Ford Nation arrival a gift for the NDP

The June election will be a mere formality down here

The Windsor area’s self-imposed status as political Siberia, many frozen steppes from the levers of power, could be drawing to an end with right-wing populist Doug Ford’s shock takeover of the provincial Conservatives.

Not that the PCs have any hope of winning down here in the people’s paradise. That’s simply not in the cards, given this former Liberal stronghold’s torrid love affair with the no-clout third-party NDP.

The June election will be a mere formality down here. Percy Hatfield in WindsorTecumseh, Taras Natyshak in Essex and even Lisa Gretzky in Windsor West — facing lame, no-name challengers — could probably spend the campaign counting beer caps down in Fort Myers and still win. You can paint it orange right now.

But the arrival of Ford Nation at Queen’s Park is a gift for the NDP. It has given the party reason to hope that leftie Liberals, fleeing their own doomed party and fainting at the prospect of a premier Ford, will help them form a government for the first time since Bob Rae was chased from office in 1995.

Hatfield, this province’s most popular MPP and an astute political analyst in his many years with the CBC, is too canny to make firm predictions but thinks this is “an opportune time for an NDP breakthrough” that could see the party, if all the stars align, forming what would most likely be a minority government. At worst, he sees it becoming the Official Opposition. Hatfield isn’t taking Ford lightly. He believes Ford, with huge grassroots popularity in areas like Etobicoke and Scarborough, could take as many as a dozen Toronto seats and will mount a powerful campaign.

The Kathleen Wynne Liberals, in his view (admittedly self-serving) have long been toast. “She’s gone. The people decided some time ago that they were going to replace her.”

Now it’s up to the NDP and its labour allies to paint Ford as a scary monster who could do immense damage to the province if he becomes premier. Hatfield makes a good start by describing Ford as a potential Mike Harris on steroids who might make even deeper cuts than the former Tory premier.

“Maybe he’ll use a chainsaw instead of a hatchet like Harris did,” mused Hatfield. He wonders whether a Ford government would sell the rest of Hydro One and slash education and health spending. And he speculates that the media and others are digging deep into Ford’s turbulent past and will find lots of skeletons. You get the picture. The NDP objective will be to scare the wits out of middle-of-the-road voters, especially Liberals, by convincing them Ford is a hacking, slashing Trump-like menace to their comfy way of life.

The funny thing is that an NDP win, with Andrea Horwath at the helm but with labour, especially the public-sector unions, pulling the strings, could be both a huge win for WindsorEssex County and a debacle for the province. How does Municipal Affairs Minister Percy Hatfield sound? He would be a shoo-in for a cabinet post and his background as a city councillor and vice-president of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario would make him the ideal choice for municipal affairs.

As Dave Cooke proved in the early 1990s with the Rae government, an NDP minister from Windsor can haul home a lot of bacon. Times were good for this struggling city with Cooke delivering a raft of spending initiatives. Were they good for Ontario? Hell, no. That’s why the Rae team was evicted after a single free-spending term and replaced with the fiscal antidote — a fire-breathing Mike Harris. Windsor needs a voice in government. We’ve been on the outside since 2014 when Windsor West voters dumped Liberal cabinet minister Teresa Piruzza in favour of a little-known NDP rookie with a priceless hall-of-fame name — Gretzky. Yet I’m terrified by the prospect of another free-spending, intrusive government — this one answerable to CUPE and OMERS and the like — taking steps to make Ontario even more overtaxed, over-regulated, over-priced and uncompetitive.

What’s scarier? Doug Ford with a chainsaw? Or Andrea Horwath with a shovel?

The jury is out.