Time is quickly running out for this Liberal government. With recent polls showing Kathleen Wynne's personal popularity rating at 12 per cent, the lowest rating for any premier in history. Premier Wynne needs to step aside soon and allow another member of the party an opportunity to rebuild the Ontario Liberal brand while there is still time to recover before the next provincial election.
If she waits any longer, she risks depriving her party of any chance to enjoy the political cooling off period that is usually afforded any new leader. Or worse, she could refuse to leave, and lead the party over the same cliff she has driven the Ontario economy over during her disastrous tenure as Liberal leader of this once prosperous province.
Wynne's hubris is larger than the budget deficit she and her party have racked up under their leadership.
Last week's Toronto Sun poll revealed the shocking reality that if the election were called today, the current government would likely hold on to just six or seven seats and may lose official party status in 2018 if these trends don't change. Let's face reality: Wynn beat the odds in 2014 and led the Liberals to a majority victory not because of any voter respect for her party, its accomplishments, or any confidence in its leadership, but because both the Tories and the New Democrats ran terrible campaigns that left the Ontario electorate to vote for the devil they knew, rather than the devils they didn't.
Since that election, the gaffes and examples of Liberal mismanagement have been stacking up like cordwood and Ontario's voters are ready to vote for anyone else but Wynne. Witness the gains from the Tories, who find themselves sitting at 44 per cent in the polls to the Liberals' 24 per cent. The recent Forum poll even suggests, say it isn't so, that the Tories are ahead in Toronto!
Wynne's hubris is larger than the budget deficit she and her party have racked up under their leadership, and she insists she is not going to quit the leadership. If that is the case, then I am convinced we are going to see a catastrophic meltdown of her party from which the liberals are not likely to recover for some time.
Liberal failures like the "billion-dollar gas plant boondoggle," the disastrously inept mismanagement of hydro in general, the $300 billion + provincial deficit, Wynne's costly and ham-fisted handling of the carbon tax and environment files, the Sudbury By-election scandal, and the botched sale of Hydro-One have Ontarians and pundits alike reaching the same conclusion that the Liberal party's popularity and prospects cannot recover with Wynne at the helm of the government.
Ontario's economy is being subjected to damage the likes of which it has never seen and may never recover from, leaving the citizens of this once great and prosperous province to struggle against epic currents just to keep their heads above the proverbial water.
Wynne's terrible leadership and numerous failures have done real and lasting damage to the province of Ontario. It is time for her to accept responsibility for her mismanagement, step aside, little good it will do her failing party.
This is now Patrick Brown's election to lose and he needs to step up and show he has what it takes to lead Ontario out of this bleak wilderness that Wynne and her liberals have dragged us into.
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