Even at the best of times, an opposition leader has the worst of jobs — paid to oppose at every opportunity.

Now, in the worst of times, Andrew Scheer’s tin ear on Parliament Hill has sparked a chorus of criticism. Yet the federal Conservative leader is far from alone.

At Queen’s Park, the NDP’s Andrea Horwath has been similarly off-key, even if few are listening. Her job description as Ontario’s opposition leader is to hold the government to account, yet she keeps missing the mark — and falling further behind.

Never mind that Doug Ford’s public performances have exceeded the public’s admittedly low expectations of the premier. While Horwath has suffered by comparison, that is more about her than him.

The premier’s tone is relentlessly inspirational and rigorously non-partisan, if occasionally corny. The NDP’s message is partisan and piqued, and frequently off-putting.

The problem is not that Horwath is too critical or cynical (although she often lapses into the latter). It is that she is increasingly ineffective.

For there is much to critique about the Progressive Conservative government’s management of COVID-19 — from mixed messages on travel to missed opportunities on testing and a mess in our nursing homes. A pandemic is precisely the time for an effective opposition to keep the party in power on its toes.

That’s what Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner has pulled off at Queen’s Park, displaying vigilance without vituperation. As leader of the fourth party, Schreiner has shown good cheer without being a cheerleader — pointedly thanking the Ford cabinet for giving it their best while pointing out where they screwed up.

The new Liberal leader, Steven Del Duca, has been relatively measured so far, asking specific questions about Ford’s responsibilities on long-term care and his relationship with the medical officer of health. Del Duca is slowly finding his feet heading the third party, weighing in from a distance, knowing the Liberals have a long way to go for their own recovery.

Where do Horwath’s New Democrats fit in this interplay of parties? Instead of focusing their energies on the party in power, the second-place NDP can’t help lashing out at the third-place Liberals if they ever dare to question the governing Tories.

The death toll from the unchecked spread of COVID-19 in our nursing homes is a public-health disaster, as the premier has acknowledged. His PC government ended comprehensive annual inspections of all homes last year, opting instead to wait for complaints before acting.

Yet whenever Del Duca talks about the need to improve long-term care, the NDP pounces, blaming Liberals for failing to keep up with past demand for beds. It’s almost as if New Democrats think their job is to keep the Liberals down in order to prop up or protect their position as the official opposition.

It’s perfectly reasonable to ask how all parties handled long-term care in decades past — Liberals, Tories and, yes, New Democrats. But the NDP’s relentless questioning of everything Liberal sounds suspiciously like a partisan attempt at shaming Del Duca into silence so he’ll stop questioning the PC government (which is part of his job description).

Doesn’t Horwath want to hear the answers? New Democrats, persuaded of their own purity, should resist playing the hypocrisy card against Liberals in perpetuity — it’s too easy and gets repetitive.

Rather than carping, Horwath could instead claim vindication in the current crisis, if only she showed a little more political agility. Her New Democrats could rightly point to their previous calls for greater investments in long-term care and staffing (even if the political rhetoric could never be matched by fiscal reality).

The problem with long-term care — past, present and future — is that it is frightfully expensive. Faced with relentless demand and rising costs, the political short cut has traditionally been to scale up as cheaply as possible, getting the most beds for the buck.

Privatization of nursing homes took off under the Mike Harris Tories in the mid-1990s, and continued under the Liberals. Is it desirable or affordable to review or reverse that approach?

The NDP pointed an accusing finger this month at the Liberals for failing to scale up long-term care fast enough. But that complaint confuses the problem of quantity versus quality, for it is the lack of staff resources — not a shortage of beds — that provided the crack in the premier’s promised iron ring to protect nursing home residents, with part-time workers transmitting COVID-19 from one facility to another.

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In the legislature, at least, Horwath has not been obstructive — just not terribly constructive or imaginative. By contrast, Ford — who started out as Ontario’s most bellicose premier in recent memory — has changed his tune of late, reaching out to opposition MPPs and giving them shout-outs.

Ford has risen to the occasion after nearly two years on the job. Is it too much to expect Horwath to grow into her job after 11 years helming the NDP — and do better at holding him to account?

It’s not that the premier is so good at what he does — though he is getting better by the day. It’s that Ford — for the moment — has found his voice, while Horwath keeps losing her way.

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