Preville on Politics

Toronto, Canada’s new political orphan

Posted on March 19, 2008 by Philip Preville

Paul Wells was first out of the gate with the bull’s eye analysis of Monday’s by-election results, which is that Toronto is becoming Liberaler and Liberaler. It’s echoed this morning by the Star’s Chantal Hébert. In federal politics, Toronto increasingly agrees with itself yet is increasingly at odds with the rest of the country. And it is so convinced of its correctness that it is prone to dismissing other views for their obvious failure to see things the same way it does.

I used to live in places like that. One was called Quebec. The other was called Alberta. Both retreated into parochial regional politics—the Bloc in Quebec, the Reform Party/Canadian Alliance out west. Toronto still backs a national party in the Liberals. The question is whether the Liberal party is in the process of becoming a Toronto-based rump with no political grasp on its hinterland. The party has, through the 1990s, remained pan-Canadian for its ability to retain seats in urban Vancouver and Montreal, but the results in Outremont last year and Quadra this week suggest that those strongholds are eroding. A poll from last month showed the Tories gaining ground in Ontario, too. Here is the anecdote Wells offers up to illustrate Toronto’s political detachment:

When I told somebody in Toronto book publishing my book about Harper would be called Right Side Up, she said it was a great title but that her preference would be something along the lines of Stop Him Now. This transformation of Toronto into a Liberal enclave appears to have deepened since then.

We’ve all heard the old joke that Northern Ontario begins at Bloor. During the Mike Harris years, that punchline became a political reality at Queen’s Park, and the city suffered greatly. The same may yet happen federally. I’m not arguing that Torontonians need to change their political views. I am arguing that they need to stop talking exclusively to like-minded neighbours and relearn how to export their politics beyond the shores of Lake Ontario.

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Shawn Micallef March 19, 2008 at 1:52 p.m.

I always thought my hometown of Windsor also had a sort of "western alienation" condition to it. "Ontario/Canada stops at London" was and is always the line. So much of it sounds like Alberta, a sort of outsider status (mixed in with other strange border town phenomena).

Generally Windsor voted NDP when everybody else did not is a bit like the Liberal-Toronto thing you suggest (with exceptions of course -- Gray Herb, Paul Martin Sr.).

I'm very interested in the next election down there (in Windsor) -- the NDP seem to be shedding the mushy-uncommitted-centre-left folk in droves and driving them to the Liberals and the greens, so I wonder if that will happen in Windsor, where NDP connections are strong and historic.

Steve Stinson March 19, 2008 at 2:19 p.m.

I'm always amused at the response when I tell people "I kinda like Harper." They'll look at me in total horror and disbelief as if they want to vomit. Then they'll sputter about Bush and evangelical Christians.

Toronto is most definitely a tough crowd for Conservatives.

Philip Preville

Veteran freelance writer Philip Preville lived much of his life in Montreal and Edmonton before he was lured, like so many Torontonians before him, by the promise of more work and a better living. A National Magazine Award winner and former Canadian Journalism Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Massey College, Preville writes Toronto Life’s politics column. He lives with his wife and one-year-old son in Riverdale, just close enough to the Don Valley Parkway that he can hear it when he steps outside his house—but just far enough away that it doesn’t keep him awake at night. On his office wall hangs a 1938–39 press pass belonging to his grandfather, Elias Gannon, who wrote for the Montreal Star.

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