Ontario Debate: We’re So Completely Fucked

On A Horrible Debate

I really wish Nate Erskine-Smith had won.

This is ostensibly a column about the Ontario Debate tonight, and it’s a debate that on some level deserves to be talked about. But the debate is not what is sticking with it. It’s not the attack lines or the quotes that stick with me, but this very specific certainty that Nate should have won. There’s just no universe where the Liberal Party would be in a worse spot if they had picked Nate, and the province is paying for the mistake we made.

Bonnie Crombie’s performance tonight is emblematic of her whole leadership - it’s a performance that’s fine on paper but doesn’t work when you’re actually watching. The words are fine, the attack lines look good on a page, and yet there’s just nothing to it when you judge it holistically.

Judging these kinds of debates as debates and judging them by the impact they will have are two very different things, and it’s important to be clear which you’re doing at all times. Marit Stiles is winning this debate as a debate, but she hasn’t done anything to radically change the NDP’s status as the third party in the popular vote and a cointoss to be opposition. She’s done a good job with the policy book and strategy they’ve landed on, but the structural problems with the NDP as two parties stuck together by First Past The Post continue to exist and no debate was going to change that.

The truth is that Bonnie isn’t doing horribly, it’s not a performance that is going to make me livid and rip into her and destroy. Her answers to the humanizing Get To Know You questions have made me like her more, which is good. (That I’ve been begging her to show more of herself for months now and she won’t do it unless prompted by the debate moderator when she’s actually interesting and human drives me crazy but whatever.) It’s a performance that’s clunky, not particularly well delivered, and overly reliant on her notes, but it’s not some disaster. But that’s the problem.

The answer on transit was her best one, in part because she was able to deliver a fairly detailed answer without looking down. But it’s just not good enough. It’s fine, it’s eminently forgettable in a way that’s not good enough when you’re down 15 ish on average. The problem Crombie’s performance tonight faces is expectations, and the expectations her people have consistently raised.

In that Star piece for the one year anniversary of her leadership, Liberals were talking about 30 to 35 seats. That was the range we were talking about, in an early election, which of course was a downgrade from the claim that she could go third to first by 2026, made because she wanted to talk down Nate’s honest statements that this was a two election rebuild. Even with the lowered standards this isn’t a standard from the electable candidate who can save the party.

She’s been a better leader on policy than most Liberals would have expected. Her housing policy is a dream, and the transit policy she seemed to soft launch in the debate makes a lot of sense. On paper, it makes sense. The problem is that it doesn’t work when actually on the road. It just doesn’t work.

Nate is not a perfect politician, but he is probably the best suited to the kind of politics that we need in Ontario. Nate’s a great communicator, comfortable in his own skin and very good at speaking off the cuff. His Dad-ish charm is the exact thing we need to disarm Ford’s annoyingly, frustratingly enduring support and goodwill. Nate’s a great example of what happens when you have people with values but also humility, and a strong communicator who can cut through bullshit.

The problem with this debate is that Ford was challenged in some not very effective ways but the debate was about Ford, and when the focus is on him it’s going to help him. Nate would have been more prepared with a coherent agenda but more importantly a message where every announcement makes sense together, as opposed to whatever Bonnie was trying to do of straddling the fence and flip flopping from her moderate stance to a more progressive one.

The Debate tonight reiterated that the problem Ontario faces is that we have a deficit of leadership. Nobody on that stage would be Premier in an ideal world, and it sucks that our options are two parties offering comically bad platforms and a third party offering a good platform led by a leader who needed to read her pre-written debate answers. It’s just plainly not acceptable.

The winner of this debate was Nate, because he wasn’t there. It is so fucking clear that a Nate-led OLP would be doing better than this, mostly because it couldn’t do worse. It’s unacceptable the position progressives in Ontario face, and while I hope Crombie is more successful than I expect I know she won’t be. This is a disaster for Ontario, and for anybody hoping for a better government than Doug Ford has provided.

May we have a better progressive choice in 2029.