Queen's Park
Move to dump Tory as leader likely to fail
Eric Dowd
Ontario's Progressive Conservatives are being urged to dump leader John Tory and return to the far-right policies of former premier Mike Harris - but they would have as much a chance of winning running as the Flat Earth Society.

The arguments for replacing Tory are considerable, because he lost ground for his party and his seat in the October election, although a case can and is being made that he has unusual talents and deserves another chance.

There is no sign of a revival of the public enthusiasm for slashing government and riding roughshod over dissent that were characteristic of the Harris regime, and unhappy memories of these were among the reasons Tory lost.

The Conservatives are itching to return to government, particularly because they have run Ontario for 50 of the past 64 years and may feel they have lost their birthright.

The most outspoken advocate of cloning Harris, his former education minister John Snobelen, is claiming Harris gained reputations by reducing government and taxes, and making promises and keeping them, that remain valuable to the party. He contends Conservatives under Harris's short-lived successor, premier Ernie Eves, and later Tory could have won elections if only they had reminded voters of Harris and his record.

He recalls that Eves distanced himself from Harris and Tory went out of his way to stress he was not Harris, and neither did anything to explain and defend Harris's record.

Other Conservatives claim many Ontarians still yearn for Harris's policies of smaller government, lower taxes and less intervention in their lives and that Tory has abandoned them by pushing centrist policies difficult to distinguish from Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty's, while promising to spend as freely as the profligate Liberals and New Democrats.

Several former aides to Harris are among those canvassing to start the formal process of replacing Tory at a party meeting in February and clearly looking for a rightwing leader.

Those urging the Conservatives to return to the far right are telling the truth, but not the whole truth. Many idolized Harris for a time, principally because he saved money, planned privatizations and put new curbs on unions

But his popularity plummeted because he weakened essential services and got in so many fights that he made Mike Tyson look timid. Those who want his policies and style to return do not seem to have noticed this.

Eves took note and became a watered-down version of Harris by acts including postponing cuts in taxes and services, promising to restore some of Harris's huge reductions in welfare benefits and starting to talk to unions.

Tory went further by not asking Harris to appear for him in the election campaign, but pointedly inviting the moderate former premier William Davis to join him at a couple of rallies.

He also had most of the those running under him describing themselves as "John Tory candidates" rather than Conservatives, clearly because he did not want them thought of as in the same party as Harris.

A small rump of Conservatives wanted their party to look more like that of Harris in the campaign, but quickly ran out of steam.

McGuinty also recognized Harris's record had become heavy baggage for the Conservatives. His TV commercials concentrated on warning against bringing back the Harris era, until Tory's careless promise to fund private, faith-based schools became an even stronger weapon to hammer him with.

Nothing much has changed. Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has postponed a federal election mainly because his far-right policies have failed to whip up enthusiasm in Ontario, where there are many seats.

There is no sign of any return internationally to the extreme conservative policies that were in vogue when Harris followed a path that had been set by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

The right's turn will come again, but those who want to bring back Harris's Common Sense Revolution do not seem to recognize that it is out of fashion.