Ontario Liberal Party
The Ontario Liberal Party is a provincial political party in the province of Ontario, Canada, and forms the Government of Ontario as of the Ontario general election, 2003. The party is ideologically aligned with the Liberal Party of Canada. The party is currently led by Dalton McGuinty, who has been its leader since 1996.
Origins
The Liberal Party of Ontario is descended from the Reform Party of Robert Baldwin and William Lyon Mackenzie who argued for responsible government in the 1830s and 1840s against the conservative patrician rule of the family compact.
The modern Liberals were founded by George Brown who sought to rebuild the Reform Party after its collapse in 1854. In 1857, Brown brought together the Reformers and the radical Clear Grits of southwestern Ontario to create a new party in Upper Canada with a platform of democratic reform and annexation of the northwest. The party adopted a position in favour of uniting Upper and Lower Canada into the United Province of Canada, a concept that eventually led to Canadian confederation.
Confederation
After 1867, Edward Blake became leader of the Ontario Liberal Party which sat in opposition to the Conservative government led by John Sanfield Macdonald. Blake's Liberals defeated the Tories in 1871 but Blake left Queen's Park for Ottawa the next year leaving the provincial Liberals in the hands of Oliver Mowat who served as Premier of Ontario until 1896.
While the Tories became a narrow, sectarian Protestant party with a base in the Orange Order, the Liberals under Mowat attempted to bring together Catholics and Protestants, rural and urban interests under moderate, pragmatic leadership.
Decline and opposition
The Liberals were defeated in 1905 after over thirty years in power. The party had grown tired and arrogant in government and became increasingly cautious. As well, a growing anti-Catholic sectarian sentiment hurt the Liberals and helped the Tories come to power under a platform that combined modernism with sectarian bigotry. The Liberals continued to decline after losing power and, for a time, were eclipsed by the United Farmers of Ontario when the Grits were unable to attract the growing farmers protest movement to its ranks.
Mitch Hepburn
After a series of ineffective leaders the Liberals turned to Mitchell Hepburn, a farmer and former member of the UFO who was able to build an electoral coalition with Liberal Progressives who had previously supported the UFO and the Progressive Party of Canada. The revitalised party was able to win votes from rural farmers, particularly in southwestern Ontario, urban Ontario, Catholics and francophones and also had the advantage of not being in power at the onset of the Great Depression. With the economy in crisis, Ontarians looked for a new government and Hepburn's popuilism was able to excite the province.
In government, Hepburn's Liberals warred with organised labour in the form of the Congress of Industrial Organizations who were trying to unionize the auto sector. Later, he battled with the federal Liberal government of William Lyon Mackenzie King who, Hepburn argued, was insufficiently supportive of the war effort. The battle between Hepburn and King split the Ontario Liberal party and led to Hepburn's ouster as leader and contributed to the party's defeat in 1943 which resulted in the party's long stint in opposition. The Progressive Conservatives under George Drew established a dynasty which was to rule Ontario for the next 42 years while the Liberals declined to a right wing, rural rump.
Post-War Boom and opposition
Ontario politics in recent times have been dominated by the Progressive Conservatives. The Liberals have formed the Government only five out of the past sixty years. For forty-two years, from 1943 to 1985 the province was governed by the Tories. During this period the Liberal Party was a rural, conservative rump with a southwestern Ontario base and were often further to the right of the moderate Red Tory Conservative administrations.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the Liberals were almost shut out of Metropolitian Toronto and other urban areas and, in 1975, fell to third place behind the dynamic Ontario New Democratic Party under Stephen Lewis. With the NDP in ascendency in the late sixties and 1970s it appeared that the Liberals could disappear altogether.
The Liberals remained more popular than the Tories among Catholic and francophone voters due to its support for extending Separate school funding, a policy the Tories opposed until their sudden reversal on the issue in 1985.
The Peterson Years
The Ontario Liberal Party first broke this hold in 1985 under the leadership of David Peterson who had modernised the party and made it appealing to urban voters and immigrants who had supported the Big Blue Machine of Tory Premiers John Robarts and William Davis.
Peterson was able to form a minority government from 1985 until 1987 due to an accord signed with the NDP in which the NDP exchanged its support for the implementation of several NDP policies. As the result of an election held once the accored expired, Peterson was returned with a majority government which was in power from 1987 to 1990.
Peterson's government ruled in a time of economic plenty where occasional instances of fiscal imprudence were not much remarked on. Peterson was a close ally of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney on the Meech Lake Accord but opposed Mulroney on the issue of free trade.
The majority Liberal government of 1987 to 1990 was less innovative than the previous minority government. The Liberals increasing conservatism caused many centre-left voters to look at the NDP and its leader Bob Rae and consider the left wing party as an alternative to the Liberals, particularly since the Liberal's co-operation with the NDP between 1985 to 1987 helped the party appear more moderate and acceptable to voters.
The election of 1990 was a shock defeat to the Liberals, who had gone in with strong poll numbers. Peterson's government lost to the New Democratic Party under Bob Rae who promised a return to the activist form of government Peterson had abandoned.
The Liberal defeat was in part caused by voter anger at going to the polls just three years into the government's mandate. The campaign was also bady run with a mid-campaign proposal to cut the provincial sales tax a particularly bad blunder. The party had also underestimated the impact of the Patti Starr fundraising scandal as well as allegations surrounding the Liberal government's links with land developers.
Common Sense Revolution
In 1995 the Liberal party was expected to replace the unpopular NDP, but a poorly run campaign under Lyn McLeod saw the party beaten by the Conservatives under Mike Harris and his right wing Common Sense Revolution platform. In the 1999 election the Conservatives started the campaign behind in the polls, but an advertising strategy focusing on attacking new Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty as well as a weak campaign by the Liberals saw the Tories returned to power.
Return to power
The 2003 Ontario election, however, saw the Tories run the poor campaign, and the Liberal party held onto its earlier support and even increased it, eventually winning a landslide victory and once again forming the government of Ontario.
While the Liberals had won the election on a centre-left platform the McGuinty government has abandoned many of its election pledges for increased funding of government programs and plead poverty due to a five billion dollar deficit. McGuinty, himself, comes from the right wing of the party and it remains to be seen whether the Liberal government will, in the end, reverse the conservative reforms of the Mike Harris years or continue the previous government's neo-conservative program and govern as a Tory lite regime.
++Hepburn resigned as Premier in October 1942 after deignating Gordon Daniel Conant as his successor and Conant was sworn in as Premier. The Ontario Liberal Association (particularly supporters of William Lyon Mackenzie King) demanded a leadership convention and one was finally held in May 1943 electing Harry Nixon. Technically, Hepburn did not resign as Liberal leader until the convention.
Leaders of the Ontario Liberal Party
+Even though Sinclair led the party through two elections he was never formally elected as leader by the Ontario Liberal Association which, due to its state of disorganization, did not organize a leadership convention until 1930.External link