SCORCHED EARTH, ONTARIO

One of our favourite road trips is to drive out west, usually to visit good friends of ours in Winnipeg. We've been doing this drive for a number of years now, and visiting Don and Joy is a great pleasure. Another pleasure is the drive itself, through the massive province of Ontario, taking in the constantly inspiring and changing landscape. Lakes, hills, forests, bogs and farmland and the spectacular shore of Lake Superior have created a lasting impression on us.

Many years ago, perhaps as much as twenty years, we were dismayed to drive along the stretch of the TransCanada highway west of Dryden to behold a huge scene of utter devastation. A forest fire had recently burned a massive swath of destruction. Blackened trees and burned land stretched as far as the eye could see, and for many, many kilometers along the road. We were heartbroken to see this and felt that some angry god had vent his wrath on the creatures of this land: and we knew that, in all probability, humans were responsible in some way for this destruction. It was sad to see.

Unlike the old Smokey the Bear ads we used to see when we were kids ( "forest fires are forever" ), the subsequent years of travel revealed something quite remarkable. Every time we did the drive, we were heartened to see evidence of rebirth and renewal: initially, small grasses and shrubs poked up out of the black soil. Then, saplings reached for the sun. Our most recent drive, in 2016, gave us new hope. Trees were in evidence along the road: the trees were now so tall that one had to really look hard to see the charred remains of their long-dead ancestors. We believe that, in a couple of more years, when we make the drive again, we will no longer see the remains of the original forest fire. To be accurate, the trees we saw a couple of years ago are hardly a forest, but they will become one in due course. New life is a constant.

In a similar way, the Ontario Liberal Party is engaged in a type of scorched earth situation. After many years of, frankly, bad or at least inconsistent government, the Liberals under Kathleen Wynne must go to the people for a renewed mandate to govern. They won't get one. Ontarians are completely fed up with Wynne, the other long-time cabinet ministers, and anyone and anything else associated with the Liberals. They are completely justified in doing so. This government is old, tired and completely out of ideas. When one sees them on television or read their messages on-line, one gets the sense that they would dearly love to be put out of their misery and go on to other things. They will get their wish soon.

As a long-time Liberal supporter, I am in a tough spot. I cannot support the Conservatives for a variety of reasons, and I never will. I am not NDP, although I have voted for them in the past, and remain uncertain of them and their policies. And supporting the Liberals this time is going to be difficult: I will not blindly cast a vote for a bad government just because I usually vote Liberal. I will have a tough choice, but that's not why I am thinking of the forest fire.

No matter what I do, the Liberals will lose badly. In the short term, this is bad news for people like me. We will wail and gnash our teeth and wring our hands. We will see a political apocalypse the like of which Ontario has rarely seen. It will be horrible, chaotic and destructive. The Conservatives will have the next four years to run roughshod over the things that Liberals and NDP's hold dear. The Conservatives will govern according to their conscience, and God help the rest of us.

But those four years will give the Liberals a wonderful opportunity to rebuild. The old leadership must be cast aside. Old policies must be abandoned or at least re-thought. Younger people must be encouraged to assume positions of leadership. New money must be raised to re-generate the war chest. And voters must be shown that the new Liberals are serious about mounting a new challenge to the Conservatives, who, let's face it, are not really good at things like renewal and offering paradigm shifts in the way things are done. Instead of wailing and weeping, Liberals need to get busy immediately after the election to grow into something new, vital and attractive.

Like the forest fire, it will take a scorched earth to bring about the necessary change. So, let's allow Doug Ford and his gang four years to hang themselves, which they will do. But let's encourage the Liberals not to stand pat and simply be "not Conservatives": in other words, the Liberals must not always be the charred and ruined remains of a forest. They must become new, young and vital. As in nature, it can be done, and it must be done.