What Christine Elliott's departure means for Doug Ford and Ontario's election

Christine Elliott's decision not to seek re-election means one quarter of the Progressive Conservatives who won seats in 2018 won't be running for Premier Doug Ford's party in June. 

That trend and Elliott's announcement have prompted lots of anti-Ford partisans to throw around the "rats deserting the sinking ship" metaphor and other such claims that the Ontario PCs are facing defeat. 

The theory is so full of holes that if it were a ship, it would already be at the bottom of the ocean.

First of all, the PC Party ship is not showing any actual signs of sinking: they're consistently polling in the high 30s. Absolutely things can change by election day, but that is a pretty good position for a governing party to be in with less than three months to go. 

Secondly, Elliott's departure is not in any way unexpected: she's 67, has been in public life since 2006, and has just spent two years as health minister in a pandemic. Only someone blinded by partisanship would conclude that she's leaving simply because she believes the PCs will lose the election. 

It is, however, worth considering the potential impact on the PC Party's fortunes when so many of its 76 MPPs elected in 2018 are not running in 2022.

You can break down those 19 MPPs into two categories:

• 12 of them (including Elliott and former cabinet minister Rod Phillips) have chosen not to seek reelection while still sitting on the government benches.
• 7 of them were either kicked out of or left the PC caucus over the past three-plus years (some of them are running again, but either for another party or as independents). 

The departure of incumbents is not uncommon when a government is getting long in the tooth. Eleven of Kathleen Wynne's MPPs took a pass on seeking re-election in 2018. Of course, the Liberals had been in power for 15 years, and some of those politicians could sense the end was nigh as the voters turned against Wynne.

What's notable about the wave of PCs declining to run this time is that it's happening in the government's first term. 

Veteran Liberal John Fraser, the MPP for Ottawa South, said Monday he can't remember in all his years observing politics a government having such a high proportion of its members leave in its first term. 

Still, it would be unwise for the opposition parties to read too much into the PC departures. It's not necessarily a sign of a party with its back against the wall.   

Most of those who've chosen not to run again are long-time MPPs who spent years in opposition before 2018, so their decision to leave politics is far more about moving on rather than abandoning ship. 

Also, PC Party campaign strategists aren't sweating about most of these 19 seats, because they're in relatively safe Tory territory.  

But in five or six of these ridings, missing out on even a little bit of an incumbency advantage could hurt the PCs if the province-wide race is tight. You could put Kitchener South-Hespeler, Cambridge, Scarborough Centre, Ajax and Burlington all in this category, and possibly Durham too. None of these are what the PCs would consider safe seats.  

This matters for the election. Ford will win another majority government if the PCs hold on to at least 63 of the 76 seats they won in 2018. Those half dozen seats are among the key swing ridings that will decide the result on June 2.  

Elliott's departure means far less about the PCs' prospects of winning the election than it does about what a second-term Ford government would look like. 

Multiple sources in and around the PCs have told me that Elliott has acted as a moderating influence on Ford during his time as premier (Having heard similar information, the Toronto Star's Martin Regg Cohn offered this analysis on the weekend. As for what Elliott's departure really means, this view from TVO's Matt Gurney is also worth reading). 

I was told Elliott had to "light cabinet on fire" back in mid-March of 2020 to get Ford to agree to declare a state of emergency when the first wave of COVID-19 was starting to hit the province.

It's worth recalling a key moment late in the 2018 election campaign, when the NDP was gaining on the PCs. The party's strategists decided for the first time to put a bunch of candidates considered to be cabinet material together with Ford in front of the cameras.

It was designed to send a message to voters who were leaning PC but had concerns about Ford as premier: "don't worry, look at the solid, competent people who'll be part of his government."

Eight candidates who appeared alongside Ford that day made it into cabinet. Two of them — Phillips and Elliott — won't be back.

The opposition parties are naturally trying to make hay with the departures from the PC ranks.

"It's clear it's becoming more and more difficult for these government MPPs to defend the indefensible, in terms of the way that Doug Ford has been leading this province," said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath on Friday after Elliott made her plans official. 

Fraser, who serves as the Liberals' house leader, questions what Elliott leaving means for Ford's cabinet team. 

"If you're going to play peek-a-boo with the people of Ontario, then you'd better have some pretty strong ministers to cover," he said Monday at Queen's Park. 

Of course, the problem of putting together another cabinet is a problem that Ford would only be too happy to have after June 2.