When it comes to the next provincial election, all bets are off

Politically speaking, COVID-19 has been very good to Doug Ford but there are big hurdles to clear

For mid-morning radio listeners last week in Windsor, Steven Del Duca got a rare chance to explain how he would prepare the province for the next time we face a pandemic.

The Ontario Liberal leader was on the Radio 800 talk show for barely five minutes, but that was fine with Del Duca because any airtime he can grab these days is a bonus.

Stuck at his suburban Toronto home, the new Liberal leader has had to resign himself to the reality that he was forced to scrap much of his 2022 election strategy and watch as Premier Doug Ford dominates the airwaves with his daily afternoon coronavirus briefings.

Indeed, the entire political landscape in Ontario has changed because of the COVID-19 crisis.

It has changed so much that Ford, once the most unpopular premier in the province’s history, is now riding so high in polls that Tories are starting to dream of an easy victory in the June 2, 2022, election.

Del Duca was chosen to lead the Liberals at a convention just three days before Ford declared a state of emergency in Ontario, effectively locking down much of the province. Absolutely everything has changed since then.

Before the lockdown, the Liberals’ election strategy was to a good extent based on Ford remaining highly unpopular.

Today, many voters are marvelling at how well Ford is managing this crisis. A survey released this week by Campaign Research indicated 76 per cent of Ontarians approve of how Ford is performing right now, with only 17 per cent disapproving. Last summer only 20 per cent approved of his performance and 69 per cent disapproved.

One of the reasons for this turnaround is that unlike his disastrous bull-in-achina-shop first year in office, Ford is now heeding the advice of senior public servants. It all changed for Ford when he realized, “Hey, this is serious.”

But Ford and his re-election team should not become overly confident that they can ride the current spike in popularity to victory in 2022.

That’s because COVID-19 will have changed politics everywhere in the world, including Ontario, for quite a long time.

The setting for the next election will be very different from anything we have seen before. Nor will it be a simple referendum on Ford’s performance, although that will remain a factor.

The economy will be the biggest issue, with many stores never reopening and many businesses failing. Unemployment is expected to remain distressingly high. Ford will also likely be facing heavy criticism over why no provincial employees were laid off or had to take pay cuts, while hundreds of thousands of private sector workers lost their jobs or saw their wages slashed.

The next government will need to present credible architecture for the reconstruction of Ontario’s economy and the design and financing of public services. Here is where Del Duca and Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath have a chance to make their mark, although it is advantage Ford only because he will be living with the problem right up to voting day.

To deal with massive post-pandemic deficits, Ford will either have to raise taxes substantially or make huge spending cuts — or worse, do both. Whichever path he takes will be unpopular with huge swaths of Ontario voters.

At the same time, Ford may pay a political price for failing to act when first took office to improve long-term care facilities and bolster public health services. He will also face continual criticism over when and how the province should have reopened stores and other sectors of the economy.

And then there’s the real chance that Ford will revert to his old ways. Just in the past few days, the “old Doug” has resurfaced, first when he called lockdown protesters “yahoos,” next when he attacked local health officials over lack of testing and telling them to “pull up their socks,” and finally when he reminded voters about his reputation as “Premier Flip-Flop” when he officially dropped plans to go ahead with flawed blue licence plates.

Three months ago Ford seemed destined for defeat in 2022. Now some believe he’s headed for victory. The certainty is that all bets are off.