Marit Stiles is in a good spot.
For a party leader in a snap election, her weakness is not in her starting position.
The Ontario New Democratic Party has won Opposition status in the last two elections, and as leader, Stiles whipped the votes of 28 members against a Progressive Conservative majority. That is a good run for this traditionally third place party, and a solid base camp from which to push higher toward government.
But in this election, the incumbent Premier Doug Ford seems to be running against the president of the United States, and on track for a third majority, almost unheard of in Canadian politics. When he does acknowledge other Ontario parties, he treats the third-place Liberals — long obliterated in the legislature with fewer MPPs than most people have fingers, their leader Bonnie Crombie without even her own seat — as his main competition.
The challenge for Stiles, therefore, is getting noticed. When she does, it tends to go well.
Stiles projects a positive, sunny tone, typically coming across as affable and smiling, approachable and optimistic, said Geneviève Tellier, professor of political science at the University of Ottawa.
This personal communication style aligns well with the NDP’s political project, she said.
“The NDP has always showcased themselves as a caring party, attending to the needs of those who need more from the state,” Tellier said. “It’s hard to sell that in an aggressive tone. I see a good fit between the party and their leader.”
“Used to be, you had to act like a man … like Margaret Thatcher,” Tellier said. “I think that this has changed a lot, generally speaking in Canada, but more so on the Ontarian scene. With Stiles, we are in this continuity.”
This week, Stiles was in Ottawa, where she once studied at Carleton University, and she addressed her audience in French. It was not polished Quebec diction, but a sort of Queen’s Park French, a stilted work in progress, but an effort all the same. “She’s kind of at the beginning, but francophones applaud that,” Tellier said.
Likewise, last week in Windsor, addressing the auto industry and the union voters so key to the NDP base, Tellier saw a party leader who can credibly connect policy to her own values without coming across like she has been workshopped and focus-grouped by her communications team.
“I think we have seen stability with her since she was elected. We didn’t see her change. She could have changed, especially with Doug Ford in front of her. But she remained constant in how she presents herself to the population,” Tellier said. “She did not change. She’s constant. It works well for her.”
Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant, professor and graduate chair in political studies at Queen’s University, saw Stiles recently in Kingston, supporting the local candidate.
“I think that she has an image that seems to me is true to who she is as a person, as someone who really is approachable, warm, supportive,” Goodyear-Grant said.
Her weakness is in visibility, Goodyear-Grant said, in part because her experience is largely in political backrooms. This gives her knowledge and connections, but it does not drive votes.
“That visibility piece means that she is going to have to work a bit harder to introduce herself to the electorate,” Goodyear-Grant said.
Marit Stiles, 55, was born in Newfoundland and grew up on a small family farm in the St. John’s area, the elder of two girls to Kathy Stiles, who worked in environmental education, and Geoff Stiles, an anthropology professor at Memorial University. Her name is frequently mispronounced, and she has described her equanimity about this. It was suggested by her parents’ Norwegian friends. The first syllable rhymes with “car,” not “care.” It is not pronounced like “merit.” And yet it usually is.
She moved to Ottawa to attend Carleton University when her family moved to Africa, and later to Toronto to work as executive assistant to northern Ontario New Democrat MPP Gilles Bisson, then northern development minister Shelley Martel.
She worked in research for a think tank called Canadian Policy Research Networks, and ran research and policy for ACTRA, a trade union for workers in film, television and radio.
She was a Toronto District School Board trustee in 2014, then became president of the federal NDP party in 2016, and in 2018 took Davenport, a central Toronto riding, from the Liberals. She was acclaimed leader of the Ontario NDP in 2023.
She has two grown daughters with Jordan Berger, an investment advisor who has also been involved in NDP politics.
Now contesting her first election as leader, she presents as a politician in the mould of her predecessor Andrea Horwath, whose personal popularity in the 2022 election was higher among the general public than any of her rival party leaders for similar reasons and impressions.
The danger for Stiles, then, is that she goes the way of Horwath and resigns after failing to translate that personal popularity into local candidate votes, even perhaps losing Official Opposition status.
The going has been tough against a Progressive Conservative majority and an Ontario Liberal Party getting back on its feet, moving to the centre, and squeezing the government.
Within her party, a key early challenge for Stiles was in the renegade MPP Sarah Jama who refused Stiles’ request to apologize and retract a one-sided and inflammatory statement about Israel after the Hamas atrocity of Oct. 7, 2023. That led Stiles to kick her out of the party for insubordination and making work environments unsafe for staff, after which Stiles’ own constituency office was vandalized with red paint and signs saying “blood on your hands” and “Free Palestine.”
“I think it caused some problems for her,” Goodyear-Grant said. There was internal support, but there were also internal calls for Stiles’ resignation. “Any attempt by a leader to usurp local autonomy is never taken well.”
To take this election, Stiles will need her own base, plus the votes parked with her party since the collapse of the Liberal Party under Kathleen Wynne, and then some. That means flipping Progressive Conservative voters who see grounds to reject Doug Ford, for example over the scandal involving alleged insider dealing in property development on protected Greenbelt land, which claimed the resignations of two cabinet ministers, and is still under RCMP investigation. (Ford’s government is cooperating with the investigation and denies any criminality.)
Such a scandal could be a winner for a left-wing campaigner against a long-term Tory incumbent.
But Stiles has struggled to command the attention she needs to drive that message, not least because of bigger fears about trade war with America, but also because Ford’s Progressive Conservatives have waged their fiercest offence against the Ontario Liberal Party leader.
“Which is weird,” said Goodyear-Grant. “It’s weird because the New Democrats are the Official Opposition and have been for a while.”
The NDP are the government in waiting now, Goodyear-Grant said. The challenge for Stiles is to end that long wait.
National Post