Memo To The OLP: Message Of The Week

Pick Your Messages

So, we going to try and fix this now?

Abacus this weekend has the Ontario PCs at 44%, up 18% on the Liberals and the NDP under 20%. The combined OLP/NDP vote is only 45%, and it’s questionable whether the anti-Ford parties would hit a combined 30 seats. At 44% for Ford it’s also inarguable that Ford is the preferred choice of Ontarians, and that no kind of OLP/ONDP deal would change that basic fact. There is not currently a progressive majority in Ontario willing to fight Ford. We might wish there was. There isn’t.

The Ontario NDP are precisely nowhere, a party that has spent 2024 writing its own obituary and burning the fact that it won 32 seats at the last election so badly that the Liberals actually have a chance to get Official Opposition back solely through Orange —> Blue flips. That they have relegated themselves to the Obligatory Mention Before I Get To My Actual Point section of this column is the greatest indictment of their failures. But that they are failing us all is a sign that progressives should be investing their time and energy into the Ontario Liberals, because somehow - and Lord knows I didn’t think I’d be saying this at this time last year with a Crombie leadership - the OLP is the most viable option for a progressive politics.

Now, it is fair to say being the most viable option in progressive Ontario politics right now is like being the least pathetic Leafs playoff exit of the Shanahan era, but it’s true. And given Bonnie Crombie is waiting for the housing and climate change expert commissions to report back, let’s focus not on what policies could get the OLP from 26% to the low 30s, but the real problem with the party. The operation is unfocused, unsteady, and not ready.

I’m hesitant to put the blame for this strategy on the staff, because they are taking direction from leadership and electeds, but here’s the honest truth; at a structural level the OLP’s political operation since the beginning of the year has been bad. We wasted whatever honeymoon Crombie had, we got no benefit from the 4 units as of right announcement and the ditching of the carbon tax, and we are now stuck, slightly up on 2022 but nowhere close to a number where we break 25 seats and/or force a hung Parliament. 

We are stuck in an outcome that is probably best for me personally, if we’re being honest. Let’s be real, Bonnie gaining 5-10 seats net and staying in second place in votes and third place in seats would mean the next OLP reader is someone I’ve interviewed for this site before. But I’d rather have this leadership succeed, because I’m not so self-centered as to put a leader I have an inside line to above the good of the province. So let’s lay out one thing this leadership needs to do to try and have any fucking hope of turning the tide.

For the love of God stop bouncing from issue to issue.

…

What I want the Liberal Party of Ontario to do is very simple - I want a caucus meeting where Bonnie Crombie and the 9 members of Caucus take a big, paper calendar and plan out a message calendar. I want theme weeks, essentially. I want a coordinated message for the week, but I want the OLP’s messaging to be clear. If it is Health Care Week, there should be nothing except 5 clear events or announcements about health care. Bonnie Crombie spent her Saturday at a hospital suffering the consequences of 6 years of Ford’s underfunding and mismanagement of the health care system. I’m very happy she went, I’m mad she went on a fucking Saturday and didn’t bring the fucking press with her.

The anti-Ford opposition has been divided, indecisive, and impotent in recent years but it has most of all been scattershot. Watching the Del Duca and now Crombie leaderships go about the task of politics has felt often like watching Jordan Spieth or Rachel Homan go about their respective domains. There has been an utter chaos to all of it, an inability to manage a process. The process of party rebuilding is tough, and I’m not eager to criticize a leadership 8 months in for not having solved the party’s longstanding crises. But at some point when it is unable or unwilling to execute a very simple playbook it’s unacceptable.

What the Ontario Liberals need to do is get to a very basic path. They need to decide what their 5 best issues are, and spend the summer and fall building out basic, easy media appearances around those themes. If you want to highlight higher wait times, package that in with announcements about respecting nurses and doctors and building more health care capacity and make it a Week!

Recently on the Scrimshaw Show I found out a school in Burlington had their roof cave in due to neglect. Seems not that shocking, right? Sure, but there’s probably a lot of schools that need repairs. So, how about an Education Week where Monday you announce a billion dollar school repairs fund at, Tuesday is a Respecting Teachers announcement where you promise not to unilaterally legislate wage levels, Wednesday you go to a community that needs a new school to highlight a promise to increase new school construction, and Thursday you announce the creation of your education expert commission?

The details are fungible, given that I don’t run education policy for the OLP (though let’s be real, none of that seems like it’s particularly hard to see Crombie supporting), but that is at least a coherent week that advances the OLP. It allows the party to lead the headlines, it allows them to seem together and strong for leading and not merely following, and those four events give you an opportunity to highlight key, swing seat candidates. When you do Health Care Week and inevitably promise to repeal Bill 124 and never introduce anything like it ever again, you can do it in Nepean where you’re (hopefully) running a Nurse against Lisa MacLeod in Tyler Watt. When you announce that same respect for teachers policy, find a candidate who’s a teacher to stand beside Bonnie. Use these moments to elevate your people.

The Message Of The Week framing would also allow the party’s apparatus to focus on a single message, spreading awareness of Ford’s failures on the issue of the week in the media. You want to get the media to cover your issues? Maybe run an op-ed by Bonnie Crombie* in the Friday Star condensing Ford’s failures at the end of the week. Imagine if Crombie laid out Ford’s failures to build more schools, fix the ones we have, and pay teachers their rightful wage in the Star or the National Post. We know the Star will run her words, they ran two of her op-eds in 2023. And before you say the Post would never run it (even though they run Ford op-eds with regularity), make them turn it down then, and leak that they did, and run it on your site. Even that would be better than this current malaise.

Doug Ford poses no end of options to attack him. We aren’t taking advantage. This bad game of whack-a-mole isn’t helping us. It’s a disaster for everyone because we are sleepwalking into a third Ford majority that is yet again bigger than the one before. A renewed message of the week focus where we properly structure our attacks on Ford, and command Crombie, the caucus, the press, and social media all in one direction would be much more effective than whatever the fuck we’re doing right now. It’s not a solution to winning government. It’s a solution to getting the fuck out of the same fucking shit spot we’ve been in since February. And until anybody has a better solution, keep it simple. Message Of The fucking Week, (hopefully) coming to an Ontario Liberal Party near you.