Marit Stiles And Mediocrity’s Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

On The ONDP's Failures

“That fear will become self fulfilling, you get that, right?”

One of the reasons I started writing fiction in the depths of lockdown of 2021 was an effort to try and clarify my mind. The belief, accurate as it turned out to be, was that by getting any amount of story on paper, things that did not seem apparent to me about my life would become obvious in the plight of my characters. It worked, and one of the lessons is just how much we are responsible for our failings. In that scene of Salvation In The Storm, the conversation was about homosexuality and how the only limits it would impose on my protagonist would be those self-inflicted. In a different context, it’s the only thing I can think about with Marit Stiles.

The Ontario NDP are an utter disaster. They’re polling below 20% in Abacus, as well as in the privately commissioned but publicly released Campaign Research poll the Star was given during the LCBO strike. They are on the verge of tipping into third place in seat projections, and currently project for fewer seats in a 124 seat Legislature than Andrea Horwath won in the 107 seat one in 2014. They are the official opposition to a Premier who Angus Reid pegged with an approval rating of 31% in June, and they’re going to lose double digit seats. They are a calamity. And the wild part is it’s almost entirely their fault.

I defended the Ontario NDP last year for a reason - getting rid of Sarah Jama was a choice, and the NDP at both a federal and provincial level have been scared of making choices. They’ve been terrified of pissing any part of their incredibly fragile coalition off, stuck as they are between economic progressives in the North and southwest who hold social views that would offend many Dippers and their socially liberal members in Toronto, Kitchener, and the Horseshoe who care quite a bit about Palestine and pronouns. I know I keep making this point, but ask a thousand NDP voters in Kenora and a thousand NDP voters in Kitchener why they vote NDP, and you’ll get two very different answers.

Is the NDP about advancing workers’ rights across the province regardless of their social views? Are they a party that stands for the Charter rights of the unvaccinated (at least if they’re teachers), as Andrea Horwath said on CBC in 2021? Or are they the party that threw such a monumental shitstorm after those Power And Politics comments that Horwath had to flip flop in a day? Is it a party more concerned with increasing economic wealth and opportunity for workers in Nippissing and Niagara or is it a party focused on protecting drag performers from being shouted at or protested?

What does the NDP have to say on homes? It pretends it wants to do things on Housing, with a $15B investment designed to build 250k units of non-market housing and sensible votes on upzoning, but their focus on rent control and willingness to let jurisdictions raise development charges would undo any progress Homes Ontario provided. Homes Ontario is also a wildly uncosted document which seems to be premised on the idea that you can fund 250k units for $60k/unit, based on some fuzzy idea that future rents can sustain building. It might work! But it’s very dicey, especially if you’re intending on building this housing anywhere where people might actually want to live (and therefore paying market prices for land).

What’s Stiles position on solving our healthcare crisis? Their only notable announcement this year was about making it easier for administrators and assistants to handle certain elements of paperwork. Their solution to the climate crisis? Commercial vehicles drive for free on the 407 to free up space for drivers. Their solution to crumbling classrooms? I’ve got nothing, except paying teachers more. And while paying healthcare staff and teachers more is worthwhile, it’s also not exceedingly clear how paying the teachers at my local elementary school more money gets the kids at my local elementary out of portapacks and back into proper classrooms or reduces the wait time at the Queensway Carleton.

Doug Ford is eminently beatable, and yet the NDP have essentially given up. They’ve done a decent job at the basic blocking and tackling of opposition over the years, but they’ve done a piss poor job of actually standing for anything. Does anyone remember what Andrea Horwath actually wanted to do in 2022? The entire platform was just flowery language about vague ambitions and no actual tangible, deliverable plans. To call it forgettable would be to mislead; it would imply I ever retained that information in the first place. Since imposing Marit Stiles in a bloodless coup masquerading as a leadership contest, the NDP have had open runway. And all they’ve done is fall backwards.

Bonnie Crombie has not exactly lit the world on fire in her first year as the OLP leader - she lost the eminently winnable Milton byelection, she’s been languishing in the mid 20s all year, she threw a cornerstone progressive policy (a carbon price) out the window - and the NDP are still fucked. As someone who supported Nate Erskine-Smith and has been quick to criticize and reluctant to praise Bonnie Crombie, I’ve had a lot of conversations since December about what the best path forward for progressives in Ontario is. I wanted it to be the Ontario NDP, I really did. It’s not. And it’s to Stiles’ immense discredit.

The NDP are stuck in quicksand, unable and unwilling to make the decisions it’ll take to get them out. They’re unwilling to decide if they want to be a party of suburban centre-left social liberalism, a party of downtown and campus progressivism, or a party of working class interests that abandons airquotes “woke” issues in the name of economic class solidarity. If they want to win anything of consequence, they need to replace the Liberals as the main opposition in Ajax and Oakville and Burlington, and focus on winning Brampton again. Instead, they’re stuck in the morass of their own making.

On election night 2018, a prominent Liberal tweeted that the NDP lost their best chance to win an election and celebrated like they won. That tweet has haunted my memory for 6 years because it’s the fundamental problem with the NDP. Their willingness to settle for “good enough” and their almost criminal aversion to conflict deprives the party of any actual ambition. The only thing stopping them from genuinely taking the fight to Ford is their own chaos. That they managed to come out for safety zones around venues that host drag performances before they managed to come up with any sort of plan for health care or education or climate change says it all.

It’s a disgrace. The party and the leader is failing the people who need them to provide a strong alternative. We do not need opposition parties all to tell us Doug Ford is bad. We need someone, anyone, to come up with any fucking ideas on how to make this province that is being hollowed out day by fucking day and inch by fucking inch better. And Stiles’ NDP is fundamentally incapable of doing that, because they’re stuck.

Dig deep and find a positive, costed plan for real change for Ontarians, or resign and let the party actually choose a leader who will.