Come clean before vote

If Doug Ford does fall short in what looked only a week or so ago like an easy stroll to the Ontario premier’s office, he’ll have only himself to blame.

Instead of being comfortably ahead of the other parties contending this unpredictable Ontario election, his Progressive Conservatives are now locked in a close battle with the New Democrats, once the province’s perpetual also-rans.

In part this is due to the PC leader himself. He has a solid base of support among devotees of “Ford Nation,” but the same qualities that attract them repel plenty of other voters.

In part it’s due to the near-constant eruptions of questionable behaviour, contested candidacies and outrageous statements that continue to plague his party.

The latest involves Ford himself, who in an audio recording released on Thursday by the Liberals is heard approaching customers at a Tim Hortons and trying to get them to sign a party membership on behalf of Etobicoke Centre PC candidate Kinga Surma without actually paying for it — a violation of party rules.

Ford waved off the whole thing off as an old story (the incident took place in October 2016) that has been investigated and dismissed by the party.

But it was notable that he didn’t deny any of it, and if as the recording suggests he was out personally flogging what the Liberals call “bogus memberships” then it will be even harder for him to pin the party’s internal ructions on his predecessor as leader, Patrick Brown. Especially now that Brown has emerged publicly (in the Star) to forcefully deny Ford’s claim that the party he inherited was a “mess.”

Voters should think long and hard before entrusting the leadership of their province to a bunch like this. And that goes double when the same party has conspicuously failed to spell out what it intends to do if it does win power on June 7.

We should, in fact, be debating the merits of the PC plan for governing versus those of the Liberals (as set out in their last budget) and the New Democrats (who have at least issued a detailed policy platform).

But we can’t properly do that because Ford hasn’t bothered to come up with a properly costed, comprehensive platform. Apparently he thought he could slow-walk into power at Queen’s Park without the bother of telling people in any detail what he plans to do.

It’s now clear that has backfired on him. The vacuum left by the absence of an actual plan is being filled by the drip-dripdrip of contested party nominations, rogue candidates and alleged fiddling with the rules. The longer it goes on, the more the party’s credibility is being eroded.

Ford has promised to release a full policy platform before election day. But the clock is ticking loudly; the vote is now just two weeks away.

The sooner he puts out his plan the better, for both the PCs and voters at large. We’ll have a clearer way to judge him. And he’ll have something to talk about other than what he might have been up to in Etobicoke Centre.

The sooner Doug Ford puts out his plan the better, for both the PCs and voters at large. We’ll have a clearer way to judge him