Are the Ontario Progressive Conservatives reaching the tipping point with Doug Ford?
Last Wednesday, April 21, may not have been the sweetest day of Doug Ford’s life.
It began with a Gable cartoon in his morning paper that had Ontario’s besieged premier in his office, while out the window, workmen were building a guillotine and a grim old lady was knitting a scarf.
Not long after his Madame Defarge moment, word leaked that the premier had been in contact with a staff member who had tested positive for COVID-19. Although Ford had received his first of two vaccine shots, he followed Toronto public health guidelines to quarantine for 14 days. He couldn’t go home lest he expose his family to the virus. So he moved into the old Ford family house in Etobicoke.
The trick was to create a command post from which he could direct the province, maintain control of Queen’s Park, and demonstrate that Doug Ford and he alone speaks for all things COVID in the Progressive Conservative government of Ontario — while fending off the dogs of war who are sniffing at his leadership heels.
As reported in the Toronto Star, there ensued a scramble to equip the premier with tools he would need for 14 days. Someone had to buy or borrow a laptop for the leader, who didn’t have one, and teach him how to use it. Next, get a modern smartphone to replace his cherished 2014 BlackBerry Classic so he could download large attachments. Finally, Zooming. As the Star noted, the premier has relied on government technicians to set up the connections for the remote meetings he has been holding from his office during the pandemic. He needed to be taught how to Zoom alone.
Remote communication will be essential throughout the quarantine if he is to continue to present himself as the pillar holding up Ontario as variants multiply and infections climb. There may be no technical reason why Health Minister/Deputy Premier Christine Elliott or one of the other ministers who pose like cardboard cut-outs behind him during his media sessions couldn’t speak for him, but there is a powerful political reason.
A surrogate might stray from the script. Loosely translated it is: OK, infections are up again and hospitals have burst at the seams, but if everyone does what we tell them today to do (forget what we said yesterday), all will be well, and, if it isn’t, it is the fault of the federal government for not closing airports quickly enough a year or so ago, or the press for never telling our story our way, or the scientists, who may be smart but don’t have the understanding that we, the chosen sages, have of how things work and what the people need.
Not only might someone from the cabinet taxi squad stray, she or he might go rogue and venture an independent opinion. Or buckle under the pressure of evasions and answer a reporter’s questions by conceding there is a chance that the government — though surely not the premier! — made a mistake or two along the way.
It is easy to make light of Premier Ford’s predicament. He is facing a potential political crisis. But it does not approach the catastrophe that confronts — has already seized — the people of Ontario, due in significant measure to mismanagement by the provincial government. It is deadly serious. Literally. Lord knows how many have died who could have lived, and how many more may die on Ford’s watch.
An insider who is highly regarded in the upper ranks of the PC party, someone whom I cannot name but whose opinion I respect, tells me he believes Ford is at the tipping point, where a slight shove would bring him down, and conceivably his government, too.
I’m not so sure. I think it might take resignations from a few ministers, probably including Elliott, or the public defections of a halfdozen or so recognizable MPPs. Do any of them have the guts to shove?
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, retired recently from teaching political science at the University of Guelph. His column appears Mondays. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com.