UPDATE, June 8, 2018: The PCs, led by Doug Ford, won a majority government. See below for more details.
The current premier of Ontario says there will be a new premier after the election on June 7 and it most certainly won’t be her.
That was a very surprising announcement.
Premier Kathleen Wynne leads the Ontario Liberal Party. She is one of three main candidates vying for the spot of premier in the upcoming election. The other two main candidates are Doug Ford Jr., who leads the Progressive Conservative (PC) party of Ontario and Andrea Horwath, who leads the Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP). (Doug Ford is the older brother of the late Rob Ford, who was mayor of Toronto from 2010 to 2014.)
In an emotional speech in Toronto on June 2, Wynne said she doesn’t think she can win the election.
“On June 7th voters will elect a new government. I don’t know who voters will choose but I am pretty sure that it won’t be me,” she said.
The Ontario Liberals are down in the polls. (Polls, in this case, happen when people are asked who they are going to vote for. Polls can’t be 100 per cent accurate, but often they can do a good job predicting what might happen in an election.) According to polls, the Liberals would likely come third–by a lot–behind the NDP and the PCs, who are tied.
Even though she thinks she would lose, Wynne still urged people to vote for the Liberals. She said if most people vote for the NDP or if most people vote for the PCs, one of those two parties could get a “majority government.” In other words, the PCs or the NDP could end up with more votes than the other parties combined.
A majority gives a party a lot of power. If a majority government wants to do something, they can’t be voted down.
A “minority government” allows a party to be in power, but with much less strength. If they do something everyone else doesn’t like, their idea could be voted down by the other parties.
There is another issue. If the Liberals don’t get enough votes, they could lose official party status.
The Liberals have been in power for a long time in Ontario–15 years.
The election takes place on June 7.
UPDATE, June 8, 2018: Election results:
PC: 76 seats (ie, MPPs elected to sit in Ontario parliament)
NDP: 40 seats
Liberals: 7 seats
Green Party: 1 seat
PCs, led by Doug Ford, won with a “majority government” meaning that they have more MPPs in Ontario parliament than all of the other parties combined.
Related Links
Here is a CityNews Toronto video of Kathleen Wynne making the announcement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6vmv1Y8Yhk
CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS
Writing/Discussion Prompt
Only one other premier in Canada has admitted defeat before an election, according to CTV News. That was BC Premier Ujjal Dosanjh in 2001. (His party, the NDP, only won two seats that year.) Why do you think Kathleen Wynne chose to admit defeat right before the election?
Reading Prompt: Extending Understanding
If you were to vote in the upcoming election. Which issues would be important to you? Education, health care, transportation etc? Pick one of those issues and write out 4 challenges that could be improved.
Junior
Extend understanding of texts by connecting the ideas in them to their own knowledge, experience, and insights, to other familiar texts, and to the world around them (OME, Reading: 1.6).
Intermediate
Extend understanding of texts, including increasingly complex or difficult texts, by connecting the ideas in them to their own knowledge, experience, and insights, to other familiar texts, and to the world around them (OME, Reading: 1.6).
Language Feature: Jargon
Jargon refers to special terms, words or expressions that are specific to one job or group. Politics has a lot of jargon, some of which is in this article: concede, seats, ballots, votes, majority, minority. What do these words mean or refer to?
