Tests and double tests

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One of the pleasures of working at my firm is the storehouse of knowledge resident in the team.

John Duffy is the acclaimed author of " Fights of Our Lives" and is a storehouse of political history.

This morning, he reminded me of two by-elections that provide a critical lens for analyzing the current trend in off-year elections in Ontario.

In the depths of the last major recession, two by-elections took place within a few months of each other.

In the downtown riding of St. George-St. David (now enveloped in Toronto Centre), Lyn McLeod's Liberals fought a pitched battle to retain the seat.

The hot issue in the riding that year was employment benefits for same-sex couples. Let me point out that we are not talking about marriage. That was still a long way away. This issue here was just whether a gay partner of a deceased public-sector worker was entitled to survivor benefits. It is rather astonishing that the very recent political history of our province saw elections being fought on issues that today seem so clear cut. But the social consensus on homosexuality is a very new reality in Canadian politics.

Seventeen years ago, the issue tied the Liberals in knots (along with the NDP, and to a lesser extent, the PCs). It divided the party's GTA wing from the OLP's then-significant rural wing. Keeping downtown social-progressives and rural traditionalists off each others' throats was a tall order for rookie leader Lyn McLeod. In the end, a position was arrived at that everyone could live with, and that was enough to allow the Liberal standard-bearer, Tim Murphy, to hold onto the seat.

A few months later, another by-election was called in Victoria-Haliburton, encompassing the two counties east of Lake Simcoe with Lindsay as its largest centre.

The Liberals were widely expected to win, as it had been held by Grit John Eakins for years before the unexpected NDP squeak up the middle in 1990. However, on election night, the Tories had won a slim 2,000 vote victory. The issue used to propel the PC victory was opposition to gay rights, or more accurately from the literature of the day, "The PC priority is jobs. The NDP and Liberal priority is gay rights."

So which was more important? Holding a key seat or winning a new one? At the time, smart Tories admonished, "There are a lot more ridings like Victoria-Haliburton than St. George-St. David."

That proved to be true, with the PCs winning a massive landslide in 1995, in part from a perception that the Liberals were out of touch with the simmering anger of voters.

Flash forward 17 years, to last night's convincing Liberal win in Toronto Centre, which will be followed close on by Sunday's Tory nomination meeting in Leeds-Grenville. In a lot of ways, the same problems are afoot, but with the roles reversed. This time, it's the Hudak Tories who are struggling to keep their disparate coalition working together, while the Liberals seem to be united and comfortable with their leader and his approach.

The PC Party seems increasingly split in two, with one wing completely expelling the other. Under John Tory, Blue PCs were out in the cold, and many sat on their hands rather than back someone they saw as no better than the Liberals. Under Tim Hudak, the roles are reversed but the exclusion and organizational short-comings remain.

Red Tories are just about the only kind in the riding formerly called "Toronto Centre-Rosedale". The vote decay between 2007 and 2010 calls demonstrates the Blue Tories alone don't have much organization in the city if they could only muster 4,000 votes.

In contrast, the NDP clearly does have a strong organization in Toronto. They were able to maintain their raw 2007 vote through organizational muscle, and an outstanding candidate in Cathy Crowe.

However, as we saw before 2007, strong showings in GTA by-elections by the NDP are a product of concentrating their resources in one spot at a time. When the general election happens, that organization gets diffused and they slip back.

The other big difference this time is that there are a lot more ridings like Toronto Centre than Leeds-Grenville.

Or more accurately, more Ontarians live in places that look like Yonge and Davenport than the Rear of Yonge and Escott.

Ontario is becoming an increasingly urban jurisdiction. The key to victory is the 35 swing seats in the suburbs of the City of Toronto (ridings like Etobicoke North or Willowdale), York and Durham (ridings like Pickering-Ajax-Uxbridge or Richmond Hill) and especially the 8 seats in Peel Region. Mike Harris's victories were based on fusing all of these seats to the rural base of the PC Party, along with a few additional seats in Southwestern Ontario.

What is more, the future of the province continues to be in urban areas. The critical swing seats in Ontario are among the most multicultural in the country, with many over 50 per cent New Canadians. Leeds-Grenville is one of a handful of seats that remain over 95 per cent white. Trends in immigration will only expand this in the next reapportionment, as New Canadians swell the census in urban and suburban seats, leaving rural Ontario as shrinking part of a growing pie.

If a candidate can't win convincingly in these seats, he or she cannot be premier. The math is as simple as that.

But Tim Hudak cannot - under any circumstances - lose Leeds-Grenville. A loss there would doom his leadership before it even began, allowing the Red Tories currently on the sidelines to openly stalk their leader the way the Blues hunted a wounded John Tory after 2007.

The nomination on Sunday will feature a number of candidates, some of whom are openly members of the Landowner movement.

In brief, the Landowners are a movement of rural residents who banded together to opposed increased environmental rules brought in after the Walkerton disaster and other regulatory issues.

Since then, their tactics have occasionally stepped outside the mainstream, including threatening police officers with bodily harm and mailing photos of dead animals to Cabinet Ministers with their names on them.

Landowner leader Randy Hillier brokered a deal with former PC leader John Tory to avert the possibility of Landowner candidates. It is widely believed this resulted in the inclusion of anti-environmental clauses in the PC Party's platform in 2007 and Hillier's own candidacy for the PCs in Lanark.

Hillier's leadership run last year was fueled by the Landowners, and Tim Hudak's anti-Human Rights Commission positioning was designed to broker a deal with the Landowners and other radicals.

Hudak will need to come to terms with these Landowners if he doesn't want a problem on his right. This is much the same challenge as Lyn McLeod faced in 1993. If he makes common cause with radical Landowners who want to gut environmental protections, he risks any ability to win in higher-density ridings.

Which brings us to Ottawa-West Napean.

The problem for the PCs is that they have a double test, whereas McGuinty has just one. Hudak must both win Ottawa West-Nepean and also win Leeds-Grenville by a mile. Even winning Ottawa West and almost losing Leeds because of a splinter candidate will pose a real threat to maintaining his coalition.

In contrast, McGuinty just has to hold on to what he has, and could even survive a loss since he enjoys the carrots and sticks of being in office to maintain his coalition.

Christina Blizzard recently noted that a win in Ottawa for Hudak would be a boost, "if he can't pick up this riding, what are his chances in the next election?" That is a huge hurdle for the rookie Opposition Leader, but a fair one. He must run the table on seats like Ottawa West-Nepean if he has any hope of forming a government after 2011.

But he also has to win convincingly in Leeds-Grenville. Hudak cannot allow a splintering of his rural flank, either from an independent "Landowner" candidate, or from apathy. Hudak may have to make a deal with a candidate who will hold his vote in Leeds-Grenville, but who could prove an albatross in seats like Ottawa West-Nepean… and Toronto-Centre.

And there are a lot more like them than there are like Leeds-Grenville.

(File photo: Randy Hillier is detained in 2006. Rachele Labrecque/The Canadian Press)