The Star’s view
Ford has never bothered to spell out his position in any detail on the big issues facing Ontario,
So now it’s official: Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives have torched the “progressive” part of their party’s name.
By choosing Doug Ford as their leader, if only by a hair, the party’s members have embraced the flight to the right that was already well underway during their shambolic leadership campaign.
And they’ve done it in the most dramatic way they could, by jumping aboard the populist bandwagon that is overtaking much of the western world.
Moderate conservatives, including the so-called Red Tories who have traditionally been a major part of the Ontario PC coalition, now have a big choice to make.
They will soon have to decide whether their distaste for Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals is so great that they’re willing to hand a blank cheque to a man whose main calling card is a simplistic rage against the out-of-touch “elites” he blames for every problem.
Because the fact is we know very little about what Doug Ford would actually do as premier if the PCs manage to win the provincial election set for June 7.
We know he wouldn’t bring in a carbon tax. We know he’d turn back the clock on sex education. And we know he might make it harder for teenage girls to get an abortion.
Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess. He’s never bothered to spell out his position in any detail on the big issues facing Ontario, and his party has trashed the relatively centrist platform put together only four months ago under the gone (but not quite forgotten) Patrick Brown. Like Donald Trump, he makes a virtue out of ignorance about policy.
So all we have to go on is sloganeering and attitude. Some empty bromides about rooting out unidentified “waste” at Queen’s Park and “bringing prosperity back” to the province.
Mostly, it’s about attitude and anger, as it was when his brother Rob occupied the Toronto mayor’s office and Doug was his cheerleader and enabler. There were the wacky schemes, such as putting a giant Ferris wheel on the waterfront, and a lot of ill-informed ranting about bureaucracy and the “gravy train.”
Maybe that’s enough. Maybe voters are so fed up with the Liberals, who have made their full share of mistakes during 15 years in power, that they’ll sign that blank cheque and turn the province over to the man with no plan.
That’s entirely possible, as many pundits and pollsters have pointed out. The same general formula worked for Trump in 2016. And it’s now clearer than ever that Ontario is susceptible to the same populist temptations that carried the day with so many U.S. voters.
Still, victory for the PCs is far from a foregone conclusion. Those Red Tories may rally to Ford out of party loyalty or a simple lust for power, but then again, many of them might not. Behind the morning-after slogans about unity, the party is seriously divided despite Christine Elliott’s decision to drop a legal challenge against the results.
At the same time, the Liberals have a lot of life left in them, even after so long in office.
Over the past year, Wynne has crafted a series of policies — pharmacare, a higher minimum wage, labour law reform and free post-secondary education for many — that are both progressive and popular. Do Ontarians really want to put all that at risk and follow Doug Ford down the populist path?
They will also have to consider the cost of what’s hidden beneath Ford’s sloganeering. One economist, for example, calculates that a PC government would have to cut about 40,000 public service jobs if it intends to balance the provincial budget without the revenue from a carbon tax.
Those are the kind of real-life trade-offs that come with governing. And they’re the kind of practical choices that voters will have to consider during the coming campaign. They’ll have to keep in mind the real lives and important services that could be sacrificed on the altar of Doug Ford’s simplistic slogans.
Maybe voters are so fed up with the Liberals . . . that they’ll sign that blank cheque