Corp Comm Connects

 

Wynne plans to lead Liberals into election as Tories claim she’ll leave after byelection loss
Premier Kathleen Wynne plans to lead Liberals into 2018 Ontario campaign despite major byelection setback.

TheStar.com
Sept. 2, 2016
Robert Benzie

Premier Kathleen Wynne plans to lead the Liberals into the 2018 provincial campaign despite a major byelection setback, losing Scarborough-Rouge River to the Progressive Conservatives.

Some triumphant Tories, thrilled at finally penetrating the Liberals’ long-time Toronto stronghold with Raymond Cho’s victory Thursday, are convinced Wynne, 63, will not stick around for the next election.

They believe Conservative Leader Patrick Brown, 38, is poised to bring the party back to power for the first time since 2003 and doubt the Liberal premier wants to wait for that.

But sources close to the hyper-competitive Wynne insist she will be at the top of the Grit ticket in the spring 2018 vote.

In a post-byelection statement Thursday night, the premier sounded elegiac in defeat.

“The result in Scarborough-Rouge River is disappointing and gives me cause for reflection,” Wynne said from Mexico, where she is on an Ontario trade mission and attending a climate-change summit.

“The good people of that riding have elected Liberals for many years. I’ll be talking with our Scarborough members in the coming days, as well as our outstanding candidate Pirigal Thiru,” she said.

Wynne, whose government has been focusing on big-picture challenges like reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, boosting pension benefits, and building infrastructure, conceded the Liberals must pay heed to pocketbook issues.

“We heard at the door that hydro rates are increasingly challenging for people. I understand, as do my ministers, that the government needs to focus on helping people with their everyday expenses,” the premier said.

“I’m confident that by the general election — with our government’s record on transit, on education, on rebuilding roads, schools and hospitals, all delivered in a fiscally responsible way — (we) will regain the confidence of the people of Scarborough-Rouge River.”

It remains to be seen if Thursday’s results will have any impact on Wynne’s carbon-pricing plan that takes effect in January and will cost the average household an additional $13 a month in higher gasoline and natural gas charges.

Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid, who represents Scarborough Centre and admitted his disappointment at the result, stressed that “byelections are a time to listen.”

“As a party, we’ve been in power for many years because we do listen. We listen, we respond. We keep building Ontario up because that’s what Liberals do. We build Ontario up,” said Duguid.

Even with the huge win, the Conservatives are also doing some soul-searching.

That’s because last week the Tories distributed 13,000 copies of a letter — in English and Chinese — under Brown’s signature that said the party would scrap Wynne’s updated sex education curriculum if elected in 2018.

After five days of controversy, the leader claimed he did not approve the correspondence and apologized for the “mistake” in an online piece for the Star on Monday.

“Frankly, that hurt us. It probably hurt us significantly — the 500 plus votes that Raymond didn’t get,” said Brown, referring to anti-sex-ed Independent candidate Queenie Yu, who received 582 votes.

“I was glad to win it on the terms that we wanted to win it — on hydro, on jobs, on health care, on education,” the PC leader added.

According to The Canadian Press, Brown's chief of staff distributed the controversial letter a day before the PC leader said he first learned about it.

The letter is attached in an email Brown's chief of staff, Nicolas Pappalardo, sent last Thursday to Yu. In the email Pappalardo writes: “As a courtesy, please find attached an open letter to parents from the Leader of the PC Party of Ontario. It will be distributed in the riding this weekend.”

Brown, who said he was “livid” about the letter, admitted his own team needs to be revamped before the 2018 election.

“The lesson for me is to continue to focus on the fundamentals: hydro, on jobs, on health care. I have no interest in wading into social issues,” he said, emphasizing the Tories will keep the modernized sex-ed curriculum.

“I’m certainly going to be looking at our organization and how we conduct things. I obviously wasn’t happy with that.”

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, whose candidate, school board trustee Neethan Shan, finished third, will also be looking at lessons learned from the byelection.

Horwath’s championing of lower electricity rates and opposing the Liberal sale of the majority share of the Hydro One transmission utility did not appear to generate votes for the New Democrats.

MPPs return to Queen’s Park from the summer break on Sept. 12.

Here are the final results for a byelection in which turnout was a very low 28.14 per cent (down from 47.5 per cent in the riding during the June 2014 provincial election):