Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Tim HudakRafal Gerszak
A little while ago, I suggested to a senior provincial Conservative that the party might want to change the way it attacks the Dalton McGuinty's Liberals. The response that the style I was suggesting was basically the one John Tory had used.
I didn't really have an answer for that.
Still, there's an interesting discussion to be had about the most effective way for opposition parties - not just in Ontario, but also federally and in other provinces - to signal their disapproval of governments' records.
The tone that Tory mostly struck was disappointment. On behalf of Ontarians, he purported to be let down by the government - to have expected more, and to be frustrated by the calibre of service he was getting.
Obviously, it didn't work too well for him. Nor has it been a smashing success for Michael Ignatieff. But it can be effective, as Dalton McGuinty demonstrated toward the end of his time in opposition - or, to use a more classic example, as Brian Mulroney did during the 1984 campaign.
The alternative, which is what the Ontario Tories are now going with, is a more aggressive tone - one in which the opposition speaks in sound bites about what an epic disaster the government is, without pretending to have expected better. Hence the repeat references to "Canada's worst government," and so on.
I'm not especially a fan of the latter approach; it strikes me as off-putting, and unrelatable for anyone who's not a card-carrying partisan. Every party has its attack dogs, but the leader generally seems more appealing when he or she isn't visibly rooting against good governance.
That being said, the Tories - and other parties that don't try to come off too high-minded - have their reasons. The job of an opposition party, at least provincially, is mostly just to get noticed - and, if all goes according to plan, to throw the government off its message by controlling the narrative. Being relatively mild and even-handed doesn't necessarily get you very far.
All told, how you signal your disapproval is probably less important than what you propose as an alternative. That was largely Tory's problem - one always had the sense that he fundamentally agreed with most of what the government was doing - and it's certainly been Ignatieff's.
In Tim Hudak's case, it's too early in his leadership, and too far from an election, to expect a substantive policy agenda. But until he's able to say what he'd do differently, it'll be tough to judge whether the shift in tone is working to his advantage.