DOUG FORD’S PITCH TO VOTERS
New PC leader says his platform will be simple, funded by ‘efficiencies’
PC leader says his platform will be simple — and he’ll fund it by finding almost $6 billion in ‘efficiencies.’
Doug Ford’s pitch to Ontario voters will be simple — no glossy magazine with147 promises like his predecessor — and the new leader of the Progressive Conservatives predicts his popularity will help the party nab 10 Toronto seats from the Liberals.
Ford’s platform would lower hospital wait times, cut hydro rates, reduce the size and cost of government — but he promises all that will be done through almost $6 billion of to-be-identified “efficiencies,” not job losses.
“Let me be clear: No one is getting laid off,” Ford said during an interview at the Etobicoke head office of his family’s labels business, amid Liberal predictions some 40,000 jobs are at stake.
As for a recent Forum Research poll that found the PCs would win a majority but almost half of those surveyed expressed disapproval of him as leader, he questioned the pollster and the small sample size and said he’s “seen polls that are absolutely opposite. I am the only candidate out of anyone on both sides that attracts Liberal and NDP voters, and they know it.
“I know some Liberal insiders and they told me ‘Kathleen Wynne was terrified that you’d win because you’d attract the 416 voters that they’ve held on to for years.’ I proved it out in Scarborough when I helped Raymond Cho” win a byelection in a stunning upset in Scarborough-Rouge River in 2016.
“We are going to win nine to10 seats in Toronto and we’re going to win 905.”
Ford emerged victorious from the PC leadership race last weekend after a tough fight with Christine Elliott, who actually took the popular vote and four more ridings than he did — but he won because many of the ridings he captured were worth more points than many of the ones Elliott took.
Elliott initially contested the results, but conceded Sunday night after meeting with Ford. It was her third unsuccessful run at the leadership.
“We just talked,” Ford said of their hours-long meeting. “We’ve known each other for years — it’s talking to your friend, saying, ‘Christine, we can do this together. I need your help, I need your expertise, your knowledge. I need you.’
“She agreed, and she’s happy, I’m happy, we’re moving forward and she’s going to play a critical role in our government,” he said, along with other leadership contenders Caroline Mulroney and Tanya Granic Allen.
Ford also said he’s fed up with the drama around Patrick Brown, the former leader who resigned after being accused of sexual misconduct with two young women while a federal MP, and who now faces a number of questions about his dealings while at the helm.
“We just have to move on,” Ford said, adding he has neither spoken with Brown nor decided if he will allow Brown to run under the PC banner. “I’m tired of this Patrick Brown saga. I just want to focus on Kathleen Wynne, and defeat Kathleen Wynne.”
Ford has asked that all nominations be reviewed after a number of complaints of improper processes under Brown, and said there are still about 22 ridings where candidates need to be nominated — including his own nomination in Etobicoke North.
If elected, Ford said he will put the family business, Deco Labels, into a blind trust.
Ford said his platform — which his team is “going at full steam” to finish, given the election is just over two months away — will be fully costed.
“People want five simple points that affect their lives every day … that’s the direction I gave to the policy team. I want to cost it, I want it justified and show me the numbers.”
The platform would also end cap-and-trade, reduce hydro rates and, like all other areas, look at better business practices to bring costs down, he said.
“There are a lot of sole-source deals in there that are officially driving up the hydro costs, and then we are going to get rid of the carbon tax as well,” he said.
On education, administration could be shared and trimmed, and boards could cut costs through shared procurement — as could all government departments, he added.
“All the procurement adds up to a tremendous amount,” he said. “We can drive costs down 15 per cent.”
On the health front, Ford said he’s assembled a team of health professionals — headed by Dr. Rueben Devlin, the former CEO of Humber River Hospital who was at the helm when his brother, Rob Ford, was being treated there for cancer — to look at the issue of improving wait times.
The PC leader said he’ll revamp the education curriculum and examine “why our Grade 6 math students haven’t hit the provincial standards, that’s concerning,” he said of a trend that has been of concern around North America.
As he pledged to social conservatives during the campaign, he will repeal the sex-ed curriculum — though he doesn’t think a lot needs to be done.