What were they thinking? Having spent as much time as I have in political circles in this country, there are more than enough times I’ve found myself coming back to that simple four-word question. That question can just as rhetorical as a serious one, because sometimes there simply isn’t a good answer to it. But rarely do we see something happen in our political lives that leaves me asking that question about almost everyone involved. That is a unicorn of a situation indeed.
Yet that unicorn managed to appear over the weekend, and strutted further onto the scene later Monday evening ensuring that it wasn’t going to be forgotten as a fantasy or a mirage. Nope, this is really happening in Ontario politics, involving one of the longest-standing and historically most effective electoral machines in the western world. And it is all over the leader of another party, whose sole achievement in elected politics is to get himself elected, twice in five attempts.
Now it should pointed out that this situation didn’t come straight out of the blue. It was a trail balloon first floated by TVO’s esteemed Steve Paikin all the way back in September. The idea was that the next leader of the Ontario Liberal Party should be Mike Schreiner, the current leader of Ontario’s Green Party. When this piece came out, Schreiner shot it down, apparently putting it to rest. It was an exercise in political blue-skying that raised more questions than it answered, but at the time it came of more as a thought exercise involving alternate universes. And that’s probably where it should have remained.
But over the past week it sprung back to life with an open letter to the Green Leader in the Toronto Star that started an strong chorus in many political circles in the province. No, that chorus wasn’t “What an amazing idea! GENIUS!”. Nope, it was a chorus of “What were they thinking?”, followed by the loud sounds of thousands of people facepalming in reaction. I spent the weekend watching this play out on Twitter, and it was quite the sight to behold.
The fact that some people in the Ontario Liberal Party got to this point and wrote that letter is not shocking to me. There are always some people in the grassroots of all parties that do that kind of thing, usually in an attempt to thumb their noses at the powers that be. What makes this letter so stunning is that it was written by many people who many would consider to be those very powers, or at least who were in better times were. It was written by folks with track records, gravitas and one would assume, better sense. The letter had signatures from such party powers as:
Deb Matthews, a former Deputy Premier
Greg Sorbara, a former Cabinet minister under two generations of Liberal Premiers (Peterson and McGuinty) and served as Finance Minister
Liz Sandals, another former Liberal Cabinet Minister, and Schreiner’s predecessor as MPP in Guelph
John Milloy, another former Liberal Cabinet Minister,
Kate Graham, a former candidate who finished third in the 2020 Liberal leadership and was seen as a rising star in the Liberal universe
Lucille Collard, the current Liberal MPP for Ottawa-Vanier
John Godfrey, former Liberal MP
Pat Sorbara, former Liberal Campaign Director & Deputy Chief of Staff to the Premier
I could go on, but this isn’t some list of unknown local riding association members, wet behind the ears and without experience in politics. There are the people used to holding the reigns of power and have led millions of Ontarians to believe through numerous of elections that they and they alone knew how to do that. They are the ones jumping to this amazing faulty call to put out an open letter to the leader of another party who had already shot down the idea. They are the ones who, in theory, should have know better.
Yet instead this letter went out in the largest circulation newspaper in the entire province, front page news that would ensure that it wasn’t missed. And in the process, they threw all those people who have actually been elected as Liberals considering taking on the daunting task of trying to rebuild their dying party clearly and firmly under the bus.
That meant for the likes of Matthews, the Sorbara’s, Sandals, and Milloy, who all sat in caucus and cabinet with rumoured contenders like Mitzie Hunter and Yasir Naqvi, this letter told the world that they think they aren’t good enough. Both who have been cabinet ministers in senior portfolios, neither up to the job in their expert eyes. That also means that in the eyes of current small-caucus colleague Collard, neither Hunter nor Hsu are up to job of rebuilding their party. It’s one thing to back another candidate in a leadership race, but it’s something completely different to try to bring in another parties leader and effectively repudiating the abilities of a quarter of your own caucus in the process. Not exactly the best way to build unity.
If that wasn’t bad enough for the team rebuilding exercise, that letter was something that screamed of desperation and an attempt to take a short cut back to power. Forget looking at the serious problems within your party, dealing with the baggage of past Liberal governments that led to their current position or make any attempt at retrospection or reform. Nope, instead the big idea is to try to find the next “saviour” to come along and paper over all these issues. It’s entitled behaviour that has become as much a part of the Liberal brand as their red colour scheme, and one of the things that led to their downfall. That letter managed to reinforce all of that in peoples minds, while at the same time coming of as a desperate act of an entitled group who think they can just slap a green coat of paint on their sunken ship and it will automatically rise back to the top just because that ship is a Liberal one.
It was a sad spectacle to witness and if it had just remained as that, it would have been enough of a story for Ontario’s politicos to dine out on for a while. But something just as unforeseen happened later in the evening yesterday, that forced many of us to ask that same question of another person: Green Leader Mike Schreiner himself. Remember that he had shot down this cockamamie idea way back, which was what one does when they have a good job and are committed to the party they lead. To waver public on your support for your own party and not shutting all that right down would just open up questions about the health of your own party, the viability of the Greens and would force us to view Schreiner himself differently. You’d think that would be obvious enough, right?
Well nope, clearly it wasn’t as Schreiner put out his own open letter, basically saying “I’m flattered, give me some time to consider this”. Jaws hit the floor across the province, leading many to recite that original question loudly in his direction. In theory Schreiner had the easiest job in all of this messed up scenario. All he had to do was say no. That was it, and he had already done it before. In doing that, Schreiner would look stronger, put him in a better position as the one that the once-great Ontario Liberal Party wanted to poach and ride to electoral nirvana. As a result (and because he’s the lone Green MPP), his party could have also ridden that stronger public image to better results next time out. It was a gift that these leading lights of the Red Team gave him.
But instead of grasping that gift and saying thank you, he chose to do the opposite. Instead he backtracked, opening the door without committing to anything. In doing so, he put everything about his leadership of the Green Party of Ontario, the future of the party itself and his own standing in the eyes of the public (which is his strongest asset) into question. At this point you might have thought it was bit crowded under the #onpoli bus today, but somehow Schreiner found more space to throw his party and himself under it. For a Green Party that is wholly dependent on Schreiner, this becomes an existential crisis if he decided to jump ship. Instead of looking stable, this “open minded” response turns all of that on its head in the worst way.
And for what exactly? If Schreiner were to cross the floor and join the Liberals, he’s not guaranteed anything. He’d still have to win the Liberal leadership, under rules or process that we don’t know yet, against people who have far better electoral records than Schreiner and actually served in government. He’d be far from being a shoo in to win, and could very well be hindered by this whole saga amongst rank and file Liberals who bristled at this who drama over the weekend.
It would have been for that reason alone that Schreiner would have been wisest to have stayed with his firm no, on top of keeping all the benefits of being portrayed in the media as the “Belle of the Ball” that other parties want as their own but can’t have. “Want to support Mike? Sorry, gotta vote Green. Here’s an eco-friendly lawn sign.” Yet that appears to be the alternate universe, one in which sanity and good political sense reigns. We’re living in the one where this unicorn decided it wanted more that the 15 minutes the political cosmos was going to give it, and is determined to do some damage in the process.
The only winners in this are the Ford PC’s and the Stiles NDP. They both sit in far stronger positions watching this goat rodeo play out as the Liberals fumble around trying to figure themselves out, managing to pull the looky-lo Greens into the mess. What were they thinking? Were they thinking at all? Valid questions that appear to have no answers, which tells you a lot about the mess that both the Ontario Liberals and Greens find themselves in now. This is completely of their own making, and no amount of unicorns will fix it.