Ontario is deep into an early election, because Premier Doug Ford likely decided that he had the perfect cover for calling for one with the inauguration of Donald Trump in the United States. Ford had reportedly been planning on calling an early election for well over six months, because he knew that he wanted to secure a fresh legislature before Pierre Poilievre could come to power federally and sour Ontarians on the Conservative brand, and to get ahead of an RCMP investigation into alleged corruption in the attempt to sell off parts of the Greenbelt around the Greater Toronto Area. So, he spent $1.4 billion to accelerate his plans to allow beer and liquor sales in corner stores, sent out $200 bribe cheques to all Ontarians and once Trump was coming into office, tried to play “Captain Canada” and insinuated himself into a pretend “leadership” position in resisting Trump by virtue of it being his turn to chair the Council of the Federation, even though provinces don’t conduct foreign affairs. His declaration that “Canada is not for sale” is only a show to cover for his self-serving plans, and there is a real danger that Ontarians will fall for it.
For the past seven and a half years, Ford has run an utterly incompetent government that cost tens of thousands of lives during the pandemic, and has seen the healthcare system in this province collapse, while he has dismantled the post-secondary education system, and turned a blind eye to the questionable activities of public-private partnership colleges as they cycled thousands of international students through strip-mall “classrooms.” Ontario has the worst housing crisis in the country, in part because they have the lowest housing starts in the country by far, which is the province’s jurisdiction. But Ford has consistently kept the public on-side with populist gimmicks like ending yearly licence-plate renewal fees, and promising new highways (and now tunnels) to suburban communities.
When Ford attacks rights, he gets a pass. He used the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ Notwithstanding Clause to limit the ability of third-party groups to advertise politically—a move to hobble his opposition, which is a tactic that is more like one used by illiberal regimes like that of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. It certainly helped him to win the last election in 2022. He then attempted to use it a second time to prevent education workers from striking in late 2022, but was forced to back down after massive unrest. He has shown he’s not afraid to trample rights if he thinks it suits his purposes, and the fact that his first use of the power to keep public interest groups from advertising against him is still on the books shows that everything is a crass political calculation for him.
Of course, Ford likes to pretend that he’s not a politician, in spite of being in politics at two different levels of government for over 15 years, and that he comes from a political family where his father and late brother also held elected office. While on a trip to Washington, D.C., this week, Ford insisted that “government drives me crazy” when he is, in fact, the government in this province. It shows how much he leans into this persona of being a regular guy, a “businessman” (who inherited his company from his father), while his singsong cadence has a hypnotizing effect on listeners that produces what I term “the Baby Spice Effect” (referring to how, in the film Spice World, Baby Spice’s cute smile let her get away with, in one fantasy sequence, murder).
Ford is now trying to use the various predations by Trump—threats of tariffs and eventual annexation—to present himself as Ontario’s defender, never mind that Ford is incapable of standing up to anyone for a prolonged period of time. He also fully admitted to supporting Trump in the first week of February, and claimed he was surprised when Trump attacked Canada, in spite of Trump promising to do so on the campaign trail, which is an object lesson in Ford’s lack of judgment. Ford has put forward the conceit that he can negotiate with Trump, but as a provincial premier, he doesn’t have that power or authority—that belongs solely to the federal government. The fact that Alberta premier Danielle Smith made a show of attempting to negotiate with Trump was in reality more of a demonstration that she was willing to kiss the ring in order to get special favours or carve-outs, which is the opposite of what Ford has been promising.
It nevertheless leads to this particular point that we all need to remember in the Ontario election: that just because the economy is being threatened by outside forces doesn’t mean that we can forget about human rights. In fact, the protection of those rights becomes even more important in times of economic crisis, because in the unrest that economic upheaval causes, vulnerable minorities come under even more threat as angry and desperate populations start looking for scapegoats. We’re already seeing it with migrants, and right-wing parties in this country have already started taking the lessons from autocrats like Orbán in engaging in LGBTQ+ scapegoating. Ford has no credibility here—yes, he may have stopped his former education minister from jumping on the bandwagon in targeting trans youth as New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Alberta have, but not before he personally accused school boards of “indoctrinating” children about gender. His reversal was again likely because of crass political calculation—Ford knows he needs the support of suburban ridings that lean more socially progressive in this province, so he didn’t want to alienate them, but if push comes to shove and people are angry, history shows that Ford will absolutely roll over queer and trans people.
We can’t forget that Ford came to office riding on a wave of vicious homophobia directed at former premier Kathleen Wynne under the guise of “parental rights” with reforms to sex education in the province, and that early in his time in office, Ford was doing favours for the likes of evangelical leaders like Charles McVety. It also cannot be stressed enough that because Ford’s incompetence has decimated basic service delivery in this province, whether it’s healthcare, education or basic infrastructure, he has created the conditions for people to be even more angry and desperate as the trade war starts to impact our economy, making it even more likely that minorities are going to be scapegoated. Ford doesn’t deserve any more time in office, but it remains to be seen if his opponents can actually mount a case against him this time.
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