There are two ways to measure Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s resounding election victory. By the usual political standards, Thursday’s vote was a huge success. What’s not to like about three straight majorities, 80 seats in the 124-seat legislature and the dismal failure of the opposition parties?
The only expectations Ford did not meet were the ones he set for himself. He said he wanted an overwhelming mandate to send a message to U.S. President Donald Trump. It’s difficult to spin winning three fewer seats than he did in 2022, the support of just 20 per cent of eligible voters, and a 45-per-cent voter turnout as an overwhelming mandate. In fact, it’s a lot like the mandate that Ford already had before the election.
The good news for Ford is that Trump wouldn’t have cared if the PCs had won every seat in the provincial election. The point of framing the election as a one-issue vote on fighting tariffs was to protect Ford from discussing areas where he was vulnerable. It was a triumph of issue management that enabled Ford to achieve his real goal: getting four more years while the getting was good.
Voters were not nearly so kind to Ford’s two key opponents, Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie and NDP Leader Marit Stiles. While Stiles will again be Opposition leader, her party’s vote declined to a worrying 18.5 per cent. Crombie really took it on the chin, failing to win her own seat and taking only 14 seats overall, despite winning 30 per cent of the vote.
Crombie, 65, says she will stay on as leader, but what’s the point? Without a seat in the legislature, she can’t be effective and there is no easy path to get one. The Liberals will have to search for yet another leader while the NDP has to ask how good theirs really is.
The next four years belong to Doug Ford. The question is, what will he do with his opportunity?
The snap winter election did little to answer that question. Ford spent most of his time talking about the threatened American tariffs and how he would “protect” Ontario from them.
Unfortunately, Ford’s protection plan consists largely of borrowing and spending billions of dollars to help offset the effects of tariffs. It’s a short-term approach that will only be useful if the tariff fight is brief.
The real challenge is developing an Ontario economy that is more resilient and less dependent on the U.S. If Ford manages that, then he will have achieved something. If all he accomplishes is four years of big deficits and corporate welfare for businesses hurt by American tariffs, then he will have failed.
The many non-tariff problems that plague the province will occupy most of Ford’s time. He will need to deal with them more convincingly in the next term than he has in the past. The top three are health care, housing and affordability.
Ford’s most durable slogan is “Get It Done,” but after nearly seven years in office “Get It Started” would be more accurate. Many of the problems the province faces will take years to resolve.
The health-care situation in Ontario is intolerable. The Ford government likes to boast that 90 per cent of Ontarians have a primary-care provider, the largest percentage in the country. That’s cold comfort to those who do not.
That’s not the only health-care problem, but if Ford can’t fix that one, the support he has now will evaporate. Just before the election, the PCs announced a new primary care plan that would rely on multi-disciplinary clinics and cost $1.8 billion over four years. As a plan, it is superficially plausible, but the odds of eliminating the primary-care gap in four years are slim.
To be fair, the Ford government has made progress on health care by hiring more people and building hospitals and long-term care homes. No government could have met the demand Ontario has faced. Between 2022 and 2024, Ontario added nearly one million people.
Ford wants 1.5-million houses built over 10 years, but it’s not going well. The government expected just over 81,000 housing starts in 2024, well short of its 125,000 target. Ford’s short-term solution has been to stop talking about housing, but it’s a persistent, intractable problem compounded by rapid population growth, high interest rates and high construction costs.
Affordability has been a weak point for the previous Ford governments. It has made a gas-tax cut and eliminated licence-plate fees, but not much else. In this election, it eliminated fees on part of a toll road and allowed for potentially cheaper beer and wine. Combined, all this barely amounts to tokenism.
While Ford said this week that he wants to be premier “forever,” at some point he will have to think about a succession plan. If he stays for his full term, he will have been premier for more than a decade. It’s unlikely that his popularity will last that long, given the probable tough times ahead.
If he’s smart, Ford would step down midway through this mandate, with at least a year left until the next election, to give his successor a chance to make a mark. That’s complicated by the fact that that he just won an election based on the premise that he needs four years to match Trump’s term.
Winning three majorities is a notable accomplishment, but it’s the next term that will decide how Ford is remembered.
National Post
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