Stakes high for provincial parties in Thornhill, Niagara

Thornhill Liberal
January 27, 2014
By Tim Kelly

Only two seats are up for grabs just over two weeks from today, but the attention of provincial political junkies is firmly fixed on Thornhill and Niagara Falls ridings.

The pair of ridings, one held by former PC stalwart Peter Shurman, the other by Liberal Kim Craitor, opened up when the two MPPs resigned late last year, triggering byelections called by Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Election day is Thursday, Feb. 13 with the polls open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Ms Wynne’s minority Liberal government will still be in charge after the results are official. She currently holds 49 seats in the 107-seat chamber, while the PCs have 36 and the NDP have 20 with, of course, two currently vacant.

When five Liberal vacancies opened up last year after McGuinty-era cabinet ministers, including the former premier himself, stepped down, five ridings were in play last August. That resulted in the Liberals holding just two of those five seats with the NDP grabbing two seats and the PCs claiming their first Toronto riding in many years.

Will the byelections next month help trigger an election this spring?

Finance Minister Charles Sousa will also bring down the Liberal budget, expected sometime late in March and it is sure to also lead to speculation about whether it will generate support from the NDP to either keep the Liberals in power or trigger an election.

The Progressive Conservatives opposed the 2012 and 2013 budgets and the NDP have either abstained or supported the budget both years after prolonged negotiations with the Liberal government, keeping the Liberals in power and forestalling an election.

Political science professor Henry Jacek of Hamilton’s McMaster University believes the byelections mean different things to all three parties.

“If the Progressive Conservatives lose Thornhill, which they have held the last couple of elections, and they don’t win the seat in Niagara Falls, that’s going to be another blow to the Conservative Party. It is going through a lot of turmoil right now, particularly over the strong stand against unions and union membership and the Rand Formula - a lot of people are unhappy. They think the party has gone way too far to the right.

“If they lose Thornhill, they need to take Niagara Falls ... ideally they need to have both, they can’t afford to lose both seats. It would be a big blow,” said Mr. Jacek.

He said if the Liberals lose both seats, “they’ll probably take a second thought about having an election any time this spring. I don’t think the polling numbers are very good for a spring election, even though they might have a lot of plans for it, they’d like to do it. If they don’t win in either of these byelections, I think they would probably not go this spring, it would probably look bad.

“If they won both seats, maybe they might be more optimistic about pulling off a victory this spring, if they do one and one, it doesn’t matter,” he suggested.

“The NDP, I don’t think they’re going to win in Thornhill, but if the NDP should take one of the two seats, that’s very positive for them.”

Mr. Jacek said, if the NDP lose both, (NDP leader) Andrea Horwath could say her party didn’t hold those seats to begin with, but if she wins one, and that would be Niagara, she could say it’s a pattern of taking Liberal and Conservative seats away.

Professor Nelson Wiseman of the University of Toronto’s political science department believes the PCs are lined up to win both byelections.

“My feeling is right now, they’re well-positioned to win both of them. I’ll be surprised if the Conservatives don’t hold Thornhill. If, however, they lose it, I think there are great implications for (PC leader Tim) Hudak, because he’s been perceived as a loser, even though in the byelections that were held recently, the Conservatives got more votes than any of the other parties even though they only won one seat and both the Liberals and the NDP each won two.”

He said that if the Progressive Conservatives “can’t hang on to Thornhill, how do they expect too win the election? You can’t win an election by losing seats you have, you’ve got to add to the seats you have.”