How to help Patrick Brown (and the rest of Ontario)

If pollsters are right sometime before June 8, 2018 Ontario voters will throw the Liberals far out of office. The results of one recent survey suggest the Liberals could be reduced to seven seats. While the NDP have risen in the polls, the big winners so far are the Progressive Conservatives. The PCs could win a thumping majority as voters express their outrage over hydro rates, backroom scandals, and financial mismanagement.

Barring a scandal of his own, Patrick Brown is likely to be Premier-elect in 14 months. Not because he has articulated a fulsome vision of how he will balance the budget, fix energy management, deliver healthcare efficiently, break the union stranglehold over education, or defend the interests of parents and families. But because Kathleen Wynne is mind-boggling out of touch with anyone who has a phone number not starting with 416.

Nothing wrong with that. Patrick Brown will not be the first politician elected as a by-product of a ‘throw the bums out’ movement. The electorate more often votes against someone than for someone anyway. And Patrick Brown knows this. That’s why he hasn’t bothered giving many people a reason to vote for him. He is just trying to keep his caucus and himself out of the line of fire of the mainstream media so that he doesn’t distract the populace from the spectacle of the Liberals’ self-immolation.

So Brown doesn’t need help to get elected. But he will need help once he’s Premier.

It’s pretty clear Patrick Brown is either in awe, or terrified, of elite opinion in this province. He has demonstrated consistent unwillingness to oppose Kathleen Wynne — who has an approval rating of 12%(!) — on any cultural or family-values issue. Whether it is a nonsense ‘Islamophobia’ motion, a rubbish sex-ed curriculum revision, another attack on children and families with the ‘All Parents are Equal Act’, or calling for a carbon tax, Patrick Brown is willing to do anything to keep from being labelled an actual conservative by the Toronto Star and The Globe & Mail. He is strikingly aware of the minimal bounds of ‘acceptable’ political debate in this province, and is not willing to push those bounds of discussion at all. In fact he has done his part to shrink the Overton window by silencing his caucus from expressing even a peep of common sense.

What reason do we have to believe Brown will behave differently once he is in office? He is likely to continue to kowtow to the champagne socialist set even as he leads the province. After all, the reason a politician exists is to get elected. The reason an elected politician exists is to get re-elected.

The Harper Problem

Remember Stephen Harper’s hidden agenda? In my dreams. Not only did Harper not impose a hidden agenda, he didn’t have the fortitude to implement the agenda he ran on. This fiscal conservative took 7 years to re-balance the budget. The profligate Liberal Paul Martin did it in only 5. And Martin had been handed the largest deficit in Canadian history. Largest deficit in history that is until Harper turned Liberal surpluses into a $55 billion deficit in 2009/2010. He turned a $209 billion budget into a $288 billion monstrosity by the time he left office.

My point is this. A guy who had a reputation as a conservative, who ran as a conservative, who was elected to be a conservative, governed as a big spender. If the forces at work in Canada (and Ontario) are so powerful that Stephen Harper can’t resist them, how is Patrick Brown - who is cultivating a reputation as an elitist, is running as an elitist, and will be elected as an elitist - ever going to govern as a conservative?

The conventional wisdom is you win elections by being middle-of-the-road on economics and well to the left on social policy. Otherwise the media will crucify you. Few are the politicians (Mike Harris, Rob Ford) who have both the insight and the spine to defy the mainstream media, the Toronto elites, and the nervous Nellies in their own party. Who run, win, and govern with the policies actual Ontarians want. Most politicians loath negative publicity. Others, like Trump and Ford, understand where the public really stand on the issues, and converse directly with the electorate. Much to the shock and awe of the journalist class.

So how can we help Patrick Brown govern as a conservative, and not as a Kathleen Wynne mini-me?

Getting Patrick the Help He Needs

You may have heard me say it before, but the best way to help Patrick Brown is to start a new party. An NDP of the Right.

Most importantly, a new party can expand the Overton window. By engaging the public and media on issues that matter to conservatives, in a way that is supportive of conservatism, we will be widening and shifting the spectrum of debate. Things that were once unmentionable to the Toronto media establishment will be out in the open.

A new party could talk about private health care, for instance, and stake out a radically free market position. That makes Patrick Brown sound like a moderate if he were ever to muse about allowing Ontarians to pay for an MRI (something some of them can do already), or permitting doctors a limited amount of extra-billing, or letting clinics replace hips and knees when the Mastercard comes out.

Secondly, a new party will give Patrick Brown ‘cover’ with the media, and with his caucus.

Politicians are a scaredy-cat lot. Even conservative ones. There are certainly actual conservatives in the PC caucus today. But for the most part they are conventional thinkers. And the conventional thinking is they have the right-wing vote sewn up, and they need to move to the centre to win a majority government. This of course ignores the reality of the Harris, Ford (and Trump) wins which unlocked right-wing voters who were previously unmotivated by bland conservative leaders, or voted Liberal (or Democrat) for ethno-cultural or historical reasons. In any event, a leader who actually wants to move his party to the right faces the phalanx of nervous Nellies in his caucus, and the armchair quarterbacks of the MSM, who see such a move as amateurish and not ‘smart politics’. A new party on the right changes this dynamic. Now the conventional thinkers realize the insurgency on the right must be put down. The moderate conservative leader is given leeway to tack right in order to draw support away from the party who can only bring great harm to the province. Suddenly Patrick Brown is the hero with his caucus and the elites.

Finally, a new party clarifies that there is a political cost for moving too far left. The further Brown encroaches on Kathleen Wynne’s voter base, the smaller his own base becomes. In the past conservative voters haven’t had a choice. A new party changes the electoral math, and thus the calculation that Patrick has to make.

Helping the Next Leader, Too

A new party on the right is the gift that keeps on giving. Whoever succeeds Patrick Brown as PC leader will face the same forces that are pulling him to the left. The next leader, and the leader after that, and the leader after that could all benefit from an NDP of the Right which is constantly widening the Overton window, providing cover with the elites, and highlighting the political cost of straying too far to the left.

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Many conservative activists and voters wish their party was more conservative, but they’re worried about splitting the vote and letting the Liberals win again. Others believe that a new party is a huge undertaking that could never achieve the level of support needed to make Patrick Brown sit up and take notice. I plan to address both of these concerns in a future post.

Craig Dellandrea can be found standing in line at the consulates of Switzerland, Monaco and Lichtenstein applying for refugee status. He can also be reached at craigdellandrea@sympatico.ca