A Minority Government Doesn’t Have To Be Hell

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Can a minority government work in Ontario?

To read the headlines in some of the newspapers the morning after this October 6th provincial election, you would think we are now on the verge of going to hell in a hand basket.

Indeed, The Toronto Sun ran a frontline headline reading; “We’ve Got A Liberal Minority – Welcome To Hell.” The front-page headline in The Globe and Mail read; Weakened Liberals, Divided Province.” A number of editorial writers argued that the last thing we need in a province facing a $14-billion deficit in a global economy where some countries are teetering on the edge of financial collapse is the possible instability of minority government.

To read some of the post-election night commentary, it’s as if we ve wandered into a haunted forest and the flying monkeys are on their way. Yet a minority government at this time could be a good thing and it has worked well in Ontario before.
The last time Ontario had a minority government was 1985 when the Conservatives’ Frank Miller barely won enough seats to keep a 42-year-old Tory dynasty in the province alive. It was clear in the final days of the campaign for what was a spring election that year that had the vote been pushed ahead another week or two, the Tories would not even have won a minority. David Peterson’s Liberals and Bob Rae’s NDP had the winds of change on their side and were surging in the polls. So within a matter of weeks, Peterson and Rae signed an accord to form a government and brought the Tories down.

What came out of all of that was two years of some of the most progressive change we’ve seen to this day in this province on health care, on the environment and on a number of other key fronts. “Most people look back at that session and they say it was one of the most productive,” said Peterson in a recent interview with The Globe and Mail.

It seems doubtful that any two of the three main parties would form such a coalition today. Peterson and Rae and their party supporters were not that far apart on a number of key issues in those days. Today, it would be hard to imagine the Liberals and NDP forming any kind of a coalition, given the negative regard the core supporters of those parties have for each other’s leaders.

Veteran St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley, congratulated by supporters following his October 6, has had some good experience in minority government. Photo by Doug Draper

Yet, minority government could still work to the benefit of we the people. With the Conservatives and the NDP holding enough seats to defeat the Liberals, it would also be hard to imagine Dalton McGuinty pulling off another regressive tax grab like the Harmonized Sales Tax or supporting a deal with private concerns to locate a large wind farm in a community without giving the municipal council of that community some say. Perhaps, McGuinty and his health minister will now pay a little more attention to the concerns residents in regions like Niagara are expressing about their hospital care.

Jim Bradley, the Liberal MPP for St. Catharines and now the longest serving member of the legislature, was returned to his seat this October 6 and under these circumstances, which is a good thing.

Bradley, who’s been an MPP since 1977, served as the province’s environment minister during the two years of minority government in 1985 and 86. He has also served as a house leader for his party and as a minister for three other ministries, and he’s sat for a number of years in opposition. He’s got the depth of experience and the political smarts to build a few practical bridges between the parties and help make a minority government situation work.

“I’m prepared to work together (with members of the other parties),” said Bradley to his supporters after the polls showed this October 6 that he had won back his seat. “Our role is to deal with the cards that the people of Ontario have dealt to us” It is important to work through any “hyper-partisanship” or any “chaos” that could result from a minority government. The parties have got to try to work together as best they can, he added, in the interest of the Ontario people.

Let’s hope, for all of our sake, that they do.

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