Right Turn

How the Tories Took Ontario

Christina Blizzard

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 1995
• ISBN:
  9781459718456
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Campaigns & Elections
• Index: Politics & International Relations

It wasn't so much a big blue machine that chugged its way across Ontario's political landscape in the spring of 1995 — it was more a big purple bulldozer driven by leader Mike Harris and a new breed of Tories. Gone were the pinstripes and the cigar-chomping backroom boys of the forty-two years of Tory rule. These Tories were young, hip, and they were riding the wave of their Common Sense Revolution, a platform launched a year earlier. Still, there were only a few who thought the PCs stood a chance of winning the Ontario provincial election. Though Bob Rae's NDP government was foundering, Lyn McLeod and the Liberals were holding what looked like a steady two-to-one lead in the polls. Relying on a combination of video tapes, clever advertising, and a brilliant campaign plan, the Harris team turned it all around, pulling off one of the most stunning upsets in Canadian political history. Right Turn tells the story.

Chapter One

Coronation to Revolution

Everyone predicted a coronation. Queen Lyn of the Liberals was supposed to sweep to power in Ontario’s provincial election. With Jean Chrétien and his federal Liberals still getting record approval ratings, conventional wisdom said that McLeod would romp to victory on his coattails. Ontario wasn’t supposed to turn right. Mike Harris wasn’t supposed to be premier. Voters in the country’s warm, fuzzy heartland were deemed too sophisticated, too socially concerned, just too darned nice to vote for Chainsaw Mike and his team.

Before the election, Harris and his rag-tag crop of Tories and their “Common Sense Revolution” were derided in the Ontario legislature as a steal from the U.S. right. Harris was portrayed as a Canadian Newt Gingrich who would slash and burn our most treasured social programs. They called him Mike the Knife, Newt of the North – any number of derisive epithets that were supposed to paint him in an extreme right corner. But while the Liberals and New Democrats were scoffing at his platform, Harris and his troops were criss-crossing the province at the grass-roots level, talking to people in town hall meetings from Kapuskasing to Cornwall to Windsor.

McLeod and her Liberals were sitting with a fairly consistent two-to-one lead in the polls throughout the fall and winter of 1994. By the spring of 1995 Harris was generally discounted as a serious contender in the election which everyone knew was just around the corner. However, the politically perceptive could see the signs. There was the Victoria-Haliburton by-election, which was called when New Democrat incumbent Dennis Drainville quit in disgust over his party’s policy on casinos. The Tories swept in neophyte Chris Hodgson, who personifies the new breed of Conservative, in what proved to be a dry run of the 1995 election. Some saw the signs as far back as the day after the New Democrats came to power in 1990. It was apparent then, pundits claim, that Premier Bob Rae and his socialist government were inexperienced and lacked the political savvy to hang on to power for longer than one mandate. Besides, did Ontarians really understand what they had wrought in electing a socialist agenda? In their haste to spank a naughty David Peterson and his Liberal government for their arrogance, had Ontario voters opened up a whole can of socialist worms?

The final sign that the Liberals might not have a cakewalk in the 1995 provincial election came, surprisingly, in the federal election of October 1993, when Ontario voters returned 98 Liberals in 99 ridings. Astute observers pointed out that no matter what the polls said, when push comes to shove, Ontarians like to see diversity in their political representation. They rarely choose to have the same party govern them from Ottawa and Queen’s Park at the same time.

It seemed impossible, but a small group of Tories believed they had a plan for Ontario. They were the ones who were left to pick up the pieces of a shattered provincial party. They were a small, shell-shocked group of generally right wing Conservatives who had kept the blue flame of Toryism burning after the cataclysmic upheaval of 1985. It was hard to believe that the once-mighty Tories had been reduced to a deficit-ridden rump, who could elect only a handful of members to a legislature which they had ruled as benevolent dictators for forty-two heady years. This small group of party loyalists had absolute faith not in the Big Blue Machine but in their ability to build their own, new political vehicle. They inherited a cranky old jalopy of a political party, stripped it of its excess baggage, gave it a new engine, and streamlined it for the 1990s. They even repainted it, subtly changing its color from Tory blue to a royal purple, which provides a richer hue for television.

But there was no magic bullet, no secret election formula to the Tory win. Moreover, there were no clever tricks by U.S. consultants. The Liberals were fixated on negative advertising and how to respond to it and even fearful of U.S. election consultant Mike Murphy. The Tories, meanwhile, plugged away for five years getting their message out, listening to grass-roots Ontarians, and formulating policy. By the time New Democrat Premier Bob Rae dropped the election writ on the desk of Lieutenant Governor Hal Jackman, on 28 April 1995, the Tory campaign was ending, rather than beginning.

They already had done their polling and listened to all the fears that were gnawing at the hearts of Ontarians. Their leader already had glad-handed across the province, talking to everyone from Bay Street CEOs to factory workers, to find out what they wanted from their government. More importantly, they took an immense gamble in releasing their policy document more than a year before the election call. It was an almost unheard-of election strategy. Liberals and New Democrats alike privately snickered and publicly ridiculed the Tories’ bold plan – the “Common Sense Revolution” – which the Tories had distilled from all those town hall meetings and private dinners.

In the end, the strategy proved brilliant and unassailable. The Tories prescribed strong medicine for what ailed the province. In a scheme dubbed “workfare,” Harris proposed that welfare recipients work for their benefits. And Ontario’s benefits, which were 30 percent above the national average, would be rolled back to only 10 percent above what other provinces pay. As well, Harris vowed to end the New Democrats’ new employment equity legislation that required employers to hire specifically targeted numbers of women and minorities. Another Tory promise was a pledge to cut taxes. In four and a half years of government, the New Democrats had increased taxes by $4 billion. Harris vowed to cut taxes by the same amount through a 30 percent cut in the provincial income tax rate.

Not surprisingly, his opponents jumped on that figure. McLeod declared that he was going to cut taxes – not the income tax rate – by 30 percent and that he was “wacky” for doing so.

On election day, Ontarians opened wide, said aaaah, and took their Tory medicine with a smile.

And the coronation became a revolution.

Chapter Two

A House Divided

Newly elected Premier Mike Harris planned the timing of his swearing-in ceremony carefully and with a sense of history. It was ten years exactly to the day – 26 June 1995 – that Liberal Premier David Peterson and his new government were sworn in on the lawn of Queen’s Park, ending a forty-two-year Tory dynasty in Ontario. And it wasn’t just the imagery of ten lost years that Harris was trying to depict. Within the PC party itself, things had come full circle. The decade had been far from wasted by the Tories. During those years, their party had been pulled apart and then rebuilt from the ground up.

By 1985, it was clear to some political observers that four decades of Tory rule were about to end. There was internal party strife, much of it coming from the Ontario Campus Progressive Conservatives in the persons of Tom Long and Tony Clement, who opposed what they saw as Red Tory policies – the SUNCOR bailout and full funding for separate schools. They bitterly denounced changes to the enforcement of the Ontario Human Rights Code tabled by Bob Elgie. The changes included the power to obtain material without a warrant and due process, which Long and Clement considered draconian, undemocratic, and certainly not particularly Progressive Conservative in nature.

The campus Tories wanted a discussion of these new policies, but they were shut out of the party’s policy debates by the old guard. It was a defining moment for the campus Tories. They realized that the old-style Tories really didn’t want a lot of discussion, and whenever there was dissent, they would simply shut it down. Eventually, the old guard relented – a little. But it was too late for Long and Clement and their allies, who realized that if the Tories were going to survive, the party had to be opened up and democratized.

And then came 1985 – the Tories’ very own annus horribilus. It was a year of turmoil, pain, and enormous upheaval for the Conservatives. Premier William G. Davis – Smilin’ Bill, Brampton Billy, one of the most respected politicians in Ontari, o – resigned at Thanksgiving 1984. He’d been leader and premier of the province since 1971, winning general elections in 1971, 1975, 1977, and 1981. (His second and third victories produced minority governments.) In 1983 and 1984, there was a “will-he-won’t he” period during which many in the party urged Davis to take a run at the leadership of the federal Tories, to succeed Joe Clark. Davis ended all the speculation in October 1984, by resigning as party leader.

Immediately, the party was plunged into a feeding frenzy of two leadership contests within the same year. This proved both costly and divisive. Round one came in January 1985, which wasn’t so much a political party choosing a new leader as it was an elite group of Conservatives anointing the next premier.

The party disintegrated quickly. Frank Miller, Dennis Timbrell, Larry Grossman, and Roy McMurtry squared off for the job. Miller won on the last ballot; Grossman was second. Miller called an election for May 1985 and the party dropped 20 seats. The New Democrats and Liberals ganged up on the government and defeated it on the Throne Speech vote. Miller resigned in August, and in November, the party endured another self-destructive leadership campaign.

“It was assumed we were electing a new premier. There was a lot of bitterness, a lot of division, a lot of fighting. And you had to go for the delegate spots – 10 delegate spots per riding,” recalled David Lindsay, who is now Harris’s principal secretary and one of the premier’s closest confidants. Lindsay watched the whole debacle unfold as a junior party worker. It was, he remembered, like “family fighting against family.” There were huge, internal battles. The party faithful fought over delegate spots and fundraising, and the leadership candidates fought to make commitments and promises. It took only twelve months for schisms and divisions to appear in the once-mighty PC party. Cracks and fissures opened up beneath their feet – and the Tories plunged downward.

“In those years, 1984-85, the party was tired. The leadership candidates didn’t seem to be running on ideas, they seemed to be running on who best to continue the mantle,” says Lindsay. “It wasn’t really a rejuvenation. The new ideas weren’t as forthcoming, or weren’t sparking debate as much as asking who was best to maintain the power. Or who best to pick up the torch and carry the mantle of the Tory dynasty – as opposed to who is rejuvenating the party and bringing forth new ideas.”

Tories wouldn’t even accept the fact that Frank Miller had lost the election in 1985. After all, he had won 52 seats. David Peterson only had 48. They wanted to claim victory, but the Liberals and New Democrats had forged an agreement to bring down the government right after the Throne Speech. The Liberal-New Democrat accord shook the Tories right down to their Stanfield underwear. They were used to governing Ontario by holy writ. It was their divine right to occupy the plush offices on the second floor of Queen’s Park. And how dare those upstart Liberals upset the natural order of things?

Miller put a sign on the door of the premier’s office telling Peterson not to get too comfortable. “We’ll be right back” was the sentiment. The Tories spent ten long years in the political wilderness, but on 8 June 1995, they honored that commitment.

In 1985, however, the Tories took on an unfamiliar role in the legislature. They sat in the Opposition with 52 seats, which went down to 51 when Bob Elgie took over the Workers’ Compensation Board. A second leadership campaign started when Frank Miller resigned in the summer of 1985. Larry Grossman took a second run at the leadership, this time defeating Allan Pope and Dennis Timbrell.

In the meantime, the Tories had people on the Opposition benches in the legislature who had never been in that position before and didn’t quite like the view. It’s understandable. Leo Bernier, Dr. Bette Stephenson, Claude Bennett had sat around the cabinet table for ten years and simply weren’t prepared for political obscurity.

Lindsay remembered one telling moment that happened in the dying days of the Miller government, shortly before the Throne Speech was voted down. It was Question Period, and the Liberals and New Democrats were giving Tory Dennis Timbrell a particularly tough time. Timbrell looked across the floor of the legislature and shouted back, “You guys are going to find it’s a lot tougher to catch the spears than it is to throw them.”

So the Tories found themselves in opposition, with no internal gyroscope to give them direction. They lost their identity. The natural ruling party was no longer ruling, and they felt that they had lost their raison d’être.

And then an odd notion dawned on the people of Ontario. David Peterson had been sworn in as premier of Ontario. There was a Liberal government at the Pink Palace, and the sky hadn’t fallen. Imagine that, after forty-two years, another party could govern without the province collapsing – or so they thought.

In 1985, voters hadn’t slam-dunked the Tories out of power. On the contrary, the Conservatives technically won the election. But once the electorate got a better look at the newly made-over David Peterson, with his trendy hairdo and stylish clothes, the new, trendy, and stylish voters in Ontario decided that they really preferred him and the Liberals to the stuffy old guard Tories.

By 1987, the voters were willing to do what they hadn’t had the temerity to do in 1985 – they swept out the Tories and swept in the Liberals with a huge majority government.

Chapter Three

No Cents and Common Sense

There was good news and bad news for Brampton South MPP Tony Clement right after the 1990 election. The good news was that he’d been elected party president. The bad news came during his first day on the job, when he received a phone call from the party’s chief financial officer.

“Congratulations on becoming party president,” said the CFO. “I just want to let you know that we’re $5.4 million in debt. That means before we pay a nickel on staff, before we pay a nickel on brochures, anything, we have to pay in interest $625,000 a year – $13,000 a week. And right now we have about $4,000 in the bank.”

That was the financial state of the Big Blue Machine following the 1990 leadership campaign. Mike Harris had inherited a massive debt, racked up during all those leadership campaigns. After the fall election of 1990, things looked grim for the Tories. With the party consistently at 15 or 20 percent in the polls, the $5.4 million debt sat like a huge boulder on a road, blocking any chance the Tories may have had of rejuvenating themselves.

That’s when Mike Harris made one of the toughest decisions of his political career — he shut down party headquarters. It was the only thing the party could do, but it meant that the once mighty Big Blue Tory Machine of Ontario no longer existed. Traditional Conservatives were aghast. It was unthinkable for them; it was akin to the Albany Club running out of twelve-year-old scotch. The Tories had no party headquarters and no paid political staff.

But the hole in the bank was only the tip of the iceberg. Not only were the Tories financially bankrupt, but they were also fresh out of new ideas. Long-time Harris friend and confidant David Lindsay argued at the time that it wasn’t just a financial problem – the party faced four deficits. “The easiest to measure, because you have monthly financial statements, and the most visible and tangible was the financial deficit,” Lindsay commented.

“Secondly, organizationally there was a deficit,” he said. “There weren’t very many people involved in the party any more. They had left for myriad reasons. Some joined the party because of power, some joined because of philosophy, some joined for many reasons and we’d lost of lot of those reasons and they left.”

The third deficit was one of intellect. There was a distinct lack of ideas. There was hardly any ability to develop policies, and almost no knowledge of how to govern. All the people with experience in government had gone, either to Ottawa, where the Tories were in power, or to the private sector. There were nothing and no one to stimulate new ideas within the party.

The fourth deficit was a strategic one. “Why are we in this business?” Tories asked themselves. Any private sector business, Lindsay pointed out, has a mission statement and strategic planning exercises that challenge workers to consider what service they provide or what product they sell. But Tories had lost their sense of direction, they no longer knew what they were about. And there was, Lindsay said, a great n...