Is this the end of the line for campaign buses?

OTTAWA-In this election campaign, the Progressive Conservatives have the Yes Express" to transport Doug Ford and his staff. The NDP has dubbed its bus that takes Andrea Horwath, her advisers and reporters across Ontario the Chariot of Change."

The other two main parties have opted for something a little different - Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca has a minivan and Green Leader Mike Schreiner's team is driving matching, attention-grabbing green electric cars as it hits key ridings across the province.

In years past, buses ferrying politicians and the media were a fixture on the campaign trail. They were the main way for leaders to see voters and get their message out, and gave journalists a front seat to report all the action.

But now, increasing reliance on technology and pandemic concerns mean most campaign stops are livestreamed, and reporters often have a chance to tune in and ask questions if they can't make it in person.

Those pandemic-friendly measures have helped Schreiner and Horwath - who both tested positive for COVID-19 last week - to continue campaigning while in quarantine.

But the ease of holding events remotely - and a growing trend of limiting access to some leaders, along with budget constraints of both parties and newsrooms - is also changing the nature of campaign coverage.

Attending a rally on Zoom is better than nothing - at least the leader is able to appear, in a form, before people," said Western University political science professor and author Cristine de Clercy.

However, she added, Canadian politicians, Ontario politicians, still put a lot of emphasis on pressing the flesh, being in person and letting people see you in person."

(To that point, the NDP had federal Leader Jagmeet Singh making campaign stops instead of Horwath over the long weekend.)

This is not the end of campaign buses going forward," added de Clercy, who is a director of Western's leadership and democracy laboratory.

But, she said, the realities of COVID-19 could cause political teams to rethink buses if it's revealed that other staff members are getting sick on the bus, or in other locales - campaign officers where you have phone banks and volunteers are tightly packed in, where ventilation may not be good and masking is optional ... a wise campaign manager would shut that down if the risk becomes untenable."

In 2018, the NDP ran a campaign bus that transported Horwath and the media - news outlets pay for their spots on any party's bus - while the Liberals under then leader Kathleen Wynne had two: one for her and her staff, and another for reporters. Ford, however, broke with tradition and opted not to have a campaign bus for reporters, prompting criticism that he was trying to avoid media scrutiny.

I've covered both federal and provincial elections, and (being on the bus) really offered that face-to-face opportunity to get stories, to get inside the leaders' heads and find out whether they really believed what they were saying, and how people were reacting to them," said Richard Brennan, who covered campaigns for decades before retiring from the Star in 2015. Without buses, he says, those opportunities will be missing in this campaign.

Not travelling with the candidates will also make it harder for to hold politicians accountable, Brennan added. They desperately do not want to say the wrong thing ... but the problem is, that's the campaign. People want to see what the person is like."

For Ewen Steele, who drove the NDP bus in the last provincial election campaign and is doing so again, the setup provides spontaneous and insightful moments.

We were in Stratford in 2018, and we were closed up and ready to go - and (former Liberal Ontario premier) David Peterson is at the door, and waves to me," Steele said.

He asked, Is Andrea available? I'd love to talk to her.' Of course, some of the journalists there recognized him - some of the younger ones didn't - but it was quite a stir. So Andrea stepped off and they (spoke), which I thought was an illustrative thing in Canadian politics - that we can agree to disagree, and we can exchange pleasantries."

Tim Abray of Queen's University said leaders need to be in front of the public. They need to be face-to-face with people as much as possible because it is critical to creating a sense of involvement, belonging, a sense of reality for people."

While there are a lot of layers to this, the bottom line is no matter where you come at it from, from conventional campaigning perspectives, you need to be in people's faces, reminding them that you're a human being and that you may or may not have things in common with them, and encouraging them to vote."

It may sound hokey," Abray said, but it goes an incredibly long way to boosting local confidence in candidates" when leaders visit ridings with close races.

They're showing up to show that this is real, that they're paying attention, that they care about the issues in the riding and that they believe in the person who is running for them - and those things are extremely important," said Abray, a doctoral candidate and teaching fellow in political studies.

Abray said the shape of campaigning in Canada is so dyed-in-the wool" that he can't imagine campaigns without buses, but what might change is who goes along for the ride - the number of people who are on that bus, and the protocols around that," given COVID-19.

Brennan said when Peterson called the election in 1990 - one in which his party, which held a huge majority at Queen's Park, was swept from power by Bob Rae's NDP - you could see the air coming out of the balloon almost right away. It caught fire with the public. They didn't like it - they were saying there was no reason for him to call that election, other than what there was for him. It was trying to get ahead of the recession of the early '90s. That's why he did it.

You could see him on the plane, you could see him on the bus - he was losing his steam," Brennan said of Peterson, who is now vice-chair of Torstar, which owns the Toronto Star. His shoulders were hunching over; he was not the guy that you saw when it first started."

Brennan said the opposite was true of Progressive Conservative leader Mike Harris when he hit the campaign trail in 1995 with reporters in tow. You could see him becoming more bold and sure of himself," he said. And you could see where Bob Rae, in his last campaign, here was a guy who was a great showman, and a great speaker, but he just lost zeal for the job after all the problems."

Being on the bus, we were able to tell the readers and our listeners and our viewers that this campaign isn't - it's going off the rails. But now you can't get inside."

Kristin Rushowy is a Toronto-based reporter covering Ontario politics for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @krushowy