14 June 2018
Ford Revolution
Ontario Results.
by J R Thomas
The big wheel of Ontario politics turned dramatically indeed last Thursday (see our article None of the Above in last week’s edition). No, not an overwhelming victory for the None of Above Party, who did not appeal, it seems, to any Canadian urge for the zeitgeist to strike Toronto. They took only sixteen thousand votes, being knocked into sixth place by the Libertarians (forty two thousand votes) and the Greens (over quarter of a million, which gave them a seat in Parliament). The day was a victory for conservatism and the Conservatives, who under leader Doug Ford had a clear and comfortable 76 ridings, out of 124 available. The New Democratic Party scored surprisingly well at 40 ridings; Shaw Sheet readers who are mathematicians will have already spotted that the day was disaster for the Liberals who lost 48 ridings to be reduced to 7 and thus ended 15 years in office in dramatic style.
A new dawn in Ontario and a new style under Mr Ford, whose victory had been predicted, but the scale of which had not. The NDP scored the votes – 1.9million against the Conservatives 2.3million (and the Liberals 1.1million) but in first past the post constituencies it is the spread that counts. Conservatives did well everywhere, and the Liberals badly everywhere, but the NDP piled up huge majorities in a limited number of seats, not a winning scheme. So a victory for populism in Canada’s most populous and wealthiest province, and a warning to Liberal Federal Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, still steaming from his bad tempered encounter with Donald Trump at the G7 last week, who must go to the polls by October 2020.
