'Experts say'

New in Canadian Affairs: Your humble newsletter purveyor sits down to talk about the pretend centre of the political universe, and the pros and cons of a government that's "Conservative in name only."

The statue of Sir John A. still sits entombed under Ontario’s Conservative premier, for no reason other than political cowardice.

The days are just packed; and not in the delightful, timeless, profoundly philosophical Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes kind of way.

Mondays soon give way to working Saturdays; the Sundays become as good a time to write as any; there are real meetings, fake Zoom meetings, ferries to conferences, flights scheduled to others, and government crackheads and scenes of degradation that pass by taxi cab windows in a blur.

It’s all hands on deck in this strange excuse for a racket, but for the more normal people, who want to make your lives easier and give your kids a shot at owning a home and living in a country that can even define itself as such — we are indeed trying, and trying very hard.

It’s in that trying very hard that my working life has slightly cannibalized my writing life of late, so what comments and columns I’ve been able to churn out have been on behalf of my professional capacities at the National Citizens Coalition, have been ghostwritten for others, or ended up in federal election advisory Google Meets, Slack chats, and What’s App groups.

The latest? A talented journo by the name of Samuel Forster was kind enough to feature yours truly in an “experts weigh in” piece for Canadian Affairs, on the Great Ontario Snap Election few were asking for.

Who knew, we make enough fun of “experts say” around here, and eventually one becomes one…

So that’s what this feels like.

I’d encourage you to give Sam’s terrific work a read over at Canadian Affairs, or below the jump. (Please note, the Canadian Affairs paywall is FREE, the writing is NOT DELICATE, OFFENSIVE, CANADIAN CODSWALLOP *and* you get 8 free articles per month.)

I should be back with a dedicated column this week, before hopping on a Hullo ferry to the birthplace of Nanaimo bars to attend the B.C. Conservative AGM. If you find yourself in or around town next weekend, do say hi.

As ever, thank you for reading. If you like this feature, kindly toss it a like, share, or join us in the comments. And if you’d like to support my work by becoming a paid subscriber, I’m sure Substack has already bombarded you with three or four prompts.

-Alex

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Canadian Affairs: What Explains Premier Ford’s Enduring Popularity?

The Ontario PCs look poised to win a third majority, despite a tenure punctuated by scandals. Experts weigh in on Premier Ford’s secret sauce.

By Samuel Forster, February 22, 2025 (link to article)

Libby Robinson, a longtime resident of Ayr, Ont., says she plans to vote for Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party in the Feb. 27 election. However, she has her reservations about how Premier Doug Ford has governed.

“ He’s not perfect,” said Robinson, 69, about the party’s leader, Premier Doug Ford. “And I’m sure there will be many things over the next four years that I will probably disagree with him on. But right now, I think he is our best bet for Ontario.”

Voters like Robinson may explain why the PCs appear poised to win a third majority, despite facing serious headwinds during its nearly seven years in power.

Polling analysts project the party will actually increase its seat count from 79 to 86, out of a total 124 seats.

Experts say the Tory leader’s relatable and non-ideological approach explains his popularity with middle class voters even after all these years.

“He  speaks to everyday people,” said Melanie Paradis, a conservative strategist and president at Texture Communications, a media relations firm. “He speaks their language. He answers issues.”

Even conservatives who would like to see Ford take a more conservative stance on issues concede he has been a highly effective messenger.

“For all the flaws of Ford’s ‘Conservative-in-name-only’ approach, he is a talented communicator, and he has the best team of digital strategists currently working for an Ontario provincial party,” said Alexander Brown, a communications director with the National Citizens Coalition, a conservative advocacy group.

“[They] have proven themselves adept at communicating Ford’s blue-collar, relatable and serious every-man image.”

But Oliver Paré, a former head of engagement for the Ontario NDP, says the premier’s communication skills paper over sustained political failures, including on matters voters identify as priorities.

 ”His affable-politician style has allowed him to get away with the fact that he hasn’t delivered on his central promises, nor has he shored up any of the systems that we rely upon,” said Paré, who now heads the digital strategy firm Oliver Paré Strategies.

Fractured opposition

When the Progressive Conservatives won their first majority in 2018, voters were exhausted with Ontario’s Liberal Party. The Liberals had been in power since 2003 and were plagued by spending scandals, including the decision to cancel two gas-fired power plants to the tune of $1 billion.

“It was pretty clear going into the election that it was Doug Ford’s to lose,” said Paradis, who was a member of Ford’s communications team during the 2018 election.

But more than six years later, the opposition still remains weak and fractured. The Liberal Party is projected to win 19 seats. The NDP, which has been the official opposition since 2018, is projected to take 17.

Brown says Ford’s centrism has made it hard for the Ontario Liberals to differentiate themselves. Since December 2023, the Liberals have been led by former Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie, who is herself widely seen as a centrist figure within the party.

“By running as a McGuinty-esque, big-union friendly, high-deficit, ‘here’s another subsidy in a pinch’, centre-left liberal, [Ford] has destroyed the Ontario Liberal Party’s ability to recover, and made them all but redundant as a political option,” said Brown.

Brown says the provincial NDP, which has been led by former federal NDP president Marit Stiles since February 2023, has also failed to gain traction with left-of-centre voters by focusing on the wrong issues.

“Performative displays of keffiyeh scarves in the Queen’s Park legislature aren’t going to win over enough of Ontario’s left when its economy is still as productive as America’s lowliest ‘have-not’ states,” Brown said.

A Conservative legacy?

Part of what makes the Progressive Conservatives’ sustained popularity surprising is that their time in power has been punctuated by numerous political quagmires. These include controversial pandemic-era crackdowns, the unilateral reduction of Toronto’s city council mid-election, and allegations of inside dealing on major development projects.

During the pandemic, other conservative-led provinces such as Alberta and Saskatchewan were reluctant to impose mask or vaccine mandates or shut down schools.

But Ford’s government imposed some of the longest school lockdowns in the world, totaling close to 30 weeks across 2020 and 2021. In April 2021, the province even announced plans to ban Ontarians from using playgrounds and permit police to conduct random stops to enforce a stay-at-home order. These moves prompted an immediate backlash — including from civil liberties groups and dozens of police forces — leading Ford to quickly backtrack.

For Robinson, a retired businesswoman, these actions were reason enough for her to not support Ford in 2022.

“ I have been a lifelong conservative, but in the last election when Ford was running, I didn’t vote for him,” she said.

But Paradis says Ford’s skills as a retail politician enabled him to win back many voters.

“ He was being very real with people. He would apologize regularly when things were hard, when things went wrong, and people respect that.”

Ford used a similar playbook in the face of blowback over the Greenbelt scandal. Ford’s government had proposed allowing housing development in the protected ecological zone that surrounds the Greater Toronto Area. The move contradicted his earlier promises, and was revealed to disproportionately benefit developers with ties to public office holders.

“[T]he owners of the 15 land sites removed from the Greenbelt could ultimately see a collective $8.3 billion increase to the value of their properties,” said a 2023 report by Ontario’s auditor general.

In an emotional address in September 2023, Ford reversed the decision, admitting it was a “mistake.”

“I made a promise to you that I wouldn’t touch the Greenbelt,” Ford told reporters. “I broke that promise. And for that, I am very, very sorry. I pride myself on keeping our promises. … As a first step to earn back your trust, I’ll be reversing the changes we made, and won’t make any changes to the Greenbelt in the future, because even if you do something for the right reasons, with the best of intentions, you can still be wrong.”

“He is a retail politician through and through,” says Paradis.

More recently, the government has been criticized for its plan to transform a public waterfront park in Toronto into a commercial hub featuring a luxury spa. Critics say the process lacks transparency. A 2024 Auditor General report highlighted unfair bidding and costs that have ballooned from $335 million to $2.2 billion.

Critics also say the PC government has failed to address issues that voters consistently cite as top concerns, such as health care.

In 2024, 2.5 million Ontarians were without a family doctor, up from 1.8 million in 2020, far outpacing population growth in the same period. And the hospital-bed-to-population ratio has also not significantly changed during Ford’s tenure.

“We don’t have more beds,” said Paré. “We still have hallway health care after seven years of it being a crisis under the Wynne government.”

Tyler Meredith, a policy consultant and advisor to the Ontario Liberal campaign, says the party’s current focus on dealing with the Trump administration has offered a welcome distraction from the health care file.

“[Ford] has benefited from this kind of early surge associated with the calling of the election around the question of Trump and tariffs,” he said.

Strategic timing

Ford has said he called a snap election to obtain a renewed mandate to deal with an adversarial Trump administration.

Paradis says it made sense to call an election more than a year ahead of schedule. “You want to be able to go to Donald Trump and say, ‘I’ve got a four-year term. You’re going to have to deal with me no matter what chaos is happening in Ottawa right now,’” she said.

Meredith says the early election call was politically savvy, but far from necessary.

“Does he need to call an election? No. He has a majority,” he said.

“He’s striking while the iron’s hot politically to take advantage of the opportunity to extend his majority,” he said.

Ford has promised significant public investments if the party is reelected, including $22 billion in infrastructure initiatives.

Paradis says these ambitious spending commitments are exactly what Ontarians need.

“ It’s not superfluous programming, it’s investing in real things … spending money on visionary investments into the future economy of Ontario is a smart thing to do. It is absolutely a conservative thing to do.”

The Ford government’s recent decision to mail out $200 rebate cheques to all Ontarians was another big spending initiative. Crombie has described the rebates, which will cost the province $3 billion, a “pre-election bribe.”

But Robinson does not see them that way.

“He was looking out for us,” she said. “I know a lot of people said, ‘Oh, he’s vote-buying’ … He was going to win anyway … I don’t think he was ever worried about not winning. So the fact that he did this was his way of trying to give money back.”

(link to article)

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