Ontario 2022 Election - June 2

[SteelTown]

Ontario 2022 election campaign to officially begin Wednesday
Premier Doug Ford met with Lieutenant Governor Elizabeth Dowdeswell at 3 p.m.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toron...ario-1.6439265

Premier Doug Ford met with the province's lieutenant-governor on Tuesday to request that the Ontario Legislature be dissolved.

Elizabeth Dowdeswell accepted his recommendation and called for writs for the election to be issued Wednesday and formally named June 2 as election day.

That means the 2022 election campaign will officially kick off tomorrow.

Elections Ontario says that a notice of an election will be formally posted on its website at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Before meeting with Dowdeswell, Ford told reporters the election "will be a pretty clear choice" between going backward "like previous governments did" or moving forward with his Progressive Conservatives.

"We are going to start building infrastructure, we are going to continue building roads and highways and bridges. We are going to create great jobs for the people of Ontario," Ford said.

"Folks, June 2, you'll have the choice."

The parties have already been unofficially campaigning for weeks, with two out of the three major parties having released their platforms.

Polls at this point suggest the Progressive Conservatives are poised for re-election, with the third-place Liberals potentially overtaking the NDP to form the official Opposition.

[Northern Light]

Originally Posted by SteelTown

[B]

The parties have already been unofficially campaigning for weeks, with two out of the three major parties having released their platforms.

Which two? I've read the entire NDP Platform. I've looked on every other party's site, I have yet to see any other complete programs. (the NDP's isn't costed yet, but neither is anyone else's)

I don't see a full platform on any of the Liberal, PC or Green sites.

[thewave46]

That has to be a record for the shortest time until Doug started using his ‘folks’ line.

I eagerly anticipate much folksiness for the next few weeks.

[Djeffery]

Originally Posted by Northern Light

Which two? I've read the entire NDP Platform. I've looked on every other party's site, I have yet to see any other complete programs. (the NDP's isn't costed yet, but neither is anyone else's)

I don't see a full platform on any of the Liberal, PC or Green sites.

I think the budget last week is considered the PC platform.

[haljackey]

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elec...acker/ontario/

Current chances out of 100.


Libs and NDP be like


...Still, a lot can happen in a month

[Loco101]

My guess at this point is that if the Ford PCs have a campaign that goes fairly well that they will gain some seats. The PCs have only been in power for one term and I don't see any evidence of a big swing of support to either opposition parties. Ford is going for big spending and big promises. Definitely not a platform with austerity as they know that being like Tim Hudak or Pierre Poilievre is toxic in times like today in Ontario.

[Innsertnamehere]

Yep - Ford's image and politics has evolved a lot over the last 2 years since the pandemic started and that's what's feeding his support.

I think his politics are also very smart - the "we say yes" type branding works well for them.

Ford himself is an idiot but whoever his handlers are, they are very smart.

Polling also indicates that things like the 413 and "highway politics" do generally have fairly wide support as well, especially in key ridings. They are unpopular in central Toronto, but the PCs don't need those areas anyway.

[Djeffery]

Not that I give the Liberals any chance, but I think they will tick up in their votes and possibly cost the NDP some ridings. Either through outright defeating them, or taking enough votes to give the PC candidate the seat. In London we have 3 NDP and 1 PC and I can see a couple of the races being interesting. In my area, the NDP MPP is pretty popular, but so is the PC candidate, who was the runner up in the 2018 mayoral election. Unfortunately, the Liberal is a no-name, so probably not going to draw lot of NDP support. Another riding has a rookie NDP MPP and the Liberal is married to a popular city councillor and she was the 3rd place finisher in the 2020 Liberal leadership race. The PC candidate is a popular London restaurateur with a lot of connections, so maybe he benefits from a bit of a Liberal resurgence.

The south end of London is in a riding with the rural counties to the south as well as the city of St Thomas. The current PC MPP, a St Thomas business pharmacist, was bounced from cabinet and isn't seeking re-election, and the PC nominee is a London business man. The Liberal candidate is a former St Thomas mayor (coincidentally, the last Liberal to hold this seat was also a former St Thomas mayor and he went on to be Speaker of the House). This could be an interesting race to watch. The 4th London riding is about as safe an NDP seat as there is, I don't even recognize the candidates names running against her.

[Dengler Avenue]

I was up at Lake Wilcox (Richmond Hill/Aurora) and saw PC signs here and there. Then I drove down Woodbine Avenue in Markham. Surprisingly, I only saw Liberal signs.
I thought Markham would be PC-leaning.

=====
https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/northe...89059.amp.html
Oh wow, even the Green candidate from Sudbury wants Highway 69 twinned asap.

[Innsertnamehere]

Signs mean nothing. I live in a solidly NDP riding and literally the only signs I’ve seen so far is PC signs.

All it means at this point is that the campaigns have spent more time putting up signs so far.

[Loco101]

We don't even have a Liberal candidate yet in Timmins. It's going to be quite a campaign between our current MPP Gilles Bisson who had been our member since 1990 and the PC candidate George Pirie who is our current mayor.

Bisson got 57% of the votes in 2018 and is most likely to win again but it could be close. Pirie is very moderate both socially and fiscally and he's a former mining executive. Many rumours are circulating that Pirie is a shoe-in for cabinet as Minister of Northern Development and Mines if he wins. But he's not really that popular as our mayor as he hasn't been seen as being any different than the previous one who was defeated by him.

It's kind of funny seeing that the pro-convoy and anti-vaxx people are supporting Pirie big time yet Pirie does not share their views nor does his party. But a number of those people have been the anti-Bisson voices over the last few decades.

[swimmer_spe]

I feel the PCs will win a majority, not because they are good, but because they are the only choice for most.

The Liberals are a mess. Their leader is a nobody in the public.

The NDP have a tired leader.

Ford has shown he isn't quite the train wreck we all though him to be.

My riding is solid orange and I doubt that will change.

[Loco101]

It's also rare for a government in Ontario to be thrown out after one term. The only time that happened during my lifetime was the Bob Rae NDP government.

[Djeffery]

Originally Posted by Loco101

It's also rare for a government in Ontario to be thrown out after one term. The only time that happened during my lifetime was the Bob Rae NDP government.

I would also put an asterisk beside David Peterson's government preceding Bob Rae. While technically he had 2 short terms, the first was when his party was in second place and an agreement with the NDP allowed him to assume power over Frank Miller's PCs. So he really only won election once, in 1987, and then lost 3 years later in a needlessly early election.

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by Djeffery

I would also put an asterisk beside David Peterson's government preceding Bob Rae. While technically he had 2 short terms, the first was when his party was in second place and an agreement with the NDP allowed him to assume power over Frank Miller's PCs. So he really only won election once, in 1987, and then lost 3 years later in a needlessly early election.

True, the Miller PCs did actually win the most seats. But their government only lasted a month and a half before it was defeated in a motion of non-confidence and the Liberals gained power with support from the NDP. The Liberals did get more votes than the PCs in that election not that it really mattered.

But Peterson was Premier for two terms with a Liberal cabinet although both short terms for different reasons.

[Loco101]

Did anybody watch the debate. I was surprised at how well Del Duca did. Horwath definitely didn't have the fire that she used to have. Ford was pretty predictable but he didn't do as well as I thought he would. I can see why the Liberals chose Del Duca to take on Ford.

[Djeffery]

I thought Schreiner did the best, but he is really a non factor. Horvath continues to show she has peaked. Ford kind of sucks in debates as it is, he kept saying his talking points and brushed off the attacks of the other 3, which is what a Premier's job is in debates. Del Duca is just ho hum. The guy puts me to sleep listening to him talk, honestly. But I suppose he did good in the debate. The debate didn't show me anything different to change my mind that the PC's will retain a majority within a couple seats either way of where they were, and that the NDP and Liberals will just divvy up the same seats they have now, with the NDP probably losing a few of them.

[1overcosc]

Here in Kingston its unclear if the Liberals will manage to take back the riding from the NDP. Our relatively bland and unpopular NDP MPP is not running for re-election and the NDP have recruited a star candidate, a well known and well liked city councillor who was also the NDP candidate in 2011 and 2014, to run.

I took a drive to visit a friend in Ompah, north of Kingston in the riding being vacated by Randy Hillier, and the sign war out there was clearly being won by the Ontario Party candidate. That riding is huge and includes lots of exurban areas of both Kingston and Ottawa that are a lot less right wing than places like Ompah are, so I doubt the Ontario Party will actually win the seat, but it was interesting nonetheless.

[1overcosc]

Looking back, the Liberals seemed to have good momentum at the beginning of the campaign, but that ended once they announced covid vaccine mandates for schoolkids. That seems to have been the turning point that prevented them from winning.

[Djeffery]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

Looking back, the Liberals seemed to have good momentum at the beginning of the campaign, but that ended once they announced covid vaccine mandates for schoolkids. That seems to have been the turning point that prevented them from winning.

338 Canada has shown the Liberals basically on a steady downward trajectory in seats, from opposition status down to 18 seats. Which is still great for them for where they came from, but I think they still expected (and may yet attain) at least official opposition. Being third party has to have been a real smack upside the head for them, and to be that for a second majority term in a row will hurt them. Will be hard for them to justify dumping Del Duca for bringing them back to party status but the question will have to be asked if he is the guy to bring them to government in 4 years. Personally I don't think so, but not sure off the top of my head who is.

Here in London, we have a Liberal candidate in one riding who ran for the Liberal leadership 2 years ago and came in third. When she ran in the 2018 election, she also came in third (in a riding the former Liberal Deputy Premier represented) by a large margin. She put out a poll last week showing she was at 38% in the riding, and people laughed. The NDP MPP won the riding with well over 50% of the vote in 2018 and is very well liked. No one really thinks she has a shot but she is playing up the strategic voting thing that voting for her is the strategy to stop the PC candidate, rather than voting for the current NDP MPP who got 3x the votes she did 4 years ago. All she is going to accomplish is getting the PC candidate elected. Some people are already touting her as a candidate to run for Mayor of London, or she might actually have a shot at Liberal leader this time. And I wonder what she has accomplished to have all this faith in her. Likely 2x loser in her riding (and probably 2x third place finisher even), as well as third place in the party leadership. This is her extent of electoral experience. She has apparently done a lot of work for the party over the years but other than that, I don't get the love some have for her.

Plus, I think the next Liberal leadership race, should Del Duca not stay on, will be a lot more competitive than the last time, with a few more high profile candidates who recognize that taking down a 2 term government is likely an easier task than after its first term.