Will OPP probe hurt Liberals on Election Day?

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For senior members of Kathleen Wynne's campaign team, it must be enough to inspire some very unpleasant flashbacks.

Nearly a decade ago, the likes of David Herle were in the midst of running Paul Martin's second campaign at the helm of the federal Liberals when the RCMP announced (through a letter to an NDP MP) that it was conducting a criminal investigation into allegations of leaks around a policy decision about income trusts. Nobody will ever know who would have won the January 2006 election if not for that story, but Liberals believe it played a significant role in the defeat that ended their dozen years in power.

Now, inside a week of election day in an Ontario campaign that has gone as well for Ms. Wynne's provincial Liberals as they could reasonably have expected, the police have again returned to complicate matters – this time courtesy of news, initially via the Ottawa Citizen, that police have ramped up their investigation into the alleged destruction of documents in the days before former premier Dalton McGuinty left office.

In one sense, the similarities – two leaders trying to distance themselves from inherited scandals, only to be have suggestions of criminal activity surface at the worst possible moment – are inescapable. And if the Liberals lose next Thursday, they will no doubt be cursing the timing of this particular story.

But at once, the news of the OPP's continued pursuit of charges against Mr. McGuinty's chief of staff seems more substantive than the story of the RCMP's allegations against Mr. Martin's finance minister, and less likely to be politically impactful.

The RCMP's intervention looks terrible in retrospect, considering that the Mounties appeared to go out of their way to name Ralph Goodale (the former finance minister in question) in an investigation that never went anywhere after the election. While it is entirely possible that the OPP's work won't result in charges against David Livingston (the former chief-of-staff) or anyone else, this week's revelations were consistent with an ongoing investigation that was publicly reported well before the campaign began, and few would see them as inappropriate.

That the news comes less out of the blue is also what makes it less likely to influence the election's outcome. The fall-out from the gas-plant scandal, including the police involvement, is not new; opinion data suggests most people have already made up their minds about whether it's reason enough to turf the Liberals from office, and campaign staff and volunteers who have been out in the field tend to back that up.

While it keeps the baggage left behind by Mr. McGuinty fresh in mind, the fresh gas-plants news does nothing to implicate Ms. Wynne herself – a different scenario from what happened with Mr. Martin, when the implication of wrongdoing under his watch gave the impression nothing had changed since he took over from Jean Chretien.

If provincial police are not as problematic for the Liberals as the national force in 2005-06, though, that doesn't mean the story couldn't do any damage at all.

Those strategists behind Ms. Wynne seem to have had some success with a campaign designed to rally centre-left voters behind her in opposition to Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak; the latest reminder of Liberal scandal could give pause to erstwhile New Democrats thinking of making the switch. In an election in which the prospect of low voter turnout overall makes mobilizing supporters especially important, the unpleasant news could also demotivate Ontarians who will vote Liberal if they vote at all. And while there aren't a whole lot of people still trying to make up their minds between the Liberals and Tories, it could still tip the balance for the odd voter trying to weigh fatigue with the Liberals against distrust of Mr. Hudak.

If the Liberals don't win, it will be impossible as ever to scientifically measure just how much police involvement had to do with it. But if that's the outcome, at least a few people will probably feel as though they relived a nightmare.