If you live in Canada (and perhaps even abroad), you would’ve heard about Ontario’s provincial election yesterday, October 10th. (And if you are a resident of Ontario, you damn well better have voted! I can’t believe only 52% of us did, we might as well embrace a fascist dictatorship or something.) You would’ve seen widespread coverage of the election results, in which the incumbent Ontario Liberal Party, led by Dalton McGuinty, the “education premier”, won another four years in a consecutive sizable majority.

You definitely would have noticed that the election results was big news, but John Tory, the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, was much bigger news.

John Tory blew it all, period. I might be jumping on the bandwagon saying this, but hey, you can’t really denied that he screwed right-winged Ontarians OVER.

He had a great start with an already established good reputation, and also with an advantage that many thought (I included, or at least I thought so) would stay as an advantage; the whole Dalton-broke-promises thing. But nope, one day Tory woke up and decided to “lob a grenade” into the education issue, as McGuinty himself said. It seemed like that grenade, rather than destroying the Liberals, bounced back right into the hand of the former CEO of Rogers Communications and exploded then, injuring him greatly. That bomb was Tory’s proposal to take money from the public education system ($500 million of much needed money) and put it into establishing educational systems for religions other than the Catholic system. Seriously, it doesn’t take an Opposition Leader to know that Ontarians are especially concerned with maintaining our public education system, even with a large population of religious immigrants; but it seems that in this case, it’s the Opposition Leader who’s completely out of the loop.

And he couldn’t even get over it. The Conservatives had a 53-page platform booklet, and that faith-based religious funding promise covered a mere half-page. Unfortunately for the Blues running for MPP, it became the main and just about only issue during most of the election. All the Liberals had to do was coast along, egging on the issue once in a while to keep the heat up. Thus, Tory’s popularity dropped from being by far the number one pick for premier to tied or worse-than Dalton McGuinty, and it was the latter - not the former - who carried the heavy baggage of broken promises.

So it was no surprise that he lead the Conservatives to a bone-crushing defeat (the Liberals took 71 seats, out of 107), getting only 26 seats. Actually, he should be glad that he didn’t lose any seats. Even the conservative-leaning National Post published a great article about Tory’s stumble, written by Andrew Coyne, who compared him to ex-premier Mike Harris (extremely hated and extremely loved by many) but found Tory much more incompetent:

The contrast with Mike Harris is striking. In the Common Sense Revolution campaign of 1995, Mr. Harris would announce something at least as obnoxious every day of the week.

Monday, he would propose that criminals should be plunged in boiling oil. Tuesday, he would unveil his “Fund Health Care From Schoolkids’ Lunch Money” policy. Wednesday was “Mandatory Workfare for Amputees” day. And so on.

His opponents never knew which appalling proposal they should hit him for first, or what other one he might announce next. Whereas poor Mr. Tory might as well have held up a sign reading: Start Kicking Me Now.

Making another comparison, a Conservative candidate running for MPP out east, Randy Hillier, won the position, which even he admitted to not being prepared for. Randy Hillier is a man who has been arrested for trespassing, threatening police officers with heavy duty machinery, forming illegal blockades on Canada’s busiest highway, and more. Long story short, Hillier is a criminal. And he still got a seat. Tory’s “negatives”? Well, nothing really, unless you count the controversy generated with his brand-new-low Federal Liberal attack ads more than a decade ago. The more I think about this, the more I’m inclined to say out loud: John Tory sucks.

It seems as if Tory’s whole campaign was a mess. Well, to be honest there is no doubt about that. His campaign managers tried to get him to visit the house in his riding that he lived in as a little boy, but apparently that didn’t turn out too well (seriously, you couldn’t make up this much hilarity on purpose). Oh, and if you don’t know this, Tory lost in his own riding, squarely knocked down by the incumbent Liberal Education Minister, Kathleen Wynne…the leader of the Opposition Party doesn’t even have his own seat in Parliament!

So last Wednesday night, the Tories lost twice: the party lost a good chance to form government, and John Tory himself lost the race for the seat in the Legislature. You could even count a third loss (which is bound to happen soon): the Conservatives losing their leader. Well, it might not really be a loss, more of a shamed-and-kicked-out-of-the-top-spot kind of deal.

Maybe I should send John Tory a nice, little postcard thanking him for leaving the comfort of money-making executive positions, and also leaving the comfort of his old, Conservative-strong riding, to become the leader of the PC party and as a result propel the Liberals to a second majority, a feat not achieved since 1937. John, you say that public service is your thing, but is it really when you ran for mayor and lost, and then ran for premier and lost even harder?

(the numbers are wrong, it’s actually 71, 26, 10)