Paul's Internet Landfill/ 2025/ Stupid Election Preblather

Stupid Election Preblather

It is the day before the election. Probably I will not publish this before the election, as if I was under any illusions that my opinions would inform anybody's vote. This is just a record of what I am feeling, and evidence that my political instincts are uniformly terrible.

Ford's Record

I guess Doug Ford is getting everything he wants. He wanted to have an election before Poilievre won power, and he got it. The Liberals were weak (boy were they weak) and most of Canada is obsessing over the USAian tire fire, so it seems to me that few people paid much attention to the Ontario election. The weather is awful and there was a big snowfall the weekend before advance polls opened, so it was even more difficult for people to canvass than normal. Neither the NDP nor the Liberals were able to break into public consciousnesses, so the OPCs maintained a comfortable lead in the polls throughout the campaign. As I write this it seems that Ford is headed for a big majority.

Since writing my last entry on the election, my opinion of Ford has dimmed significantly. I think Ontario thinks of him as a buffoon, but a known quantity -- we know he loves his developer friends and sticks his foot in his mouth, but he is tolerable. Doug Ford is not Stephen Harper or Mike Harris. But during the election people published a number of takedowns of his seven years in government, and they convinced me that Ford really does not deserve another term in government. Every other incumbent government in the world has seemed to face significant inflation-related backlash, but for some reason we are not mad at Doug Ford or his government for this. No scandal seems to stick to the guy.

In terms of takedowns, Justin Ling published a short opinion piece in the Toronto Star urging voters to unelect Ford. That piece is a quick tour through many of Ford's failures. The Local (a Toronto publication) published a deeper dive.

Maybe none of this is catastrophic in the way that Poilievre's government will be catastrophic. But the record on some key files has not been good.

I am still deeply upset that Ford cancelled the Basic Income pilot. I am on the record as being opposed to Basic Income overall, but cancelling that pilot was really dumb and really harmful to those participants who put their trust that the government would give them income supports for a predictable amount of time. I am even angrier about this than I am about the Greenbelt stuff, and I am plenty angry about the Greenbelt stuff.

Unaccountability

Certainly every government runs into troubles and scandals as the years pass on. But nothing seems to stick to this guy. The Ford government is being investigated by the RCMP over the Greenbelt stuff, and it doesn't matter. Ford makes "jokes" about bringing back capital punishment, and it doesn't matter.

But Ford's unaccountability runs much deeper than this. The OPCs didn't release an election platform until the week of the election, after all the other major parties had released theirs. And it really is not much of an election platform. In 2022 Ford didn't bother with a platform at all. He campaigns by repeating one or two talking points (this time it is "standing against tariffs") and that is supposed to be sufficient for governing a province? We all know that election platforms will be broken (and it is kind of silly that the Greens make promises knowing full well they will not form government) but at least a campaign platform offers some concrete guidance as to the inclinations of the party in question, and provide some milestones sites like Polimeter can track. But the OPCs (and Doug Ford) just don't bother, and we never punish them for this.

But it gets worse. Apparently, the OPCs finally made unofficial Conservative practices official; it appears to be party policy that their candidates avoid all-candidates debates. This is a fundamental betrayal of representative democracy, especially in a First-Past-the-Post system. The conceit under FPTP is that we do not elect our premiers directly, but rather we have a strong bond to our local MPPs, and having a party list of preselected candidates would be horribly undemocratic. But apparently these local candidates never need to be accountable to their voters. When it is not blizzarding outside, they can go door to door shaking hands, and that's about it. But being canvassed is a far cry from accountability. I understand why the OPCs made this policy -- the more that their candidates are allowed to speak, the greater the chance that one will say something stupid and that the media will jump all over those comments. That is a good policy for an authoritarian state where the local MPPs are trained seals who follow central party orders instead of serving their communities, but it is bad for democracy. For all their limitations (and there are many), all-candidates meetings are job interviews that give voters opportunities to compare candidates side by side, and I do not understand why we are hiring MPPs who don't show up to job interviews.

That's not the end of it. If local MPPs are muzzled by their political parties, then elections become contests over electing premiers, which is why I have been referring to Doug Ford more than I have the Progressive Conservative party. At the very least those party leaders should be accountable to the electorate, but despite calling an early election Doug Ford has done his level best to avoid accountability. He has traipsed off to the USA several times during the election period, he avoided the media scrum that was supposed to happen after the second English-language debate, and he has severely restricted questions when he does speak to reporters. The Conservatives are allowed to pull such shenanigans, but why in the world is the electorate rewarding such behaviour with majority governments? It makes no sense, and it bodes poorly for democracy.

So we have a politician who wants re-election as Premier, but who barely communicates with voters, prohibits his candidates from showing up in public forums, and releases a tepid policy package at the very last minute. He calls an election in the dead of winter knowing that it will very likely depress voter turnout. Then when some small fraction of the total electorate votes for him, he will claim a strong mandate to do whatever he wants, because "voters have spoken" and "if they didn't want it they should have voted for somebody else". This will be true whether the voter turnout is 60% or 10%.

Local Races

Kitchener Centre

Lots of Aislinn Clancy signs went up on the first day of the election, and although I have seen a handful of Brooklin Wallis and Colleen James signs, I haven't seen many. People in my filter bubble sound confident that we will not split the vote (it would be a disaster if we did, given that the OPC candidate Rob Elliot lives nowhere nearby) but I am less confident.

After listening to one debate, I feel that any of Wallis, Clancy, or James would be okay as MPP. Wallis is clearly the least experienced, and if she really wants to win something (either provincially or municipally) she is going to have to put together a more effective canvassing team. I am not a fan of Clancy personally, but even though I remain angry with the Green Party I suppose that tactically it would be good for the party to retain a second seat in the legislature. I thought that Colleen James would be a strong campaigning force but as far as I have seen she has not been. Like Clancy, she knows how to communicate effectively, and knows how the Region works. But I think she will do just as well going back to her Regional Council position and finishing her term (unless she is planning on running federally too?)

I am irritated at how prominently Clancy advertises her city council experience, given that she was in the position for mere months before jumping ship.

Kitchener-Conestoga

People in Wilmot are unhappy about the Wilmot Land Grab, which has been revealed to be the proposed site for a Toyota plant. This anger means incumbent Mike Harris Jr has been under attack, and (unlike any other OPC candidate) he actually showed up to a couple of debates -- one with the CBC and another for the New Hamburg board of trade. (He skipped a televised Rogers TV debate.)

I don't know whether this pressure is going to matter. I am not sure what the split is between the townships and the portion of Kitchener-Conestoga that is in Kitchener, but I am guessing that a big chunk of the riding consists of Kitchener residents, and I bet that they (like most of the region) supports Doug Ford and does not care much about the Wilmot land grab.

There are a couple of right-wingers running in the riding: Jim Karahalios from the New Blue Party, and a minor (but endearing) candidate for the Ontario Party named Patrick Doucette. There is some chance that they will bleed some right-wing votes from Harris, but I am skeptical this will make much difference.

Joe Gowing is running for the Liberals again. I continue to think he would be a strong representative, but I guess that is my fiscally conservative side speaking. But it looks like the progressives in the riding are coalescing around NDP candidate Jodi Szimanski. The Green candidate Brayden Wagenaar endorsed Szimanski, becoming the second Green party candidate in the region to effectively drop out of the campaign. (Thanks to FPTP this is a rational decision overall, but it is not great for the Greens.)

(Wow. Both of the popular strategic voting sites -- votewell.ca and smartvoting.ca -- say that the Liberals are outcompeting the NDP in the riding. These strategic voting sites are hot garbage.)

I don't anticipate Harris losing the riding, but of all the five local ridings I suspect this is the most likely to flip. I am not fond of Mike Harris Jr (although I am more fond of him than his father) and apparently he has not been responsive to his constituents as MPP, but at least he had the guts to show up for something.

Cambridge

I had hoped there would be some movement in this riding but I think it will go to the invisible OPC incumbent Brian Riddell. Rob Deutschmann dropped out of Regional Council to run for the Liberals in this riding, but I do not see much evidence that he is making headway. I cycled to Cambridge a few days ago and saw very few signs, none of which were for the Liberals.

The Green candidate Carla Johnson and the NDP candidate Marjorie Knight seem heartfelt. Either would be okay as an MPP but I think neither have a chance. Belinda Karahalios is running for the New Blue party but I think she does not have a chance either.

Waterloo

I think that Waterloo is a safe riding for Catherine Fife. I hope it is, anyways. She is a strong MPP. Given that Marit Stiles has been underwhelming, I wonder how she would have done had she chosen to run for NDP leader. I think Fife could have done a good job as leader, but I can see how she did not want the burden.

Kitchener South-Hespeler

Scuttlebutt on Reddit is that Jess Dixon has been another unresponsive MPP, but nothing I have seen suggests that she is in any danger of losing her seat.

Opposition Leaders

Obviously this is my misogyny showing, but I have been unimpressed with both Marit Stiles and Bonnie Crombie. Crombie has been particularly disappointing (and deceitful -- when running for Liberal leader she was campaigning from the right; now she is sounding like a left winger full of compassion for health care and such). During the Northern Leaders debate both the NDP and Liberal leaders had a bad habit of laughing scornfully whenever Doug made some outlandish claim. I feel that pointing out outlandish claims is fair game; the mocking laughter was not effective.

All three of the opposition parties are promising to (sooner or later) double Ontario Disability (ODSP) rates. That would be a big change, and it would mean the gulf between Ontario Works and ODSP would get wider, which probably means the barriers to accessing ODSP more difficult.

Stiles is promising to make trips on Highway 407 free somehow? Ugh. Also, I don't see how she can do this.

Nobody has been treating the NDP like the official opposition party, even though they have been the official opposition since 2018. I do not know whether this is because the NDP is weak, or because the media is biased against them. Maybe this is part of the reason Marit Stiles is still an unknown to the electorate.

Crombie is promising to give every Ontarian a primary health care provider (I think she very carefully does not say "doctor") in four years. This sounds like another impossible promise to keep.

Mike Schreiner is Mike Schreiner. Despite the fact that the Greens are not going to form government this election, they put out a detailed policy platform with a bunch of unrealistic promises (increasing the already impossible 1.5 million home target Ford promised, for example). As usual it is good that the Greens put out a platform; it shows they are a serious party, and it provides ideas for other parties to poach. I would argue that the Greens treated this election more seriously than the major parties, even though they really are contesting only three seats (Kitchener Centre, Guelph, and Parry Sound-Muskoka). The other leaders like Schreiner and compliment him because he is not a real threat to them.

The overwhelming feeling I get from all of these parties -- yes, Greens included -- is that nobody is really serious. The left wing parties are promising the moon with no realistic ways to pay for those promises. The OPCs are pretending like they are fiscally responsible when they are bankrupting the province.

Shifting Goalposts

The CBC ran some 20-minute all-candidates segments on the radio. That's good! But the criteria they used for inclusion in these segments was "we invite only parties that have sitting MPPs". That's terrible, and it is yet more evidence of the way that these eligibility criteria for all-candidates meetings are rigged.

For years and years the Green Party was not invited to debates. The reasons for this kept shifting. Now most forums include the Greens, but don't include independents or representatives from smaller parties like the New Blue party. That is both unfair and unhelpful -- since the OPCs are skipping everything, these CBC segments consisted of three left-wing candidates mostly agreeing with each other.

At least Rogers included the New Blue Karahelioses for their debates. I am not a New Blue supporter but it was good to hear the diversity of opinion. They didn't invite the Ontario Party candidates or any independents, however.

My criteria for inclusion remains unchanged:

These need not be the exact criteria. What is important is that they should be achievable even for new parties that have not elected representatives yet, and they should be stable across elections. But that is not what happens now. On the federal stage the People's Party is being locked out as thoroughly as the Greens were twenty years ago.

I have run all-candidates meetings with 13 candidates and it has gone okay. If there are 20 candidates that could be a problem (and Toronto mayoralty campaigns can have close to a hundred candidates). In such cases maybe there need to be some criteria applied, but most of the time all candidates should be invited to all-candidates meetings.

Invisible Campaign

No doubt I say this every single election, but this has been the quietest election campaign I can remember. I have never seen so few political signs during an election. There has barely been any coverage. I do not know whether people are talking much about the election (I don't talk to many people these days) but I suspect not.

Somewhat foolishly, I voted in an advance poll. (Honestly I think making election day a special occasion works better for democracy, but I wanted to get my decision over with.) Maybe I was just voting in a lull period, but the polling station was dead quiet. On Mastodon I saw some toots about polling stations being busy, but other accounts reported low turnouts.

One thing I heard is that many people had not received their voter information cards by the advance polling dates, and in fact some people might not receive them by election day. (Meanwhile everybody has received their $200 bribery cheques by now. Curious.) This is bad news. It is possible for people to vote without a voter ID card, but this increases voting friction. Voter ID cards are a visual reminder to vote, and they provide helpful information about one's local polling station. Without a card many potential voters may stay home, which works in Doug Ford's favour but is bad for democracy overall.

This all bodes poorly. My prediction is that this will be the lowest voter turnout in generations.

The reality is that this is a fairly important election. The province controls a lot of domestic policy (more so than the federal government, I would argue). Our province is in dire straits. Healthcare is falling apart. Municipalities cannot pay the costs of maintenance, never mind expansion. Climate change is here and is going to affect us both directly and indirectly. And of course we are in a housing crisis. By 2029 all of these problems will likely be more acute, not less. But I think we are sleepwalking into a government ill-suited to take on these challenges.