Dawn of a divided era for Ontario

Every day of the 2018 campaign, Doug Ford foretold the election outcome:

“A new day will dawn in Ontario,” the Progressive Conservative leader predicted, “for the people.”

That day is today. Ford Nation has captured the province and won the day — for the next four years.

The dawn of the Ford era heralds a fresh wave of right-wing populism in Canada’s most populous province, pitting Queen’s Park against a Liberal prime minister in Ottawa and a centrist mayor in Toronto. But it also sets the new premier on a potential collision course with the voters of Ontario, who appear more divided than ever. Despite Ford’s incessant claims to speak for the “people,” the people are polarized, and the electorate is not one.

Yet Ford read the results as a massive endorsement of his world view:

“People from every political stripe, you have come together around one common vision of Ontario,” a defiant Ford told cheering supporters at his victory rally.

“We have taken back Ontario. We WW have delivered a govern- ment that is for the people.”

Ford’s Tories won the most seats, gaining the right to form a majority government under our parliamentary system. The PC juggernaut wiped out most of the Liberal cabinet, reducing Kathleen Wynne’s governing party to a rump. He also beat back a remarkable challenge from Ontario’s New Democrats, who came from behind to challenge the Tories for first place in mid- campaign, but faded in the home stretch.

Now, Ford must decide what Ontario’s 26th premier will turn out to be. Will he be premier of all Ontarians, mindful of the majority of people who voted against his vision of disruption, destruction and dysfunction dd in a province that is a bulwark of progressive government?

He didn’t win because of a fully costed or coherent platform, because he never delivered one. He didn’t so much earn a mandate for reform as profit from public discontent with a 15- year Liberal dynasty — and a massive appetite for change — but that does not entitle him to a blank cheque.

Ford didn’t just harvest anger; he stoked it. Now, he risks reaping a whirlwind of resentment if he becomes too strident a premier, antagonizing those tt Ontarians who did every- thing possible to stop him — including a dramatic shifting of votes to the NDP in an any-body-but- Ford campaign.

But make no mistake, upheaval is in the air, for the dawn of the Ford era means the sun will set on legacy Liberal programs and promises that many New Democrats also supported:

An increase in the minimum wage ww to $ 15 an hour, scheduled f for next Jan. 1, will be can- celled.

Acap on greenhouse gas emissions, which also raises money to fight global warming, will ww also be unwound at con- siderable expense as Ford carries out his vow to end any form of carbon pricing — while also reducing gas prices at the pump. The end of environmental action against climate change makes the first- time victory of Green party Leader Mike Schreiner especially bittersweet.

Unprecedented ( but unspecified) cuts of about $ 6 billion a year yy are coming to the pro- v vincial budget — and, inevita- bly, public services — as Ford finds a way to pay for a massive tax cut that helped win votes with his core supporters.

Abattle looms in the executive uu suite at Hydro One, half- o owned by the province, if Ford moves rapidly as promised to fire the entire board and its handsomely paid CEO, Mayo Schmidt, whom he mocked as the “Six Million Dollar Man” — despite severance payments that will exceed $ 10 million.

Buck- a- beer prices are coming back as booze moves from supermarkets into corner stores in one of Ford’s signature populist promises.

Whether Ford will attenuate his impulses by heeding advice from cabinet colleagues remains to be seen. But judging from his behaviour as a mercurial cc city councillor when his late brother Rob served as mayor, that seems an unlikely scenario at Queen’s Park, where the premier of a majority government has virtually unrestricted powers.

The virtual annihilation of the Liberals at the polls was perhaps anti- climactic, foretold in public opinion polls and foreshadowed by the declining popularity of Wynne in her last years as premier. Despite the popularity of key policies — the minimum wage hike, free child care, free prescription drugs for young adults and seniors, and free tuition for many college students — voters tuned her out long ago.

There have been many theories about her free fall after winning ww a stunning majority government in the 2014 election, but the simplest explanation may be that voters decided on a de facto term limit for the Liberals after 15 years in power — and after exploiting the tt mistakes of previous PC leaders, they were too far down to profit from the mistakes of Ford this time.

As for Horwath’s New Democrats, a strong campaign that raised hopes of an electoral triumph fell well short in the end. When all is said and done, the tt NDP has vaulted from t third place to second, but far behind the Tories and not even remotely close to the minority government outcome that could have opened up new possibilities for power.

Horwath had hoped to be moving into the second- floor premier’s office at the legislature, but instead finds herself headed one floor above to the Opposition leader’s suite. As hard as the premier’s job might have been, and as much as she railed against Wynne’s Liberals, she will have an even harder time of it keeping Ford’s majority Progressive Conservative government in line.