The Ontario Party hasn't made much of an impact on the Ontario election — but some things could change that, observers say.

Leader Derek Sloan, a former Conservative MP, was expelled from the federal party's caucus after it came to light that he'd accepted a donation from white nationalist Paul Fromm.

Erin O'Toole, Tory leader at the time, called the donation "the last straw," saying Sloan had shown "a pattern of destructive behaviour involving multiple incidents and disrespect towards the Conservative team for over a year."

Sloan is running in Hastings—Lennox and Addington.

"He's been unsuccessful at galvanizing interest or attention," says Karl Baldauf, a former senior aide in the Progressive Conservative (PC) government.

Pandemic countermeasures such as mask and vaccination mandates were the most obvious issues around which to rally support for the Ontario Party, but now that the rules have eased, it's harder to use them to energize voters, Baldauf said.

The party's candidates include MPP Rick Nicholls, who's running for re-election in Chatham-Kent—Leamington. Elected in 2018 as a PC, Nicholls left the caucus in 2021 over his refusal to get vaccinated. He's represented the riding since 2011.

In April, the party announced it had hired longtime Republican operative Roger Stone as a strategic adviser.

Both Baldauf and Myer Siemiatycki, a professor emeritus at Toronto Metropolitan (formerly Ryerson) University, say this election is largely about bread-and-butter economic issues.

"The election is very much about tangibles," Siemiatycki says. "It's about the price of groceries, the price of gas, the price of a home, the quality of care in hospitals and long-term care.

"One piece of fortune that's come (Premier) Doug Ford's way is that COVID has virtually disappeared from the election agenda, and that helps Ford with the further right."

Says Baldauf: "The great silent majority of Ontarians are concerned about ... affordability issues," which makes them less likely to support a fringe party.

Speaking of which, the People's Party of Canada got about five per cent of the national vote in 2021, but Baldauf says party leader Maxime Bernier was much better known than Sloan.

"He'd been a cabinet minister, and he'd been somebody who came close to becoming leader of one of the two national governing parties of our country."

Aside from the four parties that won seats in the 2018 election, the others, including the Ontario Party, have seven per cent of the popular vote among them, according to the most recent polling by Mainstreet Research.

Ford is running a more middle-of-the-road campaign than he did in 2018, Siemiatycki says: "Doug Ford 2.0 is quite a different candidate, and, sort of ironically, almost the opposite of the disrupter. He's now saying, 'I'll get you back to normal (and) onto a solid footing.' He's messaging a much more centrist campaign, (thereby creating) space for the Ontario Party (and) the New Blue party."

Part of the energy of the 2018 PC campaign came from well-organized social conservatives, Siemiatycki says, and Ford will get hurt if they're not as active and committed this time.

On the other hand, a large pool of centrist votes in Ontario is available to a PC campaign, given the right approach, Baldauf points out. Forty-four per cent of Liberal voters are at least open to voting PC, he says, pointing to polling from Abacus Data.

If Ford starts slipping in the polls, he might try a more right-wing, populist message, Siemiatycki says.

"If Americans can suddenly discover that the biggest threat to their lives is critical race theory, then Ford could conjure up something going on in the school system that's a great threat to our way of life and run with that."

As of May 11, the Ontario Party had candidates in 59 ridings. In 2018, it ran five, who got about 2,300 votes among them.

As for Sloan, he'll get nowhere without attention. One way of getting some might be abrasive protests at Ford events, similar to the demonstrations at federal Liberal events in the 2021 election.

"Derek Sloan will be looking for opportunities to get onto the radar in any way he can," Baldauf says, such as interrupting other party leaders while they're on tour.

"Through some of his inappropriate comments on Twitter and elsewhere, (he's shown) he's prepared to do what it takes to get attention. And while that may not appeal to reasonable people, his goal is to begin to generate momentum behind himself and attract attention by any means necessary."

The Mainstreet Research poll of 1,639 respondents was conducted from May 5 to 10 via automated voice-response technology and has a margin of error of +/- 2.4 per cent at the 95 per cent confidence interval.

Mainstreet is part owner of iPolitics and QP Briefing.

How the Ontario Party could gain the traction it now lacks

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