In the end, it came down to nine votes.
While the press and political observers had declared it a dull race, the 1992 Ontario Liberal leadership convention ended as a tight contest. It took 11 hours and five ballots to choose the first female leader of a major political party in Ontario history. As the exhaustion faded, the big question was: Would Lyn McLeod be able to reverse the fortunes of a party devastated by the previous election?
David Peterson’s decision in 1990 to go to the polls three years into a majority government proved to be a disaster: the Liberals lost 57 seats and paved the way for the province’s first NDP administration, under Bob Rae. Party members believed that arrogance and an air of superficiality had played a role in the meltdown and that the next Liberal leader would require more relatable, down-to-earth vibes.
Premier David Peterson (right), NDP leader Bob Rae, and conservative leader Mike Harris (left) prior to a debate in Toronto in August 1990. (Hans Deryk/CP)
Within a day of the electoral drubbing, potential leadership candidates were being approached. By the time the convention date was announced in November 1991, five candidates had emerged:
Charles Beer (York North): Former minister of community and social services. Emphasized treating all Ontarians with dignity. Only candidate to address one of Peterson’s pet projects, national constitutional matters.
Steven Mahoney (Mississauga West): Only candidate without cabinet experience. Wanted to promote business, cut spiralling welfare costs, and reduce size of civil service.
Lyn McLeod (Fort William): Former minister of colleges and education; energy; and natural resources. Stressed the need to make decisions on a community level, reducing the centralization of political power. Promised a “common sense” approach to government, including balancing the budget and reducing the size of the civil service. “I’m basically a middle-ground person and I believe there are many decisions in which you can accommodate the most basic concerns of different groups,” she told the Toronto Star.
David Ramsay (Timiskaming): Former minister of agriculture. Originally elected as an NDP member but switched to the Liberals. Promised to reduce provincial sales tax and demand a one-year moratorium on the GST.
Greg Sorbara (York Centre): Former minister of consumer and commercial relations. The only trilingual candidate (English, French, Italian). Supported investment in infrastructure and improving training programs. Believed Ontario’s ethnic diversity was one of its strengths.
Supporters of Charles Beer at the convention. (Toronto Star, February 9, 1992)
Within days, rumours swirled that Murray Elston — the former minister of health who’d served as interim Liberal leader since Robert Nixon had resigned in July to take a diplomatic post — would enter the race. Elston had promised not to run for the permanent leadership, but it seemed some of the party’s old guard, especially London developer and leading fundraiser Don Smith, were uncomfortable with the candidate field. When it became clear that Elston was going to run, some Liberals hit the roof. “It’s something that he’s going to have to live with,” Sorbara told reporters at Queen’s Park. “There is a question of integrity that arises, but he will have to deal with that.”
Elston claimed that, at the time he’d accepted the interim leadership, he hadn’t intended to run but that, as November approached, the pressure on him increased: “The people in the party are the ones that are going to judge whether or not I’m worthwhile for them as a leader.” Critics charged that Elston’s post gave him an unfair advantage. “I hope it will not be divisive, because the last thing we need in the party is divisiveness,” McLeod observed.
OLP election ad, 1995
The party held a series of 13 candidate forums across the province between mid-November 1991 and early January 1992. Elston’s rocky start wasn’t helped when he repeated his announcement speech during the early forums. His comments during the campaign were vague; for example, when the Toronto Star asked him what he stood for, he responded, “I don’t know yet. I’m still growing. I haven’t finished learning. I’m going to continue to develop … I haven’t reached the top of my performance yet, in my view.”
There was a general feeling that the race was boring, as most candidates played it safe by avoiding any statements, especially regarding the economy, that might come back to haunt them later. Southam News’s Mike Trickey observed that the candidates were “uniformly bland in studied niceness, never critical of the others and falling all over themselves with expressions of sincerity, panegyrics to the grassroots, and humble apologies for the haughtiness of the Peterson government.”
Supporters of Murray Elston at the convention. (Toronto Star, February 8, 1992)
Delegate selection took place over the weekend of January 10 using a proportional-representation system. Over the past decade, parties across the political spectrum had begun to view block voting and certain other practices as shady — Liberal officials were hopeful the new system would help avoid controversy. Each riding association conducted a vote and sent delegates in direct proportion to the results. Those delegates would be committed to their assigned candidate during the first ballot at the convention and could then vote for anyone on subsequent ballots. Besides these delegates, additional voters chosen would be chosen from the party ranks and affiliated organizations.
The candidates were concerned by the fact that some delegates were supporters of the federal Reform Party; Reform leader Preston Manning had suggested during a recent trip to Ontario that he wanted to attract wavering Liberals. McLeod was uncomfortable with support from delegate Rick Anderson, a lobbyist, after he’d announced his new ties to Reform. The candidates generally disagreed with Reform policies on bilingualism and multiculturalism and wanted no association with them.
Official reporting of the results from delegate selection was delayed the following week by a snowstorm that hit southwestern Ontario, leading to highway closures that caused couriers delivering the selections to cancel their deliveries. Elston led the pack with 670 delegates, followed by 618 for McLeod, 324 for Sorbara, and 183 each for the remaining candidates.
Press endorsements varied. The Ottawa Citizen backed McLeod (“There’s something appealing about having a provincial leader from outside Toronto and its orbit for a change”), while the TorontoStar supported Elston for his grasp of federal and provincial issues. The main criticisms levelled at the frontrunners: Elston’s manner was dull, and his decision to run had been questionable. McLeod, whose advisers included members of the disastrous 1990 Peterson campaign team, was packaged to the point of being robotic.
The convention opened at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton on February 7 with candidate speeches. Elston delivered a long, ponderous attack on the Rae government. McLeod thanked MPPs who supported her, offered vague promises about good government, and made a thinly veiled attack on Elston by suggesting that “it’s one thing to manage; it’s another to lead.” While her supporters clapped for other candidates during their speeches, Elston’s did not. Ramsay spoke in clichés, Sorbara warned against falling prey to the “easy politics of the fight,” and Mahoney employed a folksy style that reminded some of a televangelist. Beer focused on his political beliefs: “Leadership is about being tough in opposition, but not petty or stupid, to provide an effective alternative. It’s time we showed people that planning for the future doesn’t mean planning for the next election.”
Lyn McLeod with her daughters at the convention. (Toronto Star, February 9, 1992)
Peterson gave his only speech during a lunchtime tribute. He warned of increasing political divisions. “I have never, I think in my political career and indeed in probably my adult life, seen a more polarized country,” Peterson observed. “We don’t need a future where … Ottawa is governed by big business and Queen’s Park is governed by big labour and never the twain meets.” Though Peterson was present throughout the convention, often watching from a private box, he was treated as an invisible man by most delegates.
Among the oddball items available to delegates was a set of 45 trading cards featuring the candidates, the Liberal caucus, and former party leaders. The creator of the $20 set joked that maybe the Dalton McGuinty rookie card (he was the only new Liberal MPP elected in 1990) “will be worth $1,500 one day just like Bobby Orr’s.” Meanwhile, Beer’s supporters found their section of the arena was located under an ad proclaiming “Canada’s Favourite Turkey.” They removed the Butterball ad, upsetting the arena managers. Beer’s supporters agreed to buy $1,100 worth of turkey (which it was hinted would be used for a fundraising dinner to cover campaign costs) as compensation for destroying the ad.
As candidates dropped out over the long voting process on February 8, only Mahoney pledged his delegates to someone else: McLeod. “From the time of McLeod’s speech,” Ottawa Citizen columnist Jim Coyle noted, “a scoreboard hanging over her team’s section in Copps Coliseum flashed the word ‘momentum.’ That momentum was slow, a little reluctant, but it built.”
Ontario Liberal Leader Lyn McLeod goes after Premier Bob Rae on Sunday Shopping (1992)
While Elston led the first two ballots, McLeod took an eight-vote lead on the third. Her lead widened to 61 votes on the fourth before, just after midnight on February 9, she finally won by only nine votes on the fifth. Elston’s support was primarily drawn from southwestern Ontario, while McLeod’s was more widespread. She also had the most support among the caucus in the legislature.
“It has taken a long, long time for women to be more fully involved in politics,” McLeod said during her first official press conference as party leader on February 9. “The province is ready for a premier who brings the kind of competence, principles, and directions that this province is looking for, and there won’t be any problem if that person happens to be female.” McLeod noted that the under-representation of women in the legislature showed that “there are probably still some systematic barriers, maybe not that obvious, that need to be addressed.”
Summing up McLeod’s victory, Georgette Gagnon and Dan Rath noted in their book Not WithoutCause that “she owed her victory less to a perception among Liberals that she stood for fundamental change than to her head start over Elston, her smart, hard-working and dedicated campaign team, and her potential to offer Ontarians in the next election the image of an ‘anti-politician’ and someone much different than Bob Rae.”
Observers felt McLeod’s greatest challenge would be positioning the party between the NDP and the Progressive Conservatives, who were moving further right. The consensus among Liberals was that, as Rae’s popularity sank, McLeod was destined to be the next premier. But, as a Windsor Star editorial accurately warned, “they shouldn’t be too self-confident.” Indeed, despite high polling at the start of the 1995 provincial election, McLeod would lose to Mike Harris and his Common Sense Revolution.
Sources: Not Without Cause by Georgette Gagnon and Dan Rath (Toronto: HarperPerennial, 1992); the February 10, 1992, edition of the Brantford Expositor; the January 6. 1992, and February 10, 1992, editions of the Globe and Mail; the February 7, 1992, February 8, 1992, and February 10, 1992, editions of the Kitchener-Waterloo Record; the January 10, 1992, and February 8, 1992, editions of the Ottawa Citizen; the January 11, 1992, and January 16, 1992, editions of the Owen Sound SunTimes; the May 26, 1991, December 9, 1991, January 6, 1992, February 1, 1992, and February 2, 1992, editions of the Toronto Star; and the November 13, 1991, January 9, 1992, January 24, 1992, February 10, 1992, February 11, 1992, and February 14, 1992, editions of the Windsor Star.
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