Goodbye, Christine Elliott

On A Retirement That Couldn't Come Soon Enough

Why, exactly, did Christine Elliott come back?

It’s a question that’s bugged me for a while - remember, Elliott, the thrice-losing candidate for the Progressive Conservative leadership in Ontario, resigned from her first Parliamentary seat when she lost to Patrick Brown, and was in the twilight of her career after the death of her husband, former Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. I kind of understood why she came back when Brown resigned over (sorta-disproven) allegations of sexual misconduct, but once she lost, she not only came back, but served as Ford’s guarantor to the centre, the responsible adult in the room who made sure that he didn’t go too far.

And now, after one failed term as Deputy Premier and Health Minister, I have the question again – why the fuck did she come back in the first place?

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Let’s be very clear here – she was not a good Health Minister under Doug Ford.

From cutting spending for mental health services to failing to win the battle for responsible handling of pandemic measures to being the Deputy Premier whose government fucked gay kids in some cases beyond repair with their sex ed curriculum, Christine Elliott has been a disaster as a Health Minister and as Deputy Premier. She has not stopped Ford from his worst impulses and her legacy will be thousands of preventable deaths because she was the health minister who gave into dogma over health advice.

That said, nobody’s here for a lesson in pandemic management, so let’s get to why you’re actually here, which is that Holy Fucking Shit, the Deputy Premier just leaked her intention not to run at the next election 3 months from election day, which is, uh, a crisis for the Tories. If you want the math in her seat, the Tories will be fine, they’ll win it again. But, as a signal for where the Tories expect to find themselves on election day, it’s a disaster.

Let’s be very clear about this – Elliott is not doing this out of honour or principle. If she claims at some future point that’s what this was about, fuck her – you don’t do the honourable thing in a leak to the CBC, you call a press conference and strongly, forcefully articulate all your differences with the man you’ve propped up for months. Plainly, she doesn’t think she’ll be in a position to be Deputy Premier again, and so she’s leaving now to save the PCs a byelection in the next Parliament. If Elliott thought the Tories could win, she’d be exactly where she’s lived for the last four years, right behind Doug Ford.

If it seems like I have utter contempt for Elliott, it’s that I do, and that she is the exact type of politician I am preternaturally disposed to hate – someone who knows better and still does shit for their own advancement. The day Flaherty died is a tragedy to me – Jim was the Finance Minister who put ideology aside and kept Canada from the worst of the Global Financial Crisis, and Flaherty always spoke intelligently and honourably. Elliott should know better, and I think she does know better, but when you act in ways that are consistently harmful, you don’t get the benefit of the doubt anymore.

Does the fact that Elliott clearly thinks the next election is lost mean it is? No, because politicians clearly suck at this kind of analysis, as the combined wisdom of the Clinton and Trump teams thinking Hillary had won shows. This same analysis led many to think the GOP had no chance in the House in 2020, and they came within a puncher’s chance of winning the chamber when all expectations were a 10-seat loss. Politicians might suck at this, but it’s notable that her assessment of her chances of getting what she wants – her own power – is seemingly this grim.

I’ve said this whole time Steven Del Duca is the likely next Premier of Ontario, and I think I’m still right. Maybe her retirement means I’m right, maybe it doesn’t. Either way, Christine Elliott has spared Ontario more of her disastrous tenure, and all I can say to her fraudulent reputation as a moderate is good riddance.