A  surprise departure and new leaders set the stage for the end of 42 years of Progressive Conservative government in Ontario

 

The 1980s saw political change in Canada and Ontario seldom witnessed before or since. Legislation and lessons learned then are applicable now.

In Ottawa, Liberal leader Pierre Trudeau retired as Prime Minister in early 1984 and Conservative Brian Mulroney defeated Trudeau’s successor, John Turner, in September that year to take over leadership of the country.

Mulroney set as a priority negotiations to achieve free trade with the United States, and the ongoing debate over national unity on the heels of Trudeau’s National Energy program in 1980 and repatriating the constitution in 1982 without Quebec’s involvement would clutter the political agenda through the ‘80s.

Change also impacted the calendar at Queen’s Park, where Stuart Smith, a Montreal-trained psychiatrist turned McMaster University professor, struggled to lift his Ontario Liberals out of third party status. His efforts to “liberalize” the party and shift it off its rural base helped him regain the long-held Liberal position of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in the 1981 general election, ahead of the New Democrats. But the party stalled at 33 seats.

That allowed William Grenville Davis, after winning two brief terms in minority at the head of the Progressive Conservative party (1975, 1977), to reclaim a majority government under a Tory banner and extend the party’s grip on power to almost 40 years. But change was coming.

The times are changing

When Smith stepped down as leader following the ’81 election, David Robert Peterson, a young lawyer/businessman from London, first elected to the Legislature in 1975, was chosen in February 1982 to lead a  bereft and somewhat fractious Ontario Liberal Party as Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. Despite Smith’s best efforts to shape the party into a more progressive, urbanized political force, Liberals managed only a handful of the seats around the Greater Toronto Area in ’81, falling short of what was needed to emerge from  the political wilderness.

Peterson credited Smith with setting the reformation of the party in motion. “History will record that he played a major role in the modern success of the Ontario Liberal Party by dragging us into the 20th century and establishing roots in the urban areas,” he said.

In his acceptance speech to the 1982 convention, Peterson proclaimed his intention to continue to move the party off its perceived right wing base to the ‘vibrant middle, the radical centre’, and stressed economic growth as a way to increase support for social services.

Peterson faced a daunting task of deposing a cconservative party that had held power since the year of his birth. The challenge was that the Tories had occupied the centre of Ontario’s political spectrum for decades, heeding the advice of Davis predecessors Leslie Frost and John Robarts to stick to the centre.

He would joke with staff: “It is an inevitable certainty that the Tories will fall sometime. It is our task to make it happen in our lifetime.”

Peterson’s preparations

Peterson was not a neophyte when it came to politics. He learned it around the kitchen table. His father Clarence was a signatory of the Regina Manifesto in 1933 that fuelled the early socialist movement in the prairie province. Clarence ran against John Robarts in 1948 when the future premier from London sought his first elected seat on city council.

Peterson’s older brother Jim would win election as a Liberal federally in 1980, and younger brother Tim would also become an MPP in 2003. Peterson’s wife Shelley was from a politically motivated family and sister-in-law Deb Matthews would later be elected to the Ontario Legislature and rise to the position of deputy premier from 2013 to 2018 in the Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne.

Peterson set an ambitious agenda from the earliest days of his leadership, bringing  unity within the party itself as a priority. He did this by merging the interests of his rural and urban constituents, strengthening fundraising, paying off 1981 election debts, reducing the party’s long-term debts and requiring riding associations to contribute a portion of their fundraising to the central office. He installed senior staff, beefed up his legislative research team, supported more community activities and created advisory groups to increase representation of women and diversity on staff and in the Legislature.

Liberal members were assigned the responsibility of conducting task forces on a range of pertinent topics from health care to the environment, holding hearings across the province, engaging stakeholders, generating policy recommendations and news media coverage. In general, raising party profile.

Dealing with the media

To build credibility among the news media in the Ontario Legislative Press Gallery and beyond, Peterson’s research and communications offices produced both press releases and backgrounders on issues of the day. The press releases focused on the party’s position on matters at hand. The backgrounders provided objective context, along with lists of experts and other authorities that reporters might interview.

To maximize pickup by the media, some of the press releases and “Ontario Liberal Background Documents” were fashioned for weekend release when radio and television stations were frequently seeking to fill gaps in their news coverage.

Consulting widely

In a special outreach in 1985 to help shape the Liberal agenda, Peterson staged a think-tank and networking conference at Lake Couchiching to put flesh on the rather skeletal definition of “liberalism” in Ontario. It brought together an eclectic group of delegates to deliver evidence of real life on the street, in government, in universities, in corporate boardrooms and union halls. Workshops were conducted on demographics, the environment, health and education, labour, social services, political history, the media…

The guest list included leaders from all areas of discussion, including John F Kennedy speechwriter Ted Sorensen, who spoke of the Kennedy experience and the hurdles to be cleared in winning power. Peterson was there to listen; so was his caucus.

Signs showed the Liberals were making progress in rebranding themselves as a progressive alternative. They jostled with the third-place New Democrats under their new leader, Bob Rae.  Still, Davis and his Tories continued to enjoy broad support in the polls. The Liberals were travelling a rocky road between their two rivals.

During Peterson’s first two years as leader, seven MPPs left the party: one took a provincial appointment; one an industry sector job, one crossed the floor to join the Tories and, when Liberal Prime Minister John Turner called his fateful federal election for September 4, 1984, four opted out to run federally. Only two succeeded – Sheila Copps in Hamilton and Don Boudria in Eastern Ontario – as Brian Mulroney, with more than 50 per cent of the vote, romped to a 211-40  seat landslide victory over Turner with the NDP under Ed Broadbent winning 30 seats plus a   single independent MP elected.

Preparing for the 1985 election

Clearly the electorate of the 1980s was in a restive mood, and Peterson’s Liberals were facing a provincial election likely to be called by Davis in 1985. Campaign planning had been going on for months. Scores of matters affecting the lives of Ontarians had been reviewed and policy positions struck. There was a rich field of issues to be harvested and shaped into Liberal policy.

The Conservative government was debt-ridden. The provincial budget had not been balanced in 25 years, and the net debt to gross domestic product (GDP) ration had tripled despite strong economic growth. In addition to their tax load, the people of Ontario faced extras-billing by doctors, who were able to charge patients any amount for essential health service above and beyond the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP). That effectively undermined the intent of the public plan for health service for all.

Ontario was also caught in a world-wide decline in the climate and state of the environment. Industrial companies could spill chemicals onto the land and walk away without a legal liability to clean up their mess. And there were minimal controls over what could spew from smokestacks at mills, smelters and factories across the province. A Blue Box program for recycling throw-away materials was a concept yet to be introduced.

Government transparency was claimed, but opaque. Citizens had no legal access to key information on government activities and deliberations. Meanwhile, personal and private information could be shared by government agencies with anyone they chose, without that individual’s approval.

Inequities existed across provincial workplaces. Companies could pay women less than men for work of equal value under the law, and arbitrarily refuse to negotiate with unions when workers collectively voted to organize.

While multiculturalism was a grand principle in Canada, the face of Ontario’s population was scarcely reflected in the leadership of government agencies or cabinet. No man or woman of colour had ever been appointed a minister or deputy minister, and there was scant representation by women in elected or as heads of agencies.

Discrimination was an everyday practice against homosexuals. A gay person or same-sex couple could be refused housing and other fundamental rights based solely on their sexual orientation.

Political patronage was rampant, from the highest corridors of power to the clerks at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO). Countless boards and commissions were led by individuals whose Tory credentials were as prominent as their capabilities, and many government contracts were awarded to favoured clients. In justifying one Tory appointment, a prominent Government minister explained: “You don’t hire your enemies.”

Peterson’s Liberals were well into their campaign preparation when, again, change intervened.

Davis departs

Davis called a press conference at Queen’s Park for Thanksgiving Day Monday, October 8,1984, just weeks following the Mulroney win. Davis was at the top of his game, and one theory had it that Mulroney’s ideological cousins in Ontario should go to the polls while there existed a warm feeling toward Tories. His cabinet colleagues and caucus members, whose coattails had carried them through multiple elections, anticipated or prayed for another election call.

The media studio in the Ontario Legislature was jammed with print, radio and TV reporters, photographers, Tory members and hangers-on as the Red Tory premier strode down the hall with his wife, Kathleen, and son Neil, to make his announcement. North of the Legislature, in front of the Royal Ontario Museum, sat a Liberal bus ready to take Peterson and the news media fast out of the blocks to the party’s first campaign event, planned assuming an election would be called.

But William Grenville Davis would stun supporters and pundits by announcing he was stepping down from the leadership of the Progressive Conservative government that had ruled Canada’s most populous province since 1943. He would remain Premier until a successor could be chosen at a convention to be called early in 1985.

A press aide ran across the hall to inform Peterson of Davis’ decision to retire. “I knew it,” the leader said. The Liberal bus was taken back to the garage to await another day.

Fortuitous is perhaps the best word to describe the impact of Davis’ retirement on politics in Ontario. Progressive Conservative  executives set a leadership convention for late January and chose to seal membership to the date of Davis’ retirement. That insured a vote for a new leader dominated by older ‘big C and small c’ conservatives, devoid of new blood. That would work in Liberal favour.

Then, tidying up his political legacy, Davis announced before leaving that his government would extend long-withheld secondary school funding beyond grade 10 up to grade 13 graduation to Roman Catholic school boards. It was a decision that enraged the right wing of his party and caucus, and enflamed anti-Catholic rhetoric from Toronto’s Anglican archbishop Lewis Garnsworthy.

“This is how Hitler changed education policy in Germany!” the archbishop said. “By exactly the same process — by decree! And I won’t take that back.”

The rancour also benefited Liberal campaign planners. The party had long supported the constitutional extension of the funding, and the split within the Conservatives was bound to reverberate through the party’s convention. set for the Coliseum on the Canadian National Exhibition grounds.

A new premier

In the January 26 convention balloting, Red Tory attorney general Roy McMurtry was the first leadership candidate to fall, followed by his centre-left colleagues Larry Grossman and Dennis Timbrell (sometimes perceived as a Davis clone). Delegates of the once centrist Tory party of Leslie Frost, John Robarts and Bill Davis exercised their resentment at the ballot box. It showed in their choice as their next premier and party leader Frank Miller, the amiable right wing health minister from Bracebridge.

A former car dealer, Miller rose to local prominence as a Bracebridge councillor and founding father of Muskoka’s popular Santa’s Village before winning a seat in the Legislature in 1971. A self-described “Reagan conservative,” he was easily identified to the eye if not ideology by the splashy tartan jacket he frequently wore in the House and at public events.

As delegates exited to Coliseum following Miller’s selection as the 19th premier of the province, Peterson, an observer and commentator at the convention, was surrounded by a clutch of reporters amid cast-off placards, posters and pamphlets. He was asked what he thought of his prospects in the general election expected to be called within months.

“I don’t think Ontario is ready for ‘Miller’s Ontario’,” the Liberal leader said.

Election preparation moved into high gear

This site picks up that story with the May 2,1985 general election and its aftermath that less than two months later led to the June 26 swearing-in of the Peterson Liberal government to be supported for two years by the New Democratic Party. The 42-year reign of the Progressive Conservatives had come to an end.

It is the story of everything that happened between that vote and the election five years later that defeated the Peterson government, told by many of those who were there.