Across a large portion of Ontario, Doug Ford cruised to a third consecutive majority government but once again fell flat in the downtown core of Toronto on Thursday night.
In the months leading up to the election, Ford had made a number of changes which appeared to be directed at voters in urban areas of the province, with one targeting specifically the city itself: tearing out bike lanes.
The other moves included working on a since-dropped order to empty homeless tent encampments, as well as shuttering supervised consumption sites, but they failed to pay off in the election as the PCs dropped a couple of seats in Toronto.
John Milloy, who is the director of the Centre for Public Ethics at Martin Luther University in Waterloo, spoke with Global News late Thursday night, explaining that Ford did not necessarily make those moves to appeal to voters in the downtown core.
“Obviously Ford wanted to make some headway into central Toronto but at the same time, Doug Ford’s mastery of all this is that he understands his base, and his base is commuters from the suburbs,” he said.
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“Going after bike lanes may make no sense from an engineering point of view, but it sends a message to those commuters that he cares about the fact that they’re spending hours in in the car.”
He noted that the Progressive Conservatives were probably not anticipating a pick-up of any seats in the downtown area of the city.
“Is he really that worried about Toronto St. Paul’s, for example, which the Tories aren’t going to win or some of the really downtown core ridings? I mean, he knows he’s not going to win them. But at the same time he can send a signal to his base,” Milloy, who is a formed Liberal MPP, explained.
He said it was a little troubling to see that those who live in the downtown area of Toronto would not have much, if any, representation.
“That’s a little concerning that the voice of a very important part of the of the country isn’t going to be that well-represented at Queen’s Park,” Milloy said.
The NDP continue to be the party of choice in the downtown area but the Liberals, who had almost been wiped off the map in recent elections, managed to pick up a few seats across Toronto on Thursday night.
“I think people just weren’t willing to give the Liberals a shot,” Milloy explained. “And I think the NDP was not their first choice, but it was sort of seen as the only progressive choice. So I think the Liberals are kind of a little bit out of the doghouse now.”
