Electing Mike Harris
Twenty years ago today, Ontario voted in one of its most controversial governments.
Reciting the opening of Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” might have surprised some of those attending the victory celebration at Mike Harris’s North Bay campaign headquarters on June 8, 1995. Though the selection was suggested by one of the premier-elect’s aides, it well represented the way Harris and his advisors reshaped the Ontario Progressive Conservatives from the flailing husk of the once-mighty “Big Blue Machine” to a hard-right party whose tight messaging allowed them to walk away with what was supposed to have been an easy victory for Lyn McLeod’s Liberals.
The decision Ontario voters made 20 years ago had significant repercussions, many of which we are still dealing with. The Harris team wasn’t kidding when they talked revolution.
When the writ dropped on April 28, 1995, it was clear that premier Bob Rae’s NDP government was toast. Since its election in 1990, it had endured a recession, the hostility of the business community and press, and its own financial blunders in raising the provincial deficit. The implementation of the “Social Contract” of public-service wage cuts, and the ensuing “Rae Days,” alienated traditional NDP supporters among public sector and labour unions. While Rae himself maintained some respect among the public, his government sank to the bottom of Lake Ontario in opinion polls. The NDP issued few promises during the 1995 campaign, preferring to stand on their record and reputation as a party with a conscience.
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