Liberals Rout Tories in Ontario Elections; U.S.-Canada Trade Pact May Be in Peril

The Liberal Party crushed its opposition in Ontario voting Thursday, winning its first provincial elections in 50 years and establishing party leader David Peterson as one of Canada’s most powerful political figures.

The Liberals, who had controlled the provincial legislature as a minority government for the last two years in a loose coalition with the socialist New Democratic Party, all but obliterated the Progressive Conservative Party that had dominated Ontario politics from the 1930s until 1985.

With all of the province’s 130 ridings--as Canada calls its voting districts--reporting, the Liberals had won or were leading for 95 seats, the New Democrats 19 and the Tories 16.

Even during the last two years, the Tories--as the Progressive Conservatives are known--had held more seats than either the Liberals or the New Democrats.

The outcome was so clear from the outset that the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and the Canadian Press wire service declared the Liberals winners within 25 minutes after the polls closed.

The Tory defeat was so devastating that the party lost its status as the official opposition, the first time in 70 years that it had finished third. To make matters even worse, Progressive Conservative leader Larry Grossman was defeated, losing a Toronto seat held first by his father and then by himself since 1955. Thursday night, Grossman resigned as party leader.

Wide Ramifications

The ramifications of the stunning Liberal victory go well beyond Ontario. Most Canadian political experts said the vote was a virtual referendum on a free-trade agreement with the United States.

In fact, Grossman based his campaign almost entirely on his support for such an agreement, which is a major goal of the national Tory government.

The 43-year-old Peterson never flatly opposed such an agreement, but he campaigned hard against the tactics and goals of the national government’s negotiators and all but pandered to the labor unions and special-interest groups fighting a free-trade agreement.

Because of the powerful role the provinces play in implementing national policy, particularly in economic and trade matters, opposition by Ontario--Canada’s largest and richest province--could destroy chances for a pact with Washington.

And at a time when the national Liberal Party is at its weakest state in Canadian history and its leader, John Turner, the least popular of the three federal party leaders, Peterson’s victory automatically places him at the forefront of Liberal affairs.

The Liberal victory, which went beyond even the most private expectations of party strategists, also represented the astounding growth of Peterson as a politician. Two years ago he ranked last in public popularity among the three party leaders. He was considered bla1852055649then-powerful Tory legislative caucus.

First he changed his image, switching from glasses to contact lenses, taking speech lessons and improving his television manners. But what really sparked his public acceptance was the way he operated as premier of a minority government.

Taking advantage of a dispirited and divided Tory opposition and co-opting the New Democrats, Peterson pushed through several popular laws, in particular measures limiting what physicians can charge patients, strengthening environmental protection rules and guaranteeing equal pay for women.

And he made campaign promises to dole out billions of dollars for such popular items as new highways, subway routes and subsidies.

When all of this showed great popularity in the polls, Peterson called an election 40 days ago, ending his coalition with the New Democrats and setting up the possibility of four years of 1835100783voters again.

The defeat of the Tories and Grossman means that what had been a centrist party more resembling the U.S. Democrats than Republicans will end up as a rural, right-wing rump in an increasingly progressive and urban province where more than half of the population lives in Toronto.

Not only did Grossman, a self-described “Red Tory,” or liberal member of the party, lose, but so did every Tory candidate in metropolitan Toronto and all others who counted themselves as Red Tories.

Grossman signaled the ascendancy of the right within his party when he announced during the night that he was resigning as Progressive Conservative leader.

For the New Democrats, winning enough seats to be the official opposition means greater visibility and power within the legislature and a sense of greater legitimacy for a leftist political stance that had been dismissed in the past as irrelevant if not loony.

The only break in the euphoria covering the Liberals was a concern that it might have won too large a victory, one that would create unrealistic expectations by the public and leave Peterson with too many caucus members demanding too few Cabinet positions and other political rewards.