Liberal leader Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne take part in a joint news conference in Ottawa Thursday January 29, 2015.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
The personal and political ties between the federal and Ontario Liberals are the closest they have been in decades as Justin Trudeau positions himself for the upcoming federal election in which Ontario is the key battleground.
This synergy helped Ontario Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne win a majority government last year – Mr. Trudeau, the federal Liberal Leader, lent his star power to Ms. Wynne, appearing at two major rallies, including one in Ottawa where her team sensed her numbers were slumping. They won the five Ottawa ridings.
"There is a lot of crossover," said Andrew Bevan, Premier Wynne's principal adviser and most powerful strategist. His Liberal credentials include running Ms. Wynne's first provincial riding campaign in 2003, chief of staff to Martin cabinet minister and Toronto MP John Godfrey, and policy and communications director on Stéphane Dion's successful federal leadership bid in 2006, and later serving as his chief of staff.
"A number of us have worked together directly before," said Mr. Bevan. "… they're just not friends or folks of the same political party, they are trusted friends and … people [with] who you have been through a bunch of wars before."
Both provincial and federal strategists say it's helpful to the Liberal brand that their leaders are pushing a consistent message on infrastructure investment, that they have similar approaches to climate change and are both talking about pension reform and other middle-class issues.
Under redistribution, Ontario has gained 15 new seats and will elect 121 of 338 members of Parliament. It is considered the region where the election will be won or lost. As leader of the third party in the House of Commons, Mr. Trudeau needs all the help he can get from the instant organization provided by the Wynne Liberals.
Ontario Progressive Conservative politicians argue the provincial Liberals are already helping out the federal ones.
"It just seems like every week or every other week the Liberals are using the legislative assembly as a means to attack Stephen Harper and the Conservatives in what I believe is a way to assist Justin Trudeau," said Kitchener PC MPP Mike Harris. "That's up to us on our own time to get out and knock on doors but not to use the unpartisan tools of the legislative assembly to blatantly give advantage to Justin Trudeau …"
Mr. Harris points to private members' motions by Liberal MPPs supporting infrastructure spending as a way of stimulating the economy, a policy supported by both Ms. Wynne and Mr. Trudeau – or the motion from another Liberal MPP attacking the federal government for announcing in its budget that it won't fund transit until 2017. Mr. Harris says the fact that the government is not going to give details of its cap-and-trade scheme until after the federal election is more assistance for the federal Liberals.
Zita Astravas, Ms. Wynne's spokeswoman, dismissed the Tory thesis, writing in an e-mail, "the Premier has proven her ability to put politics aside and work with governments, premiers, governors and municipal leaders of all stripes."
However, the Wynne government's new sex-education curriculum, which will be taught beginning in September, is enraging many Ontarians, especially those living in the so-called 905 ridings in Greater Toronto. And with the lines blurred between Ontario and federal Liberals, Mr. Trudeau and his Ontario team may be blamed at polling booths in the October election for what is a provincial initiative.
It's happened before – just days before Ontarians were to vote in the 1975 Ontario election, John Turner, then Pierre Trudeau's finance minister and rival, abruptly quit Parliament. His move was seen to reflect badly on Ontario Liberals – and believed to have contributed to the Liberal leader Robert Nixon's loss to Bill Davis.
And in the 2004 federal election, Ontario Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty's unpopular "health tax" hurt Paul Martin in the province as voters didn't distinguish between federal and provincial Liberals.
Mr. Trudeau and other Liberals are blaming the federal Tories for whipping up the sentiment against the new curriculum. Some Liberal candidates have privately expressed concern to senior Liberals over the controversial policy and are worried it will take votes away in the election. The Globe and Mail has reported on how parents opposed to the sex-education curriculum are not making a distinction between provincial and federal policy.
But Liberal MP Adam Vaughan, who represents a downtown Toronto riding, scoffs at that.
"I'm not hearing it at all," he says. "Do you think Charles McVety [Toronto Christian leader who is opposed to the new curriculum] is going to swing an election? Really? Really? Give me a break. I mean guns are more dangerous than sex."
Meanwhile, Navdeep Bains, the Liberal candidate for Mississauga-Malton, one of the 905-area ridings, and the co-chair of the Ontario campaign for Mr. Trudeau, says he isn't hearing about the issue from residents. "The issues I hear at the door are around immigration policies … people are not happy with Harper's politics of fear," he said. "They don't like when they pit one community against another."
Who's who?
Organization charts in Ms. Wynne's and Mr. Trudeau's offices read like a who's who of senior Liberal strategists. They are the key players from decades of Liberal warfare, who know Parliament Hill as intimately as Queen's Park and have served past premiers and prime ministers from Jean Chrétien to Paul Martin to Dalton McGuinty.
Some of the names are familiar – former MP John Godfrey was recently appointed special adviser to the Wynne government on climate change. Former long-time Martin aide and pollster David Herle, of Gandalf Group, is a senior adviser on both the Wynne and Trudeau teams. A national pollster, he was key in positioning Ms. Wynne as a centrist as part of the winning strategy in last year's election campaign. Alex Swann, who worked on Parliament Hill for deputy prime minister Anne McLellan, works with Mr. Herle, and is involved with the Wynne team.
Peter Donolo, former chief of staff to onetime Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and former communications director to Mr. Chrétien, is now an Ontario public servant in the Cabinet Office, involved in policy and communications. He is also close to the Trudeau team, including Gerald Butts, Mr. Trudeau's most senior strategist. Mr. Butts is a former principal secretary to Mr. McGuinty and is also close to Ms. Wynne. Katie Telford, meanwhile, who works with Mr. Butts in Ottawa, is the co-chair of Mr. Trudeau's election campaign and had worked for Mr. Bevan in Mr. Dion's office.
Even Wynne deputy chief of staff Pat Sorbara, who is now at the centre of the alleged Sudbury by-election bribery scandal, is expected to help out on the federal campaign as she is the key campaign organizer in the province for the Liberals, according to one senior Liberal source.