Ontario's Liberals face reckoning in the courts
The governing party in Canada's largest province faces an unprecedented situation: two unrelated but potentially scandalous trials against high-ranking officials at the same time. And it's all occurring ahead of an election, Adam Radwanski writes

TheGlobeAndMail.com
Sept. 5, 2017
Adam Radwanski

The dark cloud that has been hovering over Kathleen Wynne's government is finally about to burst.

Throughout the summer, Ontario Liberals were feeling pretty good about themselves – or at least better than they had in a long while. A hydro rate cut announced in the spring had taken a bit of the heat out of public anger over soaring prices. New left-of-centre policies – a minimum-wage increase, a pharmacare expansion, a housing-affordability package, a promised increase in daycare spots – may have gotten traction with voters who made up the party's base in recent election wins. At least the Liberals were off the defensive, talking about their current agenda rather than past mistakes.

But even as they insisted they were back to feeling competitive heading into next year's election, they knew they couldn't escape what was waiting for them after Labour Day.

Now, as penance for how they have wielded power over 14 years, they face an airing of their dirty laundry the likes of which they've never seen – not in the legislature nor on the hustings, but in the province's courtrooms.

On Thursday, in Sudbury, Ms. Wynne's former campaign director, Patricia Sorbara, and local Liberal organizer Gerry Lougheed are scheduled to stand trial on Ontario Elections Act charges related to an alleged bribery attempt to get a would-be by-election candidate to step aside – proceedings that at some point will see the Premier called as a witness by the prosecution.

Four days after that trial begins, another one will launch in Toronto. In a culmination of the gas-plants scandal that has now plagued the Liberals for more than a half-decade, David Livingston and Laura Miller – who served as former premier Dalton McGuinty's chief of staff and deputy chief of staff, respectively – will face criminal charges related to document destruction as Mr. McGuinty left office in 2013.

On substance, the two trials are unrelated; that they will happen concurrently is a coincidence. But symbolically, the cases are very related indeed. In combination, they threaten to solidify an image of the Liberals that Ms. Wynne has spent this year trying to escape: that they have been corrupted by a desire to stay in power that supersedes any concerns for Ontarians' best interests.

For all the Premier's recent efforts to shift the focus to a forward-looking agenda, she appears under no illusion that she will be able to change the channel from the courtroom dramas this fall. Ms. Wynne will continue trying to draw as much attention as possible to policies she has already rolled out. But speaking to The Globe and Mail recently, one of her top strategists said the Liberals really have no choice but to "ride it out" through the trials, scheduled to continue into October, because any attempt to distract with fresh news would be too obvious and just create more backlash.

What the Liberals don't know (nor do the opposition Progressive Conservatives, New Democrats or anyone else) is whether this will just be a bad couple of months or the beginning of the end.

They have overcome scandal to be re-elected – most notably in 2014, when Ms. Wynne was seen as enough of a fresh face to survive Mr. McGuinty's already well-established gas-plants mess. Will Mr. McGuinty's former officials and her own going on trial mere months before next June's election make it impossible to repeat that feat?

We should get a much better idea of that in the next couple of months, courtesy of both the courtroom dramas and how those outside the courtrooms respond to them.

The trials' outcomes may be the single biggest factor in determining their political repercussions. Even a single conviction would surely grab and potentially hold Ontarians' attention and help the provincial opposition paint the government as unusually, historically corrupt. Acquittals across the board probably wouldn't give the Liberals a political boost, exactly – there are no points to be scored from having prominent members of your party on trial – but they would at least avoid making things worse for them and perhaps allow them to argue it's time to move on.

But no matter the verdicts, all the testimony along the way could be equally problematic for the Liberals, casting light upon some of the government's darkest moments.

Of the two trials, the one involving Mr. Livingston and Ms. Miller seems to have more potential for that. The criminal charges – breach of trust, mischief in relation to data and misuse of a computer system to create mischief – are broad enough to allow a wide array of evidence to be presented. Seeking to demonstrate motive in the improper deletion of thousands of computer files before Mr. McGuinty left office, prosecutors can be expected to dig into the politically motivated cancellations of a pair of power plants and why the Liberals might have wanted to cover them up.

In other words, that trial has the potential to bring renewed attention not just to the Liberals' ethical issues, but also to their record on energy policy – the two aspects of their government they least want voters to be thinking about heading into the election.

The Sudbury trial seems to have less potential for new revelations, since it appears to hinge mostly on whether rather vague (and ultimately rejected) offers dangled to a would-be by-election candidate in return for clearing the way for someone more high-profile – conversations the would-be candidate in question recorded – are enough to qualify as bribery under the Elections Act.

But Sudbury stands to offer the most anticipated testimony of either trial: when Ms. Wynne is called to the stand by the Crown, which she has chosen to comply with, rather than invoke parliamentary privilege. The Premier can be thankful there are no cameras inside Canadian court proceedings, because images of her testifying would be manna for her opponents. But she will undoubtedly attract more journalists into the courtroom than any other witness. And if she struggles to explain her own role in the affair, it could be more politically damaging than any potential verdict. (Another potential magnet for attention: the testimony of provincial Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault, the star candidate for whom way was being made.)

Then there is the question of how effective the Liberals' opponents will be at drawing public attention to the trials and making them part of a messaging strategy that suppresses the governing party's support through the campaign next spring.

Of the two provincial opposition parties, Patrick Brown's Progressive Conservatives will make a more concerted effort on that front than Andrea Horwath's New Democrats will. That partly has to do with strategic imperatives: The PCs believe the government is theirs for the taking if they can just keep the Liberals' negatives front and centre, whereas the NDP wants to present Ms. Horwath as more of a change agent than Mr. Brown, which requires a more forward-looking message and less dumping on the incumbents. It's also because the Tories, unlike the New Democrats, have deep enough pockets to spend on advertising before the campaign begins – something they intend to do this fall to make the most of what is happening in the courts.

Speaking to The Globe recently, PC campaign chair Walied Soliman said that, particularly on gas plants, the Tories will aim to drive home that it is "Liberal corruption on trial," hold up the court proceedings as proof of the Liberals "putting their interests ahead of the province's" and try to use that to demonstrate that Ms. Wynne's current agenda is just more of the same.

The PCs seem somewhat more focused on the Livingston-Miller trial than on the Sorbara-Lougheed one – which, aside from the charges being more serious, may have something to do with the opposition party's own political circumstances. Facing several current nomination-related controversies of their own and having reportedly compensated former MPP Garfield Dunlop with party money after he stepped aside so that Mr. Brown could run in his riding after being elected leader, the Tories can only claim so much high ground.

Truth be told, current and former officials in all parties are known to privately express some sympathy for Ms. Sorbara and Mr. Lougheed in a "there but for the grace of God" sort of way. More than a few have made their own attempts to incentivize candidates or incumbents to step aside; they just had the good fortune not to be recorded doing so by a candidate deeply offended by their efforts.

But the Official Opposition is not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. If the trial of Ms. Wynne's former officials didn't happen alongside the one involving Mr. McGuinty's, there wouldn't be the prospect of a cumulative effect far more damaging to the Liberals than what the gas-plants case could have on its own.

Ontarians tend to pay only passing attention to the intricacies of provincial politics between elections, so it is entirely possible that some voters will conflate the two trials, thinking Ms. Wynne is testifying – and her officials facing charges – at a trial about the gas plants.

Even those who are more informed, and understand the distinctions, may find themselves connecting dots.

Ms. Wynne, and the people currently helping her run her government, did not participate in the alleged behaviour that led to the criminal charges against Mr. McGuinty's former officials. But how much distance will they convincingly be able to claim as their own ethical standards land them in court as well?