CTV and God, his name escaped me, but he
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was fawning over Doug Ford and that this was the dawn of a new era.
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And they were just going crazy about the idea that he has moved further to the left.
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And I thought, oh my God, when they give him kudos, we've got a problem.
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In fact, I tweeted that Houston, we've got a problem that, you know, whatever happened
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to true conservative values and, and fighting on the basis of that.
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And I wouldn't say that there's, I mean, it's tough to say because we know he's not an
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But one thing I would point out about Doug Ford, which is, is interesting here is that
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he spends a lot of time praising people that just hate him, like praising Justin Trudeau
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and praising Chrystia Freeland and they're never going to like him.
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And, you know, he didn't lift a finger in the last two federal election campaigns to support
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the conservative leaders, either Andrew Scheer or Aaron O'Deule.
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So it does seem like he's, he's campaigning for that affection that you mentioned, but
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again, that's not, I mean, he's got a majority government now.
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He doesn't have to deal with the COVID file in the same way that he did last time around.
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If you're a conservative voter that's expecting conservative policy from him, he doesn't have
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But I think that I really am concerned that he's not going to take on the teachers unions,
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I think Stephen Lecce was a mistake as the education minister.
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I don't, you know, I have my doubts that that will be tackled.
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And I think they just don't want to wade into that.
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And well, you know, whatever you say, I mean, he's abandoned some of the principles that I
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In some respects, he's been a good conservative.
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In some respects, I think he's taken a knee to the woke crowd.
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And that really, really concerns me as they all shift in order to appeal to, you know,
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when he talked about inclusivity in his acceptance speech last night, that was the most important
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thing, inclusivity, sorry, you know, what happened to conservative values of being fiscally
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And, you know, law and order, those sort of things.
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I think he's done a lot of stuff to pander to that vote that he didn't think he would
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get in the past and to pander to the mainstream media.
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Well, on that vein, Sue Ann, let me ask you about labor, because that was the one thing that
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the conservatives really did differently this time.
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I was getting the PC party press releases, and pretty much every day they were announcing
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the new endorsement from a new labor union, some larger, some smaller.
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We know the labor minister, Monty McNaughton, was doing a lot of work to cultivate this.
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Is this, in your view, expanding the conservative base in the way that we want to, as people
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Or is this along that vein of pandering like you were talking about?
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I mean, he got the support of labor because, you know, the cynical me says that he's talking
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He's talking about building, you know, the highway 413.
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So labor stands, those unions stand to benefit considerably from that.
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And the problem is, Andrew, and I see it out my own door, there's no accountability.
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You can talk all you want about building infrastructure, but there's absolutely no
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I mean, you've got Metrolinks, you've got Crosslinks building this Eglinton Crosstown
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I lay the blame squarely on the Ford government for not being more accountable and letting
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So yeah, all well and good that you've got the support of the labor unions, but what about
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actually making them accountable for the builds and not letting them run, you know, two, three
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If you look back at 2018, when he won, his big pitch was open for business.
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And I think there were some private sector unions that were on the fence about supporting
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They certainly weren't happy with the liberals that time.
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And then COVID comes and it sort of puts a damper on anyone's agenda.
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You can just ask Jason Kenney, Doug Ford, and so on.
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I mean, ultimately speaking, these are their interests align with their members' interests,
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And we don't know what was offered to these groups.
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And I'm not suggesting anything untoward happened.
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But we don't know if it was just they bought into the general vision or if there were very
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And, you know, you know, the classic thing is to overbid and then come within the budget
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and say, oh, we've met the budget, but we've added 20% or 30% or whatever.
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I mean, that's exactly what's happening in my own neighborhood.
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But, you know, again, I get back to you want to build infrastructure.
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Don't put the entire province in a huge debt situation doing that.
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If you don't prepare to be accountable, then infrastructure, like you just can't go out
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there and build these things and then just leave them to their own devices.
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I mean, you know, I'm just shocked at the lack of accountability on these projects.
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Lack of accountability when it comes to fiscal, you know, being fiscally careful, fiscal
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So, yeah, listen, earning these votes that he did last night, earning that huge majority,
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It came with a price to you, to me, to all Ontario taxpayers.
00:26:31.940
Always great to catch up with the lovely and wonderful Sue Ann Levy.
00:26:36.040
You can catch her work at True North like the rest of us here.
00:26:39.940
But again, she knows what it's like to be in the trenches running, and she also knows what
00:26:46.240
And I had people asking me, believe it or not, because there was a riding near me that
00:26:53.520
I mean, the PCs were going to win it no matter what.
00:26:55.740
So the candidate who run there got over like 50% of the vote.
00:26:58.520
And when that riding was vacant, I had people asking me, knowing I ran.
00:27:01.940
Four years ago, oh, Andrew, you're going to run.
00:27:04.060
And I was like, I didn't need, I wasn't even tempted.
00:27:06.500
Like there wasn't even a moment where I was like, you know, it would be nice.
00:27:14.220
Now, not that they would even take me as, not that they would even let me run.
00:27:17.720
But if they did, I wondered whether I would go for that.
00:27:23.920
And it's not to say I would never at some point in the future run for office.
00:27:27.100
But I have far more of a cynical view of the process.
00:27:31.680
So something would very much need to change where I'd need to feel confident like I could
00:27:40.340
And right now I feel quite frankly, and this isn't to, you know, thump my chest or anything,
00:27:44.300
like I'm able to wield more influence outside of the halls of government than inside just
00:27:48.880
because of the, how responsive or non-responsive, I should say, political parties are to their
00:27:55.420
base and how responsive they are to what the mainstream media seems to want to prioritize.
00:28:01.240
And this is why from an independent media perspective, I think it's so important to
00:28:05.180
have voices that are proving that, yeah, there is a right flank on these issues.
00:28:10.580
There's a left flank too, but we need to have all these sides represented so that people
00:28:18.880
And we'll have more analysis on some of the bigger picture themes emerging in Canadian
00:28:24.700
But I had to do something of a recap of the Ontario election the day after here.
00:28:28.900
So if you don't care about Ontario at all, I thank you very much for indulging if you
00:28:33.540
Before I say a gif for today, though, I do want to end on a particularly shameless self-promotional
00:28:39.540
note here because I'm very excited to share with you that I have just announced this week
00:28:43.980
the release of my first book, the upcoming release of my first book, The Freedom
00:28:48.840
Convoy, the inside story of Three Weeks That Shook the World.
00:28:54.360
This has been a project I've been immersed in since the end of the Convoy's time in Ottawa
00:29:01.220
And at first I was saying to a friend of mine in particular, you know, someone needs to
00:29:05.660
write a book about this because I learned there was so much behind the scenes and below the
00:29:10.580
surface that wasn't captured in media coverage.
00:29:13.440
And I eventually I kept saying this and then I realized, well, you know, who better to write
00:29:18.040
Because I have been interviewing these people and I have been spending time in Ottawa and
00:29:22.240
I've been pointing out what it is that the mainstream media has been getting so wrong
00:29:29.160
So I decided to buckle down and say, you know what, I'm going to write this book and I did
00:29:35.760
So we just announced it and made it available for pre-order this week.
00:29:39.540
It's being published by Sutherland House, which is a great independent publisher in Canada
00:29:45.000
and you can get it on their website at SutherlandHouseBooks.com or you can also get it on Amazon.
00:29:56.960
I want more people telling the story of the Convoy because there's a story there that the
00:30:03.040
So June 24th is one of my books coming out and I do hope you read it and enjoy it.
00:30:09.580
My thanks to all of you for tuning into the show today.
00:30:17.380
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:30:19.620
Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.