Ontario Liberal leadership race

[Хahar 🤔]

So far only Canadians have posted in this thread, so I'll jump in. I'm surprised at the negative reaction among the Canadians here to the idea of poaching Schreiner. Even though the NDP forms the official opposition, plenty of Ontarians think of the OLP as the alternative government. There were several times during the last Parliament when the Liberals polled comparably to or higher than the Tories; there was never any meaningful span of time when the NDP did so. What hurt the OLP in 2022 was a poor campaign headed by a no-name leader.

Schreiner fixes a lot of these problems immediately. The media has covered him positively and there's every reason to think that it will continue to do so, thereby framing him as the premier-in-waiting. adma has posted repeatedly about the tendency of Canadian media to dismiss the NDP and treat elections as a Liberal-Tory two-horse race regardless of the actual facts at hand. With Schreiner they'd have their man to do that effectively. Getting him would also probably kneecap the Green Party, which received six percent of the vote in 2022; if the leader of the party those people voted for is now saying that to get green policies they should vote Liberal, that's a difficult argument to pass up.

Maybe Schreiner is a no-talent hack who would be eaten alive in Queen's Park if anyone focused their attention on him, and maybe his transportation policies would destroy the OLP in the 905. But in the short run, poaching him would do more than anything else could to project the credibility of the Liberal Party as the next government of Ontario.

[Хahar 🤔]

I suspect that even without Schreiner - there will always be 5-6% of Ontarians that will vote for any part with the word "Green" in its name. Interesting that I have read zero about what Green party members and activists think of the fact that their leader is even considering ditching them for a possible OLP leadership run. You'd think the media would be all over them. And, in any other party there would be a move afoot to dump a leader who was openly considering leaving his or her own party.

This is kind of a strange argument to me considering that the Green Party of Ontario polled below 5% in the three elections before 2022 and that its vote has in fact fluctuated significantly. From 2007 to 2011, the Green vote fell from 8% to 3%, which is not a great argument for the idea that the Green vote is inelastic and the same people will vote Green no matter what. In 2021 we saw the federal Green vote collapse in the absence of a well-known leader with media skills. (Please note here that I'm not saying anything about Elizabeth May's seriousness here and that I'm just observing the positive traits that she shares with Mike Schreiner.) Unless the Green Party of Ontario were to find a new leader with those same characteristics and the ability to stop the demoralizing effects of having the existing leader join another party, I'm reasonably confident that its vote share would be affected.

I agree that it's interesting that we haven't heard much about what Green Party activists think about this. Mike Schreiner's letter mentions his friends and colleagues in the Green Party, but really his actions do not suggest that he cares much about what they think, either.

I don't think bringing Schreiner would meaningfully kneecap the Green Party, although losing their one seat in Guelph won't help. The reason is, there's a certain small group of Canadians who vote for the "Green" brand above all else. Maybe the Liberals could pick 1-2% off of the Greens, which won't amount to much.

Even if we accept that it would be one to two percentage points off the Green vote (and, again, the example of the federal Greens suggests that there's further to fall than that), that may not be much to the Liberals, but for the Greens that would mean losing up to a third of their 2022 vote. That's pretty significant!

[Хahar 🤔]

There's no real point in analyzing a general election strategy for Bonnie Crombie when her leadership campaign will end up like that of Jean Charest. It doesn't matter how many opinion pieces you get lauding your willingness to tell bold truths if you can't provide anything that members of your party actually want. She's clearly not all that committed, either, since she's going to keep the Mississauga mayoralty.

I don't really know anything about Peel Region deamalgamation, which appears to be the primary positive accomplishment she can point to, but it doesn't really matter how popular it is locally when most OLP members aren't from Mississauga. I find it hard to imagine that she would be able to register enough new members to make up the gap.

As someone who would like to see the NDP succeed, the most dangerous candidate to me is certainly Erskine-Smith, who presents an obvious path for the OLP to winning Toronto again. Ted Hsu and Yasir Naqvi both have names I recognize but I haven't seen much about what they're actually offering. Maybe they'd be winners, too.

[Хahar 🤔]

Yup. Crombie is worse than Ford on housing. Good luck getting very many voters under 40 if she wins.

Almost like Wynne '18 redux--i.e. how it was the Brahmin-ratepayer over-40s (or heck, over-60s) that were her most faithful remaining demo.

But at the same time, it's hard to see Marit Stiles (much less Mike Schreiner, duh) being in agreement over the Greenbelt being a "scam".  Remember: the under-40s concerned about housing are *also* concerned about the environment--that is, they might approve of a *measured* approach to development on the Greenbelt, but statements like that suggest a bone-headed contempt for any such "measured" approach. Not just to the Greenbelt, but to *anything*--unless one is using the "Ontario Proud" barometer for what under 40s are thinking...

Maslow's Hierachy, shelter trumps any kind of ability to worry about the environment.  We have reached (and surpassed) the breaking point of being able to live in the GTA on an average income.  So, I don't think this is true that these are somehow equal concerns, maybe for very wealthy under 40s (I'm thinking 200k+ salary, or excessive generational wealth from parents real estate), but not your average under 40 who isn't able to survive.

Yes, but that's if you view "shelter" in generic, utilitarian terms--like, you'll find that in practice, the under 40s most concerned about the "shelter question" are *not* the sort who'd choose generic developer fare in the Greenbelt boondocks.  They're advocating for urban intensification.

But on top of that, if these under-40s are the sort who are so desperate for shelter that they'd be on board with Doug Ford-style obtuseness--let's put it this way: their poverty goes beyond the monetary into something more broadly civic and cultural; and in an age where a lot of onetime "universal" values and concerns have become pigeonholed as more remote and elite than they were in the days of traditional media, who can blame them.  Particularly if they, themselves, are the offspring of Ford Nation, and thus never had the chance to know better--which also makes them, in their desperation for shelter, easy marks.

Any under 40 who's all on-board with Doug Ford's promise to rip down the Ontario Science Centre for "housing", with no regard for either the OSC's architectural merit or the conservation-land conditions that preclude the building of "housing" upon said land, is truly...dim.  Though yeah, maybe the whole Catch-22 is that those "precluding concerns" are probably *already* remote to the poverty-beyond-the-monetary set--which is how Ford populism can be seductive in its framing of said concerns as "elite scams"...

Perhaps if the opposition tells Ontario youth who want new housing that they're stupid for wanting that, it'll successfully change their minds. It's an interesting thought.