Fringe parties want to spoil it for Ford

Spoiler alert! Fringe parties could play the part of spoiler in Ontario’s coming campaign.

Fear not. I won’t spoil the ending for you, for I cannot foretell the finish at the political fringes.

But the pandemic has changed our politics in unpredictable ways. Here’s how Doug Ford could be squeezed and possibly lose power in the coming months:

Watch for the premier to be undone not merely by his Liberal and NDP rivals, but also undermined by the far-right populists he once counted on. Anti-Ford, anti-lockdown and anti-vax voters remain a minority in Ontario, but they could have potentially outsized consequences in the June 2 election, when every seat counts.

They could also influence, consciously or unconsciously, the premier’s handling of the pandemic between now and then. While many might want Ford to be tougher about mandating masks or demanding vaccines, doing so could cost him some of the voters he needs most, masks be damned.

Forget the idea that fringe parties are a far-off phenomenon in farflung ridings with far-fetched policies and far-right leaders in the political wilderness. In fact, they could also have a major impact in Toronto-area ridings — and anywhere in Ontario — without winning a single seat.

While the new crop of protest parties is unlikely to elect anyone, they can bleed support away from Ford’s Tories. In key ridings where his candidates won with narrow margins in the 2018 vote, the fringe could inflict a mortal blow. In a close provincewide race, the loss of a few PC seats could cost Ford the majority he needs to retain power. That’s because the opposition New Democrats and Liberals have both pledged to topple him in any post-election non-confidence motion and find a way to cobble together their own minority government to replace him as premier, as first reported by the Toronto Star last year.

What passes for a matter of principle — the fringe’s freedom to refuse vaccines and the right to restrict abortions — is as much a grudge match played by former supporters who now feel betrayed by Ford’s putative populism. Consider the new fringe parties, their recycled leaders and their revivified anti-vax followers:

The Ontario First Party (OFP) might well come last, but it has a head start thanks to the notoriety of its maverick founder, Randy Hillier. The MPP for L an ark-Frontenac Kingston is practised in political reincarnation, first leading the Ontario Landowners’ Association in rural protests for property rights, then running for the leadership of the PCs, later expelled from the party and finally refusing to wear masks while opposing vaccination requirements.

Hillier’s OFP has been blessed by his fellow traveller in the realm of reincarnation, Maxime Bernier, the federal Tory leadership candidate who bolted to found the fringe People’s Party of Canada (Bernier is returning the favour after Hillier endorsed the PPC last year). Hillier has almost no chance of retaining his seat in Lanark, but by siphoning off votes he could unseat his former fellow Tories elsewhere.

The New Blue Party of Ontario has the same old antecedents of protest parties everywhere. Cambridge MPP Belinda Karahalios, who was expelled from the PCs over her opposition to COVID-19 restrictions, has teamed up with spouse and one-time PC presidential candidate Jim Karahalios. She too is destined for defeat, but the New Blue could steal votes anew from Ford’s true blue Tory candidate in her Cambridge riding.

Splitting the vote has long been a defining feature of Ontario elections, where three major parties — PC, NDP and Liberal — can get in each other’s way, allowing one of them to sneak up the middle. That tendency has always helped the Tories when rival Liberals and New Democrats (and sometimes Greens) competed for the “progressive vote,” while the PCs had the rest of the field to themselves.

In the 2018 election, the Tories could count on so-called “social conservatives” (anti-abortion and resistant to LGBTQ rights) to stick with them because they had nowhere else to go. Ford courted them assiduously, aligning himself with Charles McVety, the head of Canada Christian College who campaigned for Ford to win the PC leadership.

More recently, McVety has questioned the fidelity of Ford’s Progressive Conservatives to social conservatives (notably for failing to return past favours by upgrading his college to coveted university status). This time, unlike last time, his ilk and his flock — in their various anti-vax, anti-lockdown and anti-abortion incarnations — have other places to park their protest votes.

Hence the paradox of this pandemic: The fringe parties likely won’t win any seats, but they might make Ford lose a few.

That’s not a spoiler alert or a prediction, merely a recognition that splinter parties want to spoil it for Ford, trying everything in their power to oust him. For the New Democrats and Liberals, who have spent so many elections splitting the vote, the outcome may yet splice them together in a minority government if Ford’s Tories unravel on June 2.