The Opposition needs to sharpen its message on how it plans to fix the perceived
wrongs of the Liberal government if it hopes to fare better in the 2011
provincial election than it did in Thursday's byelection, a political expert
said Friday.
The Progressive Conservatives slipped
to 15.4 per cent of the vote in Toronto Centre, down from 20 per cent in the
2007 general election. That put them behind the New Democrats - who nearly
doubled their tally from the 2007 to 33 per cent - and the Liberals, who held
the riding with 47 per cent of the vote.
The Liberal win came despite what the
Tories had dubbed the "summer of scandal" after a spending debacle at eHealth as
well as what they consider a "radioactive" issue - the harmonized sales tax.
Part of the problem is that new
Conservative Leader Tim Hudak has yet to provide any clear policies to show how
he would right what he considers so many Liberal wrongs, said Henry Jacek, a
politics professor at McMaster University.
"In a three-party system you simply
can't be negative, you have to offer an alternative, because you may simply just
help people go vote for the third party," Jacek said.
"(Hudak) has to have a vision for the
Ontario cities, and I don't think people see that."
Hudak remained upbeat despite
Thursday's loss - the second Toronto by-election lost since he became leader -
saying his party was garnering good support.
"We'll still continue to build the
riding associations," Hudak said.
"We're crunching our numbers and
working with our campaign team to see how we can build for 2011."
Toronto Centre is known to be the
safest Liberal seat in all of Ontario, Hudak said. The byelection may have
turned out very differently if the Liberals hadn't poured $15 million into the
struggling Grace Hospital just hours before the polls opened, he added.
"The $15 million of taxpayer money
that basically went to support the Liberal campaign does have an influence,"
Hudak said.
But as Jacek notes, the Tories were
pretty much absent from the debate over the possible closure of the Grace
Hospital - which became a key issue in the riding for the last few days of the
campaign.
"The two parties that are going to
win here are the Liberals who gave the money, and NDP who claim they forced the
Liberals to give the money," he said. "Once again the Conservatives are out in
the cold."
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said Friday
she felt "heartened" by the byelection results.
"We are showing the people of Toronto
Centre particularly that we are a viable place to put their votes if they're
unhappy with the current government," she said.
Both Horwath and Hudak accused the
Liberal government of buying votes by investing in Grace, with Horwath calling
it a "completely cynical move."
Premier Dalton McGuinty rejected
those accusations, saying his government has increased funding in Ontario
hospitals by more than 40 per cent over the last six years.
"We have been investing dramatically
in all our hospitals right across the province," he said.
Thursday's win marks the third
byelection win in a row for the Liberals in the past year.
Liberal Glen Murray, 52, inherited
the well-organized riding association from former deputy premier George
Smitherman, who stepped down to run for mayor of Toronto.
File photo