There was a time when it was the Natural Governing Party of Ontario - will it rise again?

Rivers 100x100By Ray Rivers

October 8, 2014

BURLINGTON, ON

 

They used to call the Ontario Progressive Conservatives (PCs) ‘the natural governing party’. Originated with the Upper Canada Family Compact of Sir John A Macdonald, the party was first led by another Macdonald, who was actually a Liberal. The PCs under one label or another have ruled Ontario for over half of the province’s post-confederation history. And interestingly the Party’s official name used to be the Liberal-Conservative Association of Ontario.

christine-elliott-1Next May the Ontario PCs will be choosing a new leader and will get the opportunity to rid themselves of the regressive and divisive politics that characterized much of the past couple decades. Christine Elliott, the widow of former finance minister Jim Flaherty, appears to be the candidate to beat. She’s been down this road before, coming in third place to Tim Hudak in the 2009 leadership fight. Flaherty had been one of the Mike Harris’ radicals though he took on subtler, more folksy and progressive persona as Mr. Harper’s finance minister.

After Flaherty vacated his provincial seat to run federally, Elliott squeaked in to fill her husband’s shoes. She claims to be a moderate, a centrist, and unlike Hudak, was never a foot soldier in the Harris government. In fact she has been known to criticize Harris’ ‘Common Sense Revolution’ and the extreme policies of former leader Tim Hudak, policies which led to the party’s failure in the last provincial election.

There is so much political landscape for a moderate leader of the second party to explore, providing that party is focused on good government and not blinded by ideology. For example we know that balancing the budget is an exercise in offsetting expenditures with revenues. And it follows that if costs can’t be reasonably curtailed, then taxes must increase.

Ontario’s state of transportation infrastructure is in shambles – and especially so in the GTA. Former Premier John Robarts would have intervened long ago to build more public transit, so people could come out of their cars and off the roads. And that would have helped, but this is more complex than just building bus lanes, subways and GO trains – it is about urban sprawl and planning for development in Ontario.

Bill Davis had problems learning how to balance a budget; never really did learn.

Bill Davis had problems learning how to balance a budget; never really did learn.

Former premier Bill Davis implemented Ontario’s land planning process, calling it one of the most advanced anywhere. But for all the praise, it is not much more than a reactive system driven by unsolicited developer proposals. Only the official plans and Greenbelt represent any kind of meaningful planning. And then there is that archaic institution called the Ontario Municipal Board, which exists nowhere else and, which can overrule municipal decisions to the ‘nth’ detail of a developer’s wet dream, thus emasculating council decisions.

Finally the whole municipal system promotes corruption and influence peddling. For example, some councillors accept contributions from land developers, and then are in a position to approve their development plans. And isn’t four years is too long a term for a municipal official between elections? Term limits might encourage greater participation in the municipal process as well as reducing the amount of ‘dead wood’ in council chambers.

Fixing these things is not really a matter of being right-wing or left-wing, and neither is ensuring adequate health care, reliable energy and quality education for the Ontario public. So I welcome a new PC leader who understands that we just want good government. Isn’t that how the PC party started and evolved, at least until it went off the rails. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a choice between two middle-of-the-road parties that mostly believe in the same things for all of us?

An economy in perpetual deficit will ultimately fail to perform at all.And don’t we get tired watching one party come to power and then cancel the programs the former one had brought in, and so on and so forth… Of course there are some universal truths. Wealth doesn’t just trickle down from the rich to the poor, which is one of the reasons we have taxation. An economy in perpetual deficit will ultimately fail to perform at all. And the profit incentive is essential to ensure economic progress.

These principles or philosophies can be located somewhere in the constitutions of both of the two major political parties in Ontario if we look hard enough. This is the heritage of the parties and also their foundation. What’s not there is how they act to achieve these goals: being moderate, reasonable, inclusive and cooperative or conflicting, contrary, exclusive and divisive.

You know, the kind of stuff  Mr. Tory attempted with religious school funding, Mr. Hudak with slashing the civil service and the crippling the unions, and Mr. Harris by dismantling our reliable electrical generation system.Not everybody always votes for the same party, except maybe in Alberta. Some voters might occasionally want to support a second party, if only for a change of blood. But that becomes difficult when partisan ‘policy wonks’ dream up striking new ideological policy planks for the party leader. You know, the kind of stuff  Mr. Tory attempted with religious school funding, Mr. Hudak with slashing the civil service and the crippling the unions, and Mr. Harris by dismantling our reliable electrical generation system.

There are at least four other contenders for the PC leadership so far, and in politics anything is possible. So it may not be Ms. Elliott who wins. Hopefully the new leader will look for inspiration to the glorious days before the 1990’s when the PCs were both conservative and progressive.

Rivers-direct-into-camera1-173x300Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking. Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington where he ran against Cam Jackson in 1995, the year Mike Harris and the Common Sense Revolution swept the province.

Links:
PCs    Christine Elliott   PC Leadership 

Patrick Brown Candidate    Hudak’s Platform    

PC’s Relevant?   Federal Conservative Constitution 

Return to the Front page
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

4 comments to There was a time when it was the Natural Governing Party of Ontario – will it rise again?

  • Bob Zarichansky

    Please forward a copy of your article to PC Ontario as required reading and to the Ontario Liberals to remind them that four years go by quickly and will end their reign unless they fulfill their election platform.

  • Steve Robinson

    Ahhh, remember the good ole days when Ontario wasn’t a “have not province”?

  • Joan Gallagher-Bell

    Just a wee bit of history. Christine Elliott ran for Leadership during the previous leadership conference against Hudak. Hindsight shows perhaps the decision could have been different. Out of lemons of the last election results the lemonade could be complete restructuring of PCParty. The old guard changing to new young new blood. There are two strong candidates already. Christine and Moe.
    There very well could be a formidable new breeze in PC’s. During the next there is a great opportunity to rebound.
    God Bless. Happy Blessed Thanksgiving.

  • Gary

    A reasonably balanced column. I wouldn’t have said Ontario’s energy production is unreliable, but it certainly has become costly.