“Whoever wins will be seen to have lied to the public,” David Dodge, governor of the Bank of Canada (2001-2008).

Now a corporate director and adviser to a law firm, David Dodge was talking in that September interview with Jacquie McNish of the Globe and Mail about the Ontario election and what he called the “impossible” promises being made by the three party leaders. Each was offering tax reductions and improved services in a province whose leaders, Dodge believes, should have been confronting the fact that Ontario’s tax revenue base is shrinking, not expanding.

Dodge knows whereof he speaks. Prior to 2001, he was deputy minister to Liberal Finance Minister Paul Martin. They inherited a record deficit from Brian Mulroney’s Conservatives and turned it into a surplus for Jean Chrétien’s government.

If any of the Ontario leaders took heed of Dodge’s warning, it was not evident from their campaigns. Each pressed ahead with their spend-more, tax-less programs. The Liberals published a 56-page document called “Forward Together” in which they made 45 new promises. Both Tim Hudak of the Progressive Conservatives and Andrea Horwath of the New Democrats attacked the harmonized sales tax. Both promised to remove the provincial portion (eight points of the HST) from home heating and hydro rates, although neither explained how they were going finance that or get it past the federal government.

Hudak also promised a $1.3-billion reduction in personal income taxes while Horwath said she would phase out the HST on gasoline.

Because the PCs and NDP lost the election, their promises can be assigned to the scrap heap of electoral history as fiscal follies that happily didn’t happen.

But Dalton McGuinty is another matter. He won the election. Will he be seen to have lied to the public, as David Dodge suggested?

The Liberals started the campaign by painting an unrealistically rosy portrait of the province’s finances – at least, the provincial auditor general said publicly he thought their picture was full of holes.

To his credit, I suppose, McGuinty did not make as many costly campaign promises as his opponents. But he did pledge full all-day kindergarten across Ontario by 2014, a home renovation tax credit for seniors, 60,000 new post-secondary places, new tuition grants for low- and middle-income students, a 10 per cent reduction in electricity bills, and all-day Go Train service. The Liberals claimed these commitments would cost $1.5 billion a year, which seems suspiciously low. Whatever the amount, it is not at all clear where the money is supposed to come from.

If prior post-election behaviour holds, the Liberals will chortle for a while longer over their “major minority,” as McGuinty calls the election result (an absurd rationalization if there ever was one). Then he and his finance minister, Dwight Duncan, with their financial gurus and spin doctors will assemble to devise ways to talk themselves out of promises they know they cannot keep.

Chances are they will “discover” the province’s books are in much worse shape than they had been led to believe. They will blame the world economic situation, European debt crisis, sluggish growth in Canada, the weather, political uncertainty south of the border, faulty forecasting, and anything else they can think of, up to, if necessary, sun spots on the former planet of Pluto.

So, sadly, they will not be able to keep all their promises. Oh, they still intend to honour them, but just not right now. Later, for sure – as soon as the economy improves and the deficit becomes more manageable.  Or sometime between now and the end of the government’s mandate, whenever that may be (with a minority, you see, a government has to be flexible, to keep its options open).

But don’t call the Liberals “liars.” They meant what they said when they said it. It’s just that stuff keeps changing and what seemed perfectly feasible a few days or weeks ago, no longer does. You understand. That’s not lying, is it?

Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens@sympatico.ca

(published Oct 11, 2011 in Waterloo Region Record and Guelph Mercury)

You have to hand it to Dalton McGuinty. Although he does not come across as an inspirational leader of men and women, he has other qualities that earned him a third term as Premier of Ontario this week.

He is moderate, consistent, determined, resolute when he encounters obstacles, and a good deal tougher than he appears. We tend to forget how hard he had to fight to get where he is today.

First elected in Ottawa in 1990 (when the province was abandoning the Liberals for the NDP) and re-elected in 1995 (in the teeth of Mike Harris’s “Common Sense Revolution”), he ran for the Liberal leadership in 1996, placing fourth on the first ballot. A less determined (or stubborn) politician would have thrown in the towel, but McGuinty hung in, eventually beating the populist left-Liberal Gerard Kennedy on the fifth ballot.

His early years as leader were no picnic. Many unhappy Liberals believed the party had made a grave miscalculation in choosing the relatively colourless McGuinty over the more charismatic Kennedy. To some, he appeared too weak and too indecisive to be an effective leader.

The Harris Conservatives played on that perception in the 1999 election, mounting a series of vicious attack ads proclaiming, “Dalton McGuinty – not up to the job!” After the Liberals lost that election, McGuinty had to beat back a “Dump Dalton” movement in his own ranks.

In the 2003 election – after Mike Harris had retired and was succeeded by Ernie Eves as Tory leader and premier – McGuinty was the target of one of the more bizarre attacks in the annals of Canadian politics. A Conservative press release labelled him an “evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet.”

What McGuinty, an innocuous enough fellow by most standards, had done to deserve that slagging – and what actually it meant – I have no idea, but it did not damage him. The Liberals won a majority in that election.

He won his second majority in 2007, but it was no cakewalk. The Conservatives appeared poised in the early going to make McGuinty a one-term wonder – until their new leader, John Tory, shot himself and his party in the foot with his pledge to extend public funding to faith-based schools. Handed this winning lottery ticket, McGuinty triumphed easily.

This year, with the winds of change seemingly in the air, poor dull Dalton appeared doomed.  The Progressive Conservatives, led Tim Hudak, a former Harris cabinet minister, enjoyed a seemingly insurmountable double-digit lead before the campaign began. Meanwhile, the New Democrats under a new leader Andrea Horwath, and buoyed by their success in the federal election in May, were cutting into Liberal strength on the left.

The pundits started writing McGuinty off. But wait! Politics is full of premature obituaries, from Winston Churchill, Harry Truman and Richard Nixon to John Diefenbaker, Jean Charest and, now, Dalton McGuinty.

He did not secure the majority he wanted, but given the steep hill he was forced to climb, a strong minority government, which is what he won, is no mean achievement. McGuinty did not do it alone, of course. Just as he had help from John Tory in 2007, he had help this time from Hudak, who ran as bad a provincial campaign as I have seen in years (the 2007 Tory one excepted).

Relentlessly negative, Hudak failed to define himself and his party in the minds of voters. He offered voters various reasons to reject the Liberals without giving them reasons, other than negative ones, for embracing the PCs. Who, really, was Tim Hudak? It was clear he was no Bill Davis, but was he the second coming of Mike Harris? Even voters who are prepared to invest in change like to know what they are buying before they mark their ballot.

As long as he is careful, McGuinty should be able govern as though he has a majority. And Ontario will be led by a “reptilian kitten-eater” for a few more years.

Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens@sympatico.ca

(published Oct 8, 2011 in Waterloo Region Record and Guelph Mercury)

Tomorrow’s provincial election will be won or lost in ridings located within a stone’s throw, figuratively speaking, of Highway 401.

Dalton McGuinty, Tim Hudak and Andrea Horwath have worn out the asphalt from Oshawa in the east, through Toronto and the GTA, to London in the west as they seek to shore up existing support and attract some loose voters. Now it is up to their election-day machines to get their probable, but not terribly motivated, supporters to the polls.

Whether they will turn out, and how they will vote, will depend on the level of comfort individual voters feel with the party leaders and their campaign promises. The Conservatives won the May federal election when Ontario voters decided they were more comfortable with Stephen Harper than with Michael Ignatieff.

Will this level of comfort transfer to the Ontario Progressive Conservative leader, Tim Hudak? Will the endorsements of senior Harper ministers like Jim Flaherty and Rob Nicholson help Hudak? Or will they (as I suspect) cause voters to shy away from putting too many eggs in one political basket?

“Comfort” is not a word one normally associates with McGuinty, not even when he is in “Premier Dad” mode. But after eight years in office he is very familiar. People know what to expect from him. He may bore some Ontarians, but there are no surprises with him. If comfort is not McGuinty’s thing, perhaps familiarity will do.

Andrea Horwath is no Jack Layton. She does not excite or inspire the serious-minded voters of Ontario. She is too new, her priorities too little appreciated to engender any real degree of comfort. Not yet. Comfort may come over time, but it won’t be in this election.

Here are a few ridings to watch when the polls when the polls close tomorrow night. In the east, Oshawa, a three-way battle won by the Tories in the 2007 election, could be a cliff-hanger. The main threat comes from the NDP.

Greater Toronto is the Liberal bastion, the heart of the party’s support. Without Toronto, the Liberals are nowhere. The NDP will challenge the Liberals in the city and the Conservatives will be competitive in the 905 area, but if the Liberals can’t hold the capital, they won’t be able to win the province.

Brampton is crucial. It has exploded from a sleepy, tree-shaded town in the days when Bill Davis, the former premier, was growing up there in the 1930s and 1940s into a vibrant, multicultural city of a half-million people who will cast ballots in four provincial ridings. Although the Liberals won all four seats in 2007, they will be hard-pressed to keep at least one, maybe more, from falling to the Tories.

Moving west along 401, keep an eye on Kitchener-Conestoga where Liberal incumbent Leeanna  Pendergast is trailing Conservative Michael Harris. Some projections suggest that Pendergast’s brother-in-law John Milloy, the minister of colleges and universities, is also in trouble in Kitchener-Centre, but it would take a major upset for the Tories to take the riding. A similar upset would be needed for Tory Rob Leone, a university professor, to lose Cambridge to critical-care nurse Kathryn McGarry.

Finally, in London, where the Liberals won all five area seats in 2007, they are in danger of losing one, London-Fanshawe, to the NDP and two outlying ridings, Elgin-Middlesex- London and Lambton-Kent-Middlesex, both to the Tories.

In London, as elsewhere in midwestern and southwestern Ontario, what happens tomorrow will depend on how the vote splits. In the federal election, the Liberal vote split, some to the NDP and some to the Conservatives. Although McGuinty’s Liberals are heavily favoured to win at least a minority tomorrow, they are not nearly as dominant as they were in the 2003 and 2007 elections.

Where will the votes they lose end up? Some may stay home, but some will go to the New Democrats, and some to the Conservatives. These splits will tell the tale tomorrow night.

Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens@sympatico.ca

(published Oct 5, 2011 in Waterloo Region Record and Guelph Mercury)

The Ontario election on Thursday will not be decided by party policies nor by leaders’ appeal. It will be determined by the party machines – the ability to get supporters out to the polls.

The election could be that close.  Just take a look at a website called “threehundredeight.com.”

The site (it takes its name from the number of seats in the House of Commons in Ottawa) is operated by Eric Grenier, a political analyst/stats junkie. Grenier is not a pollster himself. Rather, he takes opinion polls commissioned by other organizations, consolidates them, assigns weights to them, adds a pinch of previous voting behaviour, and out of this statistical blender, he produces aggregate numbers. He’s usually pretty accurate.

As of Saturday, threehundredeight.com showed the popular vote breakdown as follows: Progressive Conservative 34.2 per cent, Liberal 34.1, NDP 25.9, Green 4.5.  These numbers were derived in part from the four most recent province-wide polls, each showing much the same picture: Environics Research for Canadian Press: PCs 36, Liberals 35; Nanos Research (for Globe and Mail and CTV): Liberals 37.7, PCs 34.4; Leger Marketing (for Sun Media): PCs 34, Liberals 32; Angus Reid (for Toronto Star): PCs 34, Liberals 33.

(The first two polls were traditional telephone surveys while the second two were conducted online. The method didn’t seem to make any difference. In each poll, the gap between the leading parties was within the margin of error – meaning a statistical dead heat. )

The minuscule PC lead of one-tenth of one per cent on the threehundredeight.com website does not translate into a Tory minority government or even a tied result with the Liberals. The regional distribution of popular support – which party is projected to have the most votes in areas with the most winnable seats – favours the governing Liberals.

Grenier’s seat projection on Saturday (and it could well change before election day) was: Liberal 54 (compared to 71 seats won in the 2007 election); Tory 32 (26 in 2007); NDP 21 (10 in 2007). Those 54 seats, if they all go Liberal, would give Dalton McGuinty a bare majority in the 107-seat Legislature – or a tiny working majority if he appointed an opposition member as speaker, as he presumably would.

However, oregional distribution of support is only one factor. Voter turnout is another. All pollsters ask respondents how likely they are to vote. What they cannot measure is how many supporters of a given party will in the end actually make the effort to cast their ballots. People get busy, they don’t think their vote will matter, or they simply forget. The party that can get the largest number of their marginal supporters to the polls will win close ridings.

Experience suggests that in Ontario the Tories are best at this. Their support tends to be “harder” or more committed than the other parties’, and thus more likely to vote. In the federal election last May, pollsters found they needed to bump the Conservatives’ numbers up by about one percentage point to allow for the greater likelihood of voting.

A provincial election is different than a federal one, of course, but each of the parties draws on the same pool of people to organize polling divisions, knock on doors and run its voting day operation, federal or provincial. In the federal election, these Conservative stalwarts seemed more energized and better organized than their opposite numbers in the Liberal party.

What is all this likely to mean on Thursday? Since the leaders debate last week, I have a sense that Andrea Horwarth and the NDP have gained some momentum while the PCs, whose early lead was already dribbling away, lost a bit more ground. The Liberals seem frozen in place.

Taking account of the turnout factor, I’d guess something fewer than 50 Liberals – enough for a minority government in alliance or coalition with the NDP. The weaker the Liberals, of course, the stronger the NDP would be in the government.

Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens@sympatico.ca

(published Oct 3, 2011 in Waterloo Region Record and Guelph Mercury)

This should be the most exciting Ontario election in many, many years.

For starters, the fight is desperately close. The polls all tell us this – and they can’t all be wrong.  All three parties are viable. Two, the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives, have approximately equal chances of forming the next government while the third party, the New Democrats, is poised the wield the balance of power when neither of the old parties wins a majority on Oct. 6.

Yet a campaign that should be exciting instead is discouraging, even depressing. The thought that kept coming to my mind during the leaders’ debate on Tuesday night was: Is this the best Ontario can do?

The leaders, even Andrea Horwath at times, seemed more intent on fighting past elections and old battles – whether Dalton McGuinty’s promises in 2003 and 2007 or Mike Harris’s cuts to hospitals and schools between 1995 and 2002 – than on addressing  the very serious issues (economic growth, provincial debt, job creation, an ageing population, cost of living and environmental degradation, to mention a few) that the government must address when the last ballots have been counted next Thursday.

It has seemed to me throughout the campaign, especially during the leaders’ debate, that the parties are more concerned about singing to the choir, to locking up their own base support, than they are about reaching out to swing voters or attracting the votes of independents. The election has become a defensive game, fought between the blue lines, with no one daring to break away for a shot on goal.

Getting out their own vote is more important than growing that support.

Each of the leaders was desperately anxious not to make a mistake in the debate – and they all succeeded in achieving that exceedingly modest objective. They stuck resolutely to their scripts, to the talking points they and their candidates have been wedded to since the election began. For example, Tim Hudak’s attack on McGuinty over the harmonized sales tax was virtually word-for-word the same as the attacks I had heard coming from the mouths of Conservative candidates in Kitchener-Conestoga, Cambridge and other ridings. This repetition – or lack of originality – did nothing to enhance the message’s impact.

A lack of spontaneity has become one of the hallmarks of the election. So is lack of vision. Why – why? why? – couldn’t the leaders (or at least one of them) relax a bit or unbend enough to offer a personal vision of the Ontario they want to create? And to tell voters how far along that road they hope to carry the province by 2015 when their mandate ends?

They don’t have to be eloquent, although that would be nice. They don’t have to have a John Diefenbaker “Northern Vision” or a Pierre Trudeau “Just Society,” but they need something to raise the Ontario electorate out of its lethargy. A little passion would go a long away. (Petty arguments over job-creation statistics just don’t cut it.)

Not least, why is there no humour in this election? Why are the leaders so determined to reinforce the popular perception of Ontario politics and politicians as the most boring in Canada? Which, frankly, they are. Did someone make it illegal to have fun in Ontario? Is excitement banned from Ontario politics?

Ontario in 2011 needs a Tommy Douglas, a John Crosbie, a Stephen Lewis or even a (young) Bill Davis instead of the “same old suits” as Horwath labelled McGuinty and Hudak.

So who won the debate? No one, really. McGuinty, who was on the defensive throughout, reminded me of a hyperactive kid with a peashooter as he fired off statistics that no one will remember. Tim Hudak gave the impression of auditioning for the role of opposition leader, not premier.

Andrea Horwath may not be quite ready for prime time, but if “winning” means exceeding expectations, then she “won.” But, I ask again, is this the best Ontario can do?

Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens@sympatico.ca

(published Sept 29, 2011 in Waterloo Region Record and Guelph Mercury)

The Ontario election is as close as it is because there is no defining issue – nothing any party can seize and run away with.

That’s why, with 10 days to go to Oct. 6, the race seems to get tighter with each successive poll, culminating with the massive (40,750-respondent) poll by Forum Research on the weekend that put the governing Liberals and the challenging Progressive Conservatives in a dead heat at 35 per cent, with the New Democrats within hailing distance at 23 per cent.

There are reasons to be wary of the Forum numbers. They are the product of what is known, disparagingly among its critics, as “robo polling” – officially “IVR” (for Interactive Voice Response) polling. A computer picks your phone number, a computer voice asks the questions and directs you to the numbers to press to record your responses, and a computer tabulates the results. There is no human intervention or supervision.

The established polling companies don’t like IVR polls. They don’t trust them at all. But the technology is too new to have a track record that news organizations can assess. The new Forum Research poll is very large – most political polls have a sample size of only1,000 to 2,000 respondents – and this one claims a minuscule margin of error of just 0.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20. Its results could be dead on. They could be wildly wrong. Or they could be somewhere between on the mark and out to lunch.

Because the sample is so large, Forum claims it can give a breakdown for each of Ontario’s 107 ridings to within about five percentage points. These numbers show the PCs ahead in the three Kitchener seats and in Cambridge, but trailing the Liberals in Guelph. This would mean a gain of two seats – Kitchener Centre and Kitchener-Conestoga – from the Liberals, if the robo poll numbers are accurate.

Province-wide, Forum’s results are roughly consistent with those of other, conventional pollsters. They are all forecasting a tight contest that, if anything, is growing closer as an early Tory lead shrinks.

There is a sense among voters that it is time for a change, but that sense is not quite strong enough, insiders say, to unseat the Liberals and deliver the election to the Conservatives.

There are lots of issues, but none that seem capable of moving voters en masse. Everyone agrees that high taxes are an issue and the harmonized sales tax is large part of it. But no party is able to offer a compelling answer.

The Liberals have the Ontario Clean Energy Benefit, a program under which they write cheques to homeowners to offset the added burden of the HST on hydro bills; they say will continue this program until the end of 2015. The Conservatives and New Democrats both promise to eliminate the provincial portion of the HST (that’s eight points) on electricity and home heating costs. And the NDP says it will gradually phase out the HST on gasoline.

It hard for average Ontarians to tell which platform is best. The differences are not dramatic enough to cause voters to stampede in any one direction

The Liberals’ have a Green Energy Act that they boast would create 50,000 new jobs in the green energy sector in Ontario. The Conservatives say these are “phantom” jobs and they would scrap the Green Energy Act. But what if they are not phantoms? Where would the Tories find 50,000 new jobs to replace them?

All parties say they will reduce waiting rimes in Ontario hospitals. But how and when they will do it – and how they will afford it – is not at all clear.

In an election that lacks clear and defining issues, parties and candidates are left nibbling at the margins – emphasizing insignificant differences and attacking their opponents instead of promoting their own visions. It becomes uncommonly difficult to make a choice, which is what the polls are telling us.

Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens@sympatico.ca

(published Sept 26, 2011 in Waterloo Region Record and Guelph Mercury)

Liberal candidate Eric Davis posed the question at the very beginning of an all-candidates forum in Kitchener-Waterloo this week, and he repeated it a couple of times as the meeting went on:

“Do you really want Tim Hudak as premier of Ontario?”

Coming from a Liberal candidate, Davis’s question was obviously self-serving, yet it tapped into a vein of unease that runs through the province. Before the race ever began, it Hudak’s to lose. With exactly two weeks to go, he and his Progressive Conservatives have not lost it – not yet – but they are far from the winner’s circle.

The outcome could be desperately close. Polls show the Tories and Liberals in a virtual dead heat with the Conservatives perhaps still a bit ahead, but within the margin of error. Seat projections, on the other hand, suggest the Liberals will take enough seats to form a minority government.

Dalton McGuinty is a known quantity, as he should be after 15 years as Liberal leader and eight as premier. He’s been outperforming the rookie Hudak in this election. As the National Post, a newspaper that has never met a Conservative it did not adore, put it in a report the other day: “While Mr. McGuinty long ago grew comfortable with his own core beliefs, Tim Hudak does not give off the air of a man who knows his own self-narrative. For the uninitiated in the crowd, he gave no clues about who he is or why he thinks they should make him their premier.”

That was the question in Kitchener-Waterloo on Monday night at the forum sponsored by The Record. The riding has been held by Conservative frontbencher Elizabeth Witmer for 21 years. She is experienced, respected and popular. Her Liberal opponent, Davis, knew better than to attack a local icon, so he concentrated his fire on her old leader, Mike Harris, who is long gone, and her new leader, Hudak, who is clearly vulnerable. Not that it will help Davis himself; Witmer is unassailable.

The next night, Tuesday, brought an all-candidates debate in Cambridge. It, too, has been a Conservative bastion, but this time it is very much in play with Liberal Kathryn McGarry battling Conservative Rob Leone.

Cambridge was held for 16 years by retired Tory Gerry Martiniuk, one of the most obscure backbenchers at Queen’s Park, leading one audience member to say on Tuesday that Cambridge had been “seriously under-represented” for years. That was meant as a dig at Leone who, like some other Conservative candidates in the region, adopted the front-runner strategy of skipping candidate debates – in favour, Leone said when pressed, of more door-to-door canvassing.

On paper, he should be the front-runner. He inherited a plurality of 3,200 votes – the margin by which Martiniuk defeated McGarry when she ran against him in 2007. With the Tories stronger province-wide than they were in 2007, one would think Cambridge would stay blue.

Candidates and organization, however, can make a difference. Leone does not have Martiniuk’s name recognition. And McGarry is a stronger campaigner than she was in 2007. She is better organized and more polished. A critical care nurse, she brought some passion on Tuesday to the subject of health care – the long-awaited expansion of Cambridge Memorial Hospital being a major local issue.

Leone, a political science professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, knew the issues but did not generate much excitement among his listeners when he told them he has earned three university degrees, including a PhD in comparative public policy.

On Tuesday, at least, McGarry outperformed both Leone and the only other serious candidate, New Democrat Atinuke Bankole, who ran for regional council last fall and is making her first bid for provincial office.

Still, given the history of the riding and the fact that the Conservatives appear to be running more strongly across the province than they did in the last election, Leone has to be given the edge this time.

Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens@sympatico.ca.

(published Sept 22, 2011 in Waterloo Region Record and Guelph Mercury)

The 2007 Ontario election, the one that returned Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals for a second term, set a record – albeit a dubious record.

Only 52.6 per cent of the province’s 8.4 million eligible voters turned out to the polls. That broke the old provincial record of 54.7 per cent set away back in 1923. It was also more than eight percentage points lower than the (dismal) turnout for the federal election in May this year.

I wish I could report that it will be different next month – that the electorate is energized, that issues affecting all Ontarians are being debated vigorously, that Dalton McGuinty, Tim Hudak and Andrea Horwath (or even one of those three leaders) have captured the public’s imagination. I wish I could report it, but I’m afraid it ain’t so.

As the campaign approaches its midpoint this week, the level of public engagement is extremely low, lower than I have seen in previous elections, federal or provincial. All-candidate meetings seem to attract more partisans bent on slagging their opponents than ordinary voters in search of information. There is precious little buzz in the workplace, newsrooms, coffee shops or bars. Most people seem only dimly aware that there is an election and many have no idea when it’s happening (Thursday, Oct. 6).

You might think it would be different in the so-called “technology triangle” (Waterloo, Kitchener and Cambridge, which I will arbitrarily expand to include Guelph), but it isn’t. The region has witnessed the same death of industries and loss of good manufacturing jobs as the rest of southern Ontario. Yet we are blessed with three excellent universities, a top-ranked community college, significant public investment by senior governments, and a high-tech sector that, notwithstanding the current problems at Research In Motion, is the envy of all Canada.

Although you might think all these smart, educated, well-compensated citizens would be thoroughly engaged in the election, we seem to be as remote from it as other Ontarians.

There are a couple of reasons, I think. One could be called “political fatigue.” There were municipal elections across the province less than a year ago, followed by a federal election in the spring, then the whole drama and trauma of Jack Layton, his astonishing success, his untimely death and his state funeral that consumed the public’s attention. Now, facing another trip to the polls, Ontario voters, who tend to pay more attention to federal and municipal politics than to the provincial variety, are asking: “Another election? What is it?”

That’s part of the disconnect. Another part comes from the campaigns of the three principal parties. Let’s not call them boring. Let’s just say that none of the three leaders has succeeded in setting the woods on fire. None has even a scintilla of charisma.

McGuinty, the Liberal leader, has been around a long time. After eight years in office, his government is tired and depleted of some of its better talent.

Hudak, the Conservative, comes across as something of a synthetic figure, more adept at shooting himself in the foot (the “foreign workers” controversy) than at selling his program. We know what he is against – including, for some reason, allowing Samsung, a Korean company, to invest $7 billion in Ontario to create green energy jobs – but it is hard to get a handle on what he is in favour of (aside from tax cuts).

Horwath and her New Democrats are waiting for an “orange surge” or “Layton halo effect” to propel them into second place. They may be waiting a long time.

In the “technology triangle,” plus Guelph, we are looking at some tight races and low turnouts, I fear. We may have a better sense after the next round of all-candidate meetings sponsored by The Record and its sister paper, the Guelph Mercury. Those are in Kitchener-Waterloo Monday night; Cambridge Tuesday, Kitchener-Centre on Wednesday and Guelph on Thursday.

Time is running out. Would someone kindly set the woods on fire? Politically speaking.

Previously published in the Waterloo Region Record, Sept. 19, 2011.

(Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens@sympatico.ca)

There are nasty overtones in this Ontario election and some of them surfaced in at an all-candidates meeting in St. Agatha in Kitchener-Conestoga riding on Tuesday night.

Perhaps that was inevitable. Kitchener-Conestoga, a sprawling urban-rural seat, is a crucial battleground. Although solidly Conservative in federal elections, it has been desperately close in recent provincial elections. In 2007, a new Liberal candidate, Leeanna Pendergast held the riding by just 1,870 votes out of 39,007 cast. That 4.8 per cent margin was the third closest loss registered by the Progressive Conservatives in all of Ontario – after Nipissing (at 1.1 per cent) and Barrie (2.9 per cent).

Both parties need Kitchener-Conestoga, and I think it is fair to say that if the Conservatives can’t win the seat, they won’t be able to win Ontario – and, if the Liberals can’t hold the seat, they can say goodbye to a majority government (or worse).

In the summer, when polls put the Tories comfortably ahead, seat projections – including the one at LISPOP (Laurier Institute for Studies in Public Opinion and Research) – were showing Kitchener-Conestoga as deep blue (probable Conservative). But now, with support shifting, the riding is coloured pale blue (leaning Conservative).

Given the trend, chances are the riding will be rated too close to call after the next round of polls.

The closeness of the contest undoubtedly contributed to the tension at the all-candidates meeting, which was sponsored by The Record. So, I think, did the fact that the three principal candidates are old foes – Conservative Michael Harris (no relation to that other Harris) battled Liberal Pendergast in 2007, as did New Democrat Mark Cairns – and they don’t like one another very much.

Harris packed the meeting partisans who loudly harassed Pendergast about her alleged failure to answer constituents’ phone calls.

Pendergast, a former school vice-principal with a schoolmarmish tendency to talk down to listeners, snapped at one point that she was glad to finally get a question from a “real” person – meaning a non-Conservative. Cairns, the New Democrat, who was largely ignored by the other two, declared he was not going to engage in personal attacks, then did a bit of it himself.

The first question from the floor, from a Harris supporter, was: “What are you going to do to end the gravy train for Liberal hacks?” It was mostly downhill from there. Harris attacked Premier Dalton McGuinty for breaking promises and raising taxes, while Pendergast defended McGuinty and attacked Conservative leader Tim Hudak for blindly opposing worthwhile measures to address the needs of the province.

None of the candidates offered any original thoughts about economic growth, job creation, provincial debt or gasoline prices (an issue everywhere, it seems). On a scale of one to five, I’d give the St. Agatha meeting a three for partisan bitchiness, a one for public enlightenment and a zero (to heck with the scale) for political goodwill and humour.

One thing that surprised me was the way the Liberals – who are, after all, the incumbents – allowed themselves to be out-hustled by the Conservatives. Outside, Harris signs lined the drive to the St. Agatha Community Centre. Inside, Conservatives out-numbered the Liberals by two to one. They dominated the question period.

It reminded me of the 2008 federal election when Stéphane Dion was Liberal leader. Liberals everywhere sat on their hands, then stayed at home. It was not a happy election for Liberals.

Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens@sympatico.ca

(published Sept 15, 2011 in Waterloo Region Record and Guelph Mercury)