Toronto Star ePaper

In need of course correction

MARTIN REGG COHN

It’s not every day I wake up at 5:25 a.m. to stick a swab up my nose — for naught.

On schedule, I email photographic proof of my negative test result to the NDP’s travelling COVID control officer, ready to load my luggage. Permission granted!

The New Democratic Party campaign bus is hard to miss in any airport hotel parking lot, laminated with oversized images of a smiling Andrea Horwath. But at the scheduled departure time of 5:50 a.m., we are still awaiting the arrival of the party leader herself — who is never late without good reason.

The NDP’s chartered Dash 8-300 is parked on the tarmac nearby — ready for takeoff to Sault Ste. Marie, North Bay, Thunder Bay, Kenora and the fly-in reserve at Sandy Lake. But the leader will not be clambering aboard this morning.

No Horwath. No smiles. No dawn departure.

Horwath’s aides come bearing bad news of her positive test result(s) — two tests, in fact. The NDP’s fourday northern swing has been grounded by COVID-19 in the final days of the 2022 election.

Is this a metaphor for the NDP campaign at the midpoint? For all of its lofty ambitions to reach the summit of power, the New Democrats have never truly gained traction, let alone soared above their rivals.

While Horwath herself has handled the latest setback with aplomb — grace under pandemic pressure — her political journey has stalled as the party faces headwinds. But with less than two weeks left for a course correction, time is running out.

Amid the campaign ups and downs, it’s hard not to notice the one issue that wasn’t much of a talking point this week — the very bug, and bugaboo, that has given Horwath such a headache of late: COVID-19.

The virus is everywhere and nowhere in Election 2022. But it has not gone viral, notwithstanding the predictions of pundits and critics that it might be the big ballot question.

Not just one but two party leaders have been sidelined by COVID. Yet it is still far from occupying centre stage.

The Green Party’s Mike Schreiner disclosed his positive result just two days after sharing the stage with his counterparts in Monday’s televised debate. Horwath tweeted out her sympathies and good wishes to Schreiner, but by the next morning similar sympathy tweets were coming her way.

What’s notable is how little notice they both attracted. Fleeting stories and ephemeral headlines, to be sure, but their campaigns went on because the show goes on (as with other politicians across Canada and around the world who caught COVID before them — premiers and PMs, presidents and the Queen).

Holed up in her airport hotel room, sinuses stuffed up, Horwath assured supporters and reporters at her next scheduled event that the party had contingency plans for precisely such an eventuality. Beamed in via Zoom, the NDP leader appeared at a Sault Ste. Marie photo-op promising she was still a contender, thanks to vaccines and Tylenol.

The Greens’ Schreiner, too, has kept up his hectic schedule — off the campaign trail but online. No more staged arrivals in electric vehicles painted green in the party’s official colour scheme.

The takeaway message — despite the political script blaming Ford’s Progressive Conservatives for COVID claiming so many lives — is that life goes on. Schreiner was essentially asymptomatic, while Horwath had nagging throat and headache symptoms.

They talked about how other Ontarians had been far less lucky in their pandemic afflictions, and deserving of paid sick days. But the two leaders stayed on the job — living proof of living with COVID, and that democracy must also live on.

No one castigated Ford for exposing his rivals to risk by triggering an unnecessary vote (not that he had much choice as premier — Ontario has fixed election dates every four years by law). If the reaction to two leaders catching COVID was more political than medical — indeed, anticlimactic — it was a reminder that other, deep-seated fears now preoccupy Ontarians, two years after the pandemic took root.

Health care and long-term care ranked high on the list (third and sixth place) of voter concerns in a recent Abacus Data poll. But when asked directly about politicians “responding” to COVID-19 over the past few years, the topic ranked further down in eighth spot — with barely 19 per cent of voters calling it a major concern at the ballot box.

The top issue for 59 per cent of Ontarians was “affordability” — which Ford has made his own by relentlessly cutting taxes, rebating fees, removing tolls and raising the deficit in a shameless vote-buying spree. A remarkable 41 per cent of voters believe his PCs are best able to reduce the cost of living, compared to a mere 23 per cent who cite either the NDP or Liberals; similarly, 48 per cent trust the Tories to freeze or reduce taxes, with the Liberals (20 per cent) and NDP (17) far behind.

Yet both the New Democrats and Liberals keep playing on the Tories’ turf — by trying to play tax-fighter and fee-cutter.

Hence Steven Del Duca’s boast of a “19-point affordability” agenda that isn’t scoring many political points — notwithstanding his “buck-a-ride” plan for rock bottom transit fares, a tax holiday for prepared food under $20, and going along with Ford’s six-month reduction in gas taxes plus the licence fee rebate.

Horwath, too, has a newfound love affair with affordability — promising an astronomical 40 per cent cut in auto insurance rates without a plausible plan; regulating gas prices to make fill-ups cheaper; lowering the price of food (see cheap gas, above); and lifting tolls on the hated Highway 407, albeit only for commercial truckers — with regular folks still paying full fare, and all taxpayers likely to pay the freight.

Possibly these two parties can see the writing on the wall — and in the polls — and are merely cutting their losses by throwing together policies that ape the PC platform. But why play along with the PC agenda when ingrained voter attitudes — and affinities for Ford’s talking points — are so hard to shift?

Another question: If the affordability shoe doesn’t fit anyone but Ford, why would Horwath and Del Duca shoehorn themselves into it?

NEWS

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2022-05-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

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