Opinion | If Doug Ford is re-elected, the real winner will be Justin Trudeau

MONTREAL – To see Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole and her caucus falter these days is to be reminded that the cream rises to the top.

In politics, that means that talent, at the elected or backroom level, is more likely to be attracted by success and power than by the alternative.

It’s not just the lure of the most lucrative positions.

As anyone who has served on both sides of the divide can attest, it is more rewarding to articulate and/or influence policies in government than to take it upon oneself to criticize them in opposition.

On this basis, having one’s own party in power in provincial capitals is almost always a very mixed blessing for a federal leader.

Take the NDP, for example. In recent years, the party’s success in British Columbia has translated into the loss to Jagmeet Singh of most of its most prominent veterans from that province.

After the federal New Democrats fell to third place in 2015, Nathan Cullen, Murray Rankin, Sheila Malcolmson and Fin Donnelly migrated to the government benches in Victoria.

It is no coincidence that some of the NDP’s best years at the provincial level have often coincided with lean times for the party at the federal level.

These days, that same pattern holds true for the O’Toole Conservatives.

In fact, it may be that one of the worst things to happen to the federal party, post-Stephen Harper, was the return to government of its Ontario cousin four years ago.

For both the Liberals and the Conservatives, success at Queen’s Park has consistently been accompanied by a stint in opposition at the federal level, and vice versa.

When Brian Mulroney led the Tories out of the federal wilderness in the mid-1980s, he did so with the decisive help of the group of strategists who had masterminded the victories of Ontario Premier William Davis.

Once Mulroney came to power, many Ontario backroom veterans migrated to the federal capital. The Ontario Tories, meanwhile, soon found themselves relegated to opposition for a decade.

Fast forward to 2003 and the Liberal victory of Dalton McGuinty. That allowed Harper, a few years later, to recruit the Ontario triumvirate of former provincial ministers Jim Flaherty, John Baird and Tony Clement to head his Ontario candidate team. A great deal of backroom intelligence accompanied him.

In the same vein, Justin Trudeau, during his early years as Liberal leader and prime minister, brought dozens of former McGuinty team members into the federal backroom.

When it comes to federal and provincial politics, there are not many A-team members to call on. Those in government are usually the first to recruit them.

An internal autopsy of O’Toole’s failed election campaign has just concluded that he was “over-managed” by his strategists. Since then, there have been many indications that not only is O’Toole getting bad advice, but that he lacks the judgment to distinguish between a promising idea and one that erodes credibility.

But even if the Conservative leader wanted to hire a shrewder crew to help steer his list ship, he would find that many of his party’s proven strategists are busy. That’s particularly true in Ontario, the essential piece in any federal electoral jigsaw puzzle.

With the province about to go to the polls in the spring, and with Premier Doug Ford’s prospects for victory undeniably better than O’Toole’s for maintaining his lead, all hands are more likely to be on deck for the premier of Canada’s largest province than for the beleaguered federal leader of the Official Opposition.

From that point of view, Ford’s re-election later this year would not necessarily be a bad thing for Trudeau. As long as the Tories hold Queen’s Park, many of their best and brightest strategists will be content to leave their quarrelsome federal partners to their own devices.

After all, it is not inconvenient for the prime minister and the premier to blame each other for any gaffes that occur during their tenure. The pandemic conversation has provided examples of that dynamic.

Similarly, the presence at Queen’s Park of a Tory government almost always makes life more difficult for an Official Opposition federal leader of the same persuasion.

How to oppose a national policy that has the support of such a prominent ally as the premier of Canada’s largest province?

Take child care: by all indications, Ontario is about to join the other provinces and territories and sign on to Trudeau’s plan.

O’Toole has promised that a Conservative federal government would scrap the initiative upon taking office. But if Ford is re-elected, Ontario Tories will be fully committed to Trudeau’s childcare policy when Canada returns to the polls. And that makes the current Conservative position untenable.

As counterintuitive as it sounds, a Progressive Conservative victory in Ontario this spring could go a long way toward cementing Trudeau’s legacy on social policy.