A sight never before beheld: Ontario’s rival party leaders coming together on campus — talking not only to students, but talking to each other.

Thoughtfully, civilly, collegially.

Despite a tense pre-election environment, and the temptation to boost their own political causes, they brainstormed on a shared public cause — electoral engagement.

Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne and opposition leaders Vic Fedeli (PC) Andrea Horwath (NDP) and Mike Schreiner (Greens) united just this once for the Ryerson Democracy Forum, trying to grapple with the worsening democratic deficit in a province with the worst voting record in Canada.

Few Ontarians realize just how few of us actually vote to elect a provincial government that wields power over almost everything that matters in our lives — from education funding to hospital care, hydro rates, policing, road building and taxation.

Barely half of the electorate cast a ballot in Ontario’s last two elections — 48 per cent in 2011, and 51 per cent in 2014. That dismal turnout prompted 62 per cent of Ontarians to question “the legitimacy of the government,” according to a poll by Campaign Research for the Toronto Star ahead of Wednesday’s Ryerson forum.

That’s a humbling vote of non-confidence for all politicians, not least the winner of the last election.

“All of us are in this together, and so as politicians we need to do everything we can to engage people — that means things like this (forum),” Wynne told students and a television audience following CP24’s live coverage or via thestar.com (see the forum for yourself — highlights and the full event remain online).

With the June 7 election barely 100 days away, how low will we go?

The unexpected ceasefire at Ryerson — a conversation of rivals — offered rare grounds for optimism over the puzzle of how to re-engineer engagement. The first step in problem-solving is problem-recognizing.

A good start is changing the tone that turns off voters — who then tune out and don’t turn up. As moderator, on behalf of Ryerson’s Faculty of Arts, I marvelled at the outbreak of civility, however temporary.

And wondered why it couldn’t be prolonged beyond an hour: “Why can’t you be like this all the time?”

The NDP’s Horwath argued, understandably, that politicians need to hold one another to account: “I think people become more cynical about politics when ... promises don’t get fulfilled and then folks say, ‘Well, why do I even bother to vote.’”

Wynne countered with a hockey analogy, recalling when the old Philadelphia Flyers team first “put a goon on the ice ... people are waiting for the fight — the media with all due respect, likes the fight.”

Schreiner noted that the Green Party “has a vested interest in voter turnout going up” because they always do worse when turnout falls. “Who do we blame for disengagement? I think the media, politicians, and the way we conduct politics has to share in some of the blame.”

Fair point. We in the media (I’m guilty as charged) waste too much time on the horserace — I call it “horseracism” — and dogfights of politics. Surely we can marry accountability with civility, lest we lapse into perpetual hostility (perhaps force politicians to shake hands after the daily Question Period, just like hockey players after a game?).

The politicians compared notes on competing for votes among new Canadians. Given that many come from countries where people die for democracy, why is their turnout so much lower?

Fedeli’s Tories have made undeniable gains with outreach in recent years: “I think what you’ve seen Andrea do, and the premier and Mike as well and other parties ... you see us at the (Sikh) gurdwaras, you see us at the Vietnamese Tet celebrations,” he mused. “We’re trying to build trust, and I think that’s what all parties are doing equally well.”

The polling results by Campaign Research show that new Canadians are not just a political challenge but an electoral opportunity. While some youth are easily alienated, newer Canadians are already disposed to vote — if only they could. They have a high sense of civic duty — a majority believe in mandatory voting — but often believe, wrongly, that they aren’t registered to vote (a little public education could go a long way on voting day).

Schreiner won cheers for saying we should give 16-year-olds the vote, given that they’ve just studied civics classes in high school. Figuring out social media — the good, the bad, and the ugly — is no mean feat amid online incivility.

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Answering audience questions later, top strategists from each party acknowledged that reaching young voters can be vexing: “The parties that are able to unlock that not only will be doing good for themselves electorally, but they’ll be doing good for the province,” Fedeli’s PC chief of staff, Alykhan Velshi, told one student.

The leaders covered a lot of ground — and broke new ground merely by sharing the same turf. They are all in this together — as are we in the media. Collectively, we — and half the electorate — are failing miserably on democracy.

Please stay tuned. More on the issue of turnout in future columns leading up to election day, barely three months away.

Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn

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