1999 Ontario general election

General elections were held on June 3, 1999, to elect members of the 37th Legislative Assembly of the Canadian province Ontario.

The governing Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario (PC), led by Premier Mike Harris, was re-elected to a second majority government.

Redistribution of representation

The size of Ontario's legislature was reduced by a fifth, from 130 to 103 Members of Provincial Parliaments (MPPs), through this election. The last time the Legislative Assembly of Ontario had experienced a reduced number of seats heading into an election was in 1934, when the legislature was reduced from 112 to 90 seats.

Previously from the 1886 provincial election onward, the province's electoral boundaries were different from those used in federal elections. Since the 1896 provincial election there has consistently been more provincial electoral districts (or "ridings" colloquially in English Canada) than federal electoral districts in Ontario. The difference in numbers peaked when the 1975 provincial election returned 125 MPPs compared to the 88 Ontario MPs returned in the federal election a year earlier.

During the 1995 election campaign, the Progressive Conservative Party pledged, among many reforms aimed to reduce the size of government proposed in its 1995 election platform Common Sense Revolution, to reduce the number of provincial and municipal politicians. In December, 1996, the Fewer Politicians Act, 1996 came into effect and updated the Representation Act to make provincial electoral districts identical to federal electoral districts.

While the reduction of seats was among the less contentious measures implemented by the incumbent PC government, it carries with it significance political consequences to the political landscape of the province, organizational and structural consequences to the three political parties represented in the legislature, and life consequences to the incumbent MPPs and their staff.

Reduction of seats

The reduction of 27 seats was felt across the provinces. With the exception of two regional municipalities, all regions and areas of provinces saw a reduction of representation The reduction was particularly severe for Northern Ontario and City of Toronto, two areas where the oppositions parties are relatively strong. With explosive population growth through much of the 1980s and 1990s, York Region and Peel Region were the only exception to the reduction, gaining 2 and 1 new seats respectively. Conincidentally, the PC swept both regions.

Faceoff between incumbents

The elimination of such large numbers of ridings resulted in many incumbent MPPs directly facing each other for the new seats. In a number of instances, MPPs from the same party had to compete for their party's nomination.

With eight fewer seats among them, Toronto incumbents faced the most chaotic nomination landscape as many of them saw their former electoral districts broken up into multiple significant but non-majority pieces and distributed to three or more new districts each with another incumbent claiming majority. For example, education minister David Johnson saw 39% of his former Don Mills riding went to Beaches—East York (which also consisted of 95% of NDP Frances Lankin's former Beaches—Woodbine riding), 36% went to Don Valley West (also consist of 46% of cabinet colleague David Turnbull's former York Mills riding, along with over a third of the former riding of two other caucus colleagues) and only 25% went to Don Valley East (also consisted of 73% of Liberal David Caplan's former riding of Oriole), the riding where he ultimately met his defeat.

With eighty-two incumbent members, the Progressive Conservative Party saw six nomination contests between incumbent MPPs, mostly fought by lower profile backbenchers. The exception was the contest that pitted Doug Ford Sr, father of future premier Doug Ford, against legislative speaker Chris Stockwell, during which the future premier, then referred to as Doug Ford Jr., was prominently featured for his allegation that Stockwell supporters has rigged the rules to require members to prove their residential address.

With a concentration of its caucus members in Toronto, the Liberal Party faced grave risk of having multiple acrimonious internal contests. It has largely avoided such predicaments through an informal system where members with seniority were given priority. Senior members were urged to declare their intentions early, and junior members interested in same district were leaned upon to select another districts in exchange for being shielded from non-caucus challengers. This led to 1996 leadership contest runner up Gerrard Kenney yielding York South—Weston, the recipient district of 81% of Kennedy's York South, to Joseph Cordiano, the former leadership rival who delivered the final blow to his leadership bid. In the end, there was only one contest among Liberal MPPs, a highly acrimonious battle between Annamarie Castrilli, a contestant in the party's 1996 leadership contest, and Monte Kwinter, a minister in the Peterson ministry, for the new electoral district of York Centre. Following her nomination defeat, Castrilli switched over the PCs on the day the election writ was issued, and was nominated to challenge Kennedy in the general election. Her subsequent defeat made her the only incumbent to have been twice defeated by fellow MPPs in this election cycle.

The general election featured sixteen contests with two incumbent MPPs from different parties, many of them high profile members. The Liberals were most successful in defending their MPPs. In the twelves contests they were part of, incumbent Liberals won all nine against PC incumbents PCs, and two of the three against NDP incumbents. The only contest they lost was to NDP leader Howard Hampton. The opposite was true for the governing PC. In the thirteen contests featuring incumbent MPPs as PC candidates, they prevailed in only two, both over NDP incumbents (though one of them was a former Liberal turncoat). NDP incumbent were featured in seven of these contest, winning three and losing four. Notable casualties of contests between incumbents included:

• David Johnson, incumbent education minister, defeated by Liberal MPP David Caplan, son Elinor Caplan of the Peterson ministry and himself a future minister in the McGuinty ministry
• Noble Villeneuve, incumbent agriculture minister, defeated by Liberal MPP John Cleary
• Marion Boyd, Attorney General in the NDP Rae ministry, defeated by incumbent minister Dianne Cunningham
• Tony Silipo, education minister in the NDP Rae ministry, defeated by Tony Ruprecht, briefly a minister without portfolio in the Peterson ministry

List of nomination contests between incumbent MPPs

(Percentage in bracket behind each incumbent's former district indicates the proportion of the former electoral district's voters transferred to the electoral district being contested.)

List of election contests between incumbent MPPs

(Percentage in bracket behind each incumbent's former district indicates the proportion of the former electoral district's voters transferred to the electoral district being contested.)

Faceoff avoided

There were significant effort among caucus colleagues to coordinate their riding choices to avoid contesting against each other. The following incumbent MPPs would have had to compete with a fellow MPP for a new district consisted of the entirety or a substantial portion of their old district, but opted to retire or contest a different electoral district consist of much smaller portion of their former electoral district. Four PC incumbents opted to contest entirely different electoral districts, and one of them, cabinet minister Frank Klees, was successful in getting reelected in his new electoral turf of Oak Ridges.

Campaign

According to a poll released on the eve of the election, the Liberal Party entered the campaign with a lead over the Progressive Conservatives. This poll's accuracy was disputed by many, however, and even Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty cast doubt on it: noting that most polling companies claim to be accurate 19 times out of 20, he suggested that this might have been the 20th. Subsequent polls taken in the early period of the campaign showed the Progressive Conservatives with a commanding lead over the Liberals, in a manner more consistent with pre-election numbers.

Harris' government had delivered large tax cuts and significantly reduced the deficit, but they had also severely cut spending in the process. They had the support of the legendary Tory political machine, bolstered by a group of American experts imported from the United States' Republican Party. They targeted Dalton McGuinty as inexperienced ("Dalton McGuinty is not up to the job" was a Tory campaign slogan), and attacked him for lacking a clear vision. This was successful due to McGuinty having a reputation for being uncomfortable and stiff in the media. During the leader's debates, McGuinty had a poor performance, being unable to explain his party's platform clearly and being compared to fictional serial killer Norman Bates by NDP leader Howard Hampton.

The extensive use of attack ads and wedge issues by the Tories was a new development in Canadian politics, and some commentators worried the election process was becoming Americanized.

The third major party, the Ontario New Democratic Party led by Howard Hampton, spent much the campaign battling the memory of Bob Rae's unpopular government in the early 1990s. Despite Hampton's efforts to reach out to labour, the NDP were substantially weakened as the major unions deserted them in favour of the Liberals, hoping to defeat the Tories by strategic voting.

The province was enjoying strong economic growth at the time which also vindicated the Conservatives' deficit-cutting measures in the public. The Liberal Party managed to recover some support late in the campaign, but it was not enough and the Tories were re-elected with a second consecutive majority government.

Opinion polls

During campaign

During 36th Legislative Assembly

Toronto-only

Results

Among the independent candidates were slates fielded by several unregistered parties:

• 27 candidates were affiliated with the Communist Party of Canada - Marxist-Leninist. These candidates won a total of 7,194 votes.
• Three were members of the Humanist Party of Ontario.

Vote and seat summaries

• 1995
• 1999

It is possible that some independent candidates were actually members of these or other unregistered parties.

Synopsis of results

= Open seat

= turnout is above provincial average

= incumbent in previous Legislature

= Not incumbent; was previously elected to the Legislature

= Multiple candidates

Summary analysis

Constituency results

Expenditure entries are taken from official candidate reports as listed by Elections Ontario. The figures cited are the "Total Candidate's Campaign Expenses Subject to Limitation", and include transfers from constituency associations.

The official returns incorrectly list Ray as a candidate of the Ontario Communist Party, rather than the Communist League.

Ottawa-Carleton

Eastern Ontario

Central Ontario

Southern Durham & York

Central Toronto

Suburban Toronto

Brampton, Mississauga & Oakville

Hamilton-Wentworth, Burlington & Niagara

Midwestern Ontario

Southwestern Ontario

Northern Ontario

By-elections

Six by-elections were held between the 1999 and 2003 elections.

See also

• Politics of Ontario
• Independent candidates, 1999 Ontario provincial election
• Independent Marxist–Leninist candidates, 1999 Ontario provincial election
• List of Ontario political parties
• Premier of Ontario
• Leader of the Opposition (Ontario)