Ford victory in Ontario spells good, bad news for Trudeau
OTTAWA — Doug Ford’s resounding victory in the country’s most populous province is bad news for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the federal-provincial relations front — particularly on the climate change file where the two are on a “collision course,” as one veteran Liberal MP candidly admitted Friday.
But that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad news for Trudeau politically. Indeed, history suggests the ascendancy of Ford’s Conservatives in Ontario may actually turn out to be good news for Trudeau’s federal Liberals. First, the bad news for the PM. With Thursday’s decimation of Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals, Trudeau has lost a dependable and trusted ally on any number of federal-provincial files, including climate change. Instead, he’ll have to deal with Ford, a bombastic populist who represents the antithesis of everything Trudeau stands for.
“Clearly, Mr. Ford’s agenda is not the same agenda as Mr. Trudeau’s, and so I think federal-provincial relations will be a bit more challenging,” long-time Toronto Liberal MP John McKay said.
Ford won a commanding majority on a platform that included a pledge to scrap Ontario’s cap-and-trade carbon pricing system. And he’s vowed to join Saskatchewan in challenging attempts by the federal government to impose a carbon price on the provinces, going to the Supreme Court if necessary.
Under federal legislation, all provinces have until the end of this year to enact carbon pricing plans and, if they don’t meet federal standards, a national price will be imposed on them — which, as McKay conceded, puts Trudeau “on kind of a collision course” with Ford.
“You can’t sugar-coat this one ... we are committed to pricing carbon, period, end of story.”
Sarnia Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu said Ford’s victory should be a “wake-up call” for Trudeau, warning him that Canadians think his carbon tax is “just a tax grab for the government.”
She said Alberta could be next to drop out of the pan-Canadian carbon pricing plan if United Conservative Leader Jason Kenney defeats Premier Rachel Notley’s NDP next May.
However, Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister, a fellow Conservative, injected a note of caution. He warned “there’ll be tremendous complexity in dismantling” Ontario’s membership in a capand-trade market with Quebec and California and that it will cost “billions of dollars in expense for the government of Ontario to unwind that system” of auctioning off greenhouse gas emissions allowances.
Ontario’s auction last November alone generated more than $422 million in proceeds, which by law are to be invested in programs to reduce carbon pollution.
Still, federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer expressed his satisfaction at gaining an ally in the fight against Trudeau’s “carbon tax.”
And just as Ontarians rejected Wynne’s deficit-driven, big spending policies, he predicted they’ll reject her policies (that is, Trudeau’s) at the federal level in 2019. If so, they’ll be bucking history. Since Confederation, Ontario voters have almost always opted for a different party federally than the one they’ve chosen provincially — even when that’s meant electing a premier and prime minister guaranteed to be at each other’s throats.
From 1995-2002, Conservative Premier Mike Harris and the Liberal prime minister of the day, Jean Chretien, were openly at war with each other. Yet, in two federal elections during that period, Chretien managed to sweep almost every seat in the province.
Trudeau and Ford both appear to be taking pains to get their relationship off to a collegial start. The prime minister called Ford on Thursday to congratulate him and Ford said he told Trudeau he stands united behind him in his fight against U.S. President Donald Trump’s imposition of crippling tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum.
But Liberal MPs’ reaction demonstrated the potential for that relationship to quickly sour.
In pondering lessons for the federal Liberals from Ontario, McKay said, “why would people embrace such a manifestly obvious unqualified candidate for premier; what is it that drives people to make those decisions that many of us would regard as almost irrational?”