Who speaks for people of Ontario?
Doug Ford can legitimately claim to speak for less than 20 per cent of Ontarians
This week, speaking about the judicial ruling that found his government’s actions in reducing the size of Toronto’s city council to be unconstitutional, Premier Ford said: “I believe the judge’s decision is deeply concerning and the result is unacceptable to the people of Ontario.” He went on to point out that he was elected while the judge was appointed.
Let us leave aside, for the time being, the premier’s questioning of the authority wielded by a Superior Court justice in interpreting the Charter of Rights in the Constitution of Canada. Instead, let us focus on the matter of who speaks for the people of Ontario. At least one commentator on these events suggested that, in making the claim that it is he who does, Ford was acting according to a “populist” political stance. “Populism” is often said to refer to those who believe they represent so-called “ordinary people” as opposed to the members of “elite” groups, whoever they may be.
So let us ask: Who are these ordinary people? On whose behalf does the current premier of Ontario have a legitimate right to speak?
First, as an elected politician, he has an undoubted right to speak on behalf of the constituents in his riding who voted for him. Second, as premier of a government holding a majority of seats in the provincial legislature, he has a right to speak on behalf of that government as a whole. By extension, he may speak on behalf of all the voters in Ontario who elected all of the MPPs in that governing party.
But those electors make up, in point of fact, a rather small proportion of all “the people of Ontario.” How small? The calculation runs as follows. First, exclude all those who cannot vote, by reason of age, lack of Canadian citizenship, illness, or anything else. The voting age population in Canada is about 79 per cent of the total population. Then, exclude from the 79 per cent all those eligible to vote who did not do so in the last Ontario election, that is, 42 per cent, leaving us with 58 per cent of 79 per cent, or 46 per cent. Then exclude all those who did not vote for the Conservative Party in that same election, that is, 59.4 per cent, which yields the final figure of 19 per cent. To sum up, the Premier and his party actually have a legitimate right to claim to represent, and thus to speak on behalf of, 19 per cent of the people of Ontario. I invite others to check these calculations and improve them.
With respect to any specific question of law or policy, such as the law reducing the size of Toronto’s city council, it is reasonable to suppose that at least some of the electors who voted for the Conservative Party in the 2018 election might not support that particular law, making it likely that, on this issue, Premier Ford is entitled to speak on behalf of something less than 19 per cent of the people of Ontario.
This strikes me as being a very peculiar form of “populism,” if that is indeed what it is, in today’s Ontario. Nevertheless, it has become common to refer to an entire group of current political leaders around the world, particularly certain of those in the United States and Europe, as being “populists.” It is time for us to have a wider debate in Canada about how well the term populism describes the reality of political formations, and how the term might relate to other characterizations, especially demagoguery.