Having won his third-consecutive majority government on Thursday night, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has successfully positioned himself, as a recent Guardian headline put it, as “Canada’s anti-Trump.” It’s a remarkable transformation considering that a mere seven years ago, the left was trying to brand Ford as a homegrown version of U.S. President Donald Trump.
From the start of the campaign, Ford attempted to frame the election as a referendum on who is best positioned to deal with Trump’s tariff threats, continually reinforcing the message that he was the only leader who could save the province from economic ruin.
He took time away from the campaign trail to make two trips to Washington, D.C., made headlines for his pro-Canada apparel and tried to claim that giving his Progressive Conservative party a majority would “send a message down to Donald Trump that we’re a force to be reckoned with” (that will show him!).
The opposition Liberals and NDP tried to change the subject, pitching Ontarians on voting for “change” and improved health care, but these messages clearly didn’t resonate with voters.
Although health care was the top issue for a plurality (28 per cent) of voters, according to a Nanos poll released Feb. 9, it’s become painfully obvious that none of the provinces have any idea how to fix it and simply throwing money at the problem, which the left is apt to do, has proven not to work.
The other top election issues were “the economy” and “dealing with U.S. President Trump,” which are really the same thing. Combined, they were top of mind for 36 per cent of voters, showing that Ford managed to skilfully capitalize on an issue that has been weighing on the minds of many Ontarians.
“Ford emerged as one of the strongest pro-Canada voices against the backdrop of a looming trade war,” read a story published in the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper on Wednesday.
The funny thing is that a mere seven years ago, Ford was widely seen as Canada’s version of Donald Trump, mostly because his political opponents tried to brand him as such.
“Doug Ford sounds like Donald Trump, and that’s because he is like Donald Trump,” then-premier Kathleen Wynne said in 2018. “He believes in (an) ugly, vicious … brand of politics that traffics in smears and lies. He’ll say anything about anyone at any time.”
At the time, the Guardian ran a story, which claimed that, “Since Doug Ford was elected to lead Ontario’s Conservatives, comparisons to Trump have been unavoidable.”
The evidence for this assertion was thin, with the author citing as evidence Ford’s boastful rhetoric and how he “rails against elites, who — in his words — ‘look down on the common folk.’ ” Yet it was always a mistake to equate Ford’s attempts to connect with average voters with Trumpian-style populism.
There’s no question that Ford has placed a lot of emphasis on what many think are somewhat trivial matters, like alcohol and bike lines. But these are the issues that affect us plebs, who can’t figure out why we’re forced to sit in gridlock to accommodate a bike lane that no one uses. Or why, until recently, we couldn’t pick up a six pack at a corner store.
Far from being a divisive and polarizing figure like Trump, Ford has managed to build a broad coalition that includes both traditional conservatives and trade unions.
And although he’s loathed by the type of people who hate anyone who doesn’t ride a bike to the farmers’ market wearing a keffiyeh, he has generally managed to be unoffensive enough as to not elicit strong feelings either way.
In doing so, Ford has alienated some of his traditional base. But, from a political perspective at least, he correctly calculated that fiscal conservatives didn’t have anywhere else to go.
The Progressive Conservatives promised $40 billion in new spending and deficits for years to come. But the New Democrats were pledging to increase spending by $70 billion, funded by billions in new taxes, while the Liberals would have hiked spending by $65 billion over four years.
Indeed, Ford has managed to build a successful political career — becoming the first Ontario premier to win three consecutive majorities since the 1950s — by monopolizing the mushy middle.
On issues such as wokeness in schools, for example, the PCs have kept conservatives onside by saying all the right things. But they’ve also managed not to alienate the centre-left by actually doing anything about it.
And so it is that Ford consistently has one of the lowest approval ratings of any premier in the country, but still manages to trounce his opponents in general elections.
Yet no matter what one thinks about Ford, it should by now be abundantly clear that he is nothing like Donald Trump — and never was. The comparison was a little more apt with Ford’s late brother, Rob, but it was never a good one.
The fact is that no one is like Trump — and no one ever will be. Trump’s is a unique brand of populism with no modern analogues.
There is a lesson in here for federal Liberals, such as Mark Carney, who are still making comparisons between Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and the U.S. president: just because a politician speaks to issues that average, hard-working people care about, and speaks his mind rather than beating around the bush, doesn’t mean he’s some sort of scary right-wing populist.
At some point, Canadians may start to wonder why the Liberal elite think these qualities are worthy of scorn in the first place.
National Post
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