Many Ontarians may be in shock he’s still premier given the politics he’s been playing with the pandemic and the reports leaking out of Queen’s Park early in his tenure about not being interested in governing outside of his agenda to do favours for his monied friends in high places.
But according to recent polls, Doug Ford has rebounded from the darkest depths of Mordor and seems positioned to win re-election. Even the (supposedly) “Red” Star thinks so.
The paper’s Queen’s Park columnist Martin Regg Cohn weighed in on Ford’s chances in next spring’s election in a front-page story on Wednesday. (Yes, we still have newspapers.) And he pronounced Ford poised to win after watching his popularity sink to unfathomable lows. The Twitter-verse was beside itself.
But that Ford can win is not news (or a surprise) to anyone who follows politics and understands the amnesia of voters or the vagaries of our first-past-the-post electoral system that heavily favours incumbents.
The interesting part: Cohn suggests that the turnaround in the premier’s fortunes has a lot to do with how Ford is now actually taking the advice of new folks he drafted months back to rescue him from political oblivion.
After Dougie’s tearful apologia for messing up in his handling of another wave of the pandemic this past spring, the premier is reportedly (wait for it) listening to his advisers, Cohn reports. It’s a new and improved Doug (reportedly, allegedly, supposedly) changed by the rigours of battling the pandemic. It’s “Doug 2.0.” It’s the kind of narrative we crave in politics.
But it all has a very familiar smell for those who remember the mischief and mayhem when Doug was a Toronto councillor and he and his late brother, Mayor Rob Ford, were laying waste to city hall. Back then, there were also attempts to rehab Rob’s tattered image with stories finding their way into the press about Rob growing into his role after steamrolling his way through his political opposition in the first years of office. That story ended tragically.
Doug may very well win re-election. But if he does, it will have more to do with math than redemption.
He won a substantial enough majority in 2018 (since diminished by removals from caucus) to be able to lose a half dozen seats and still form the government. Hence the big money being spent on highways to nowhere to buy votes in the 905 and the push to steal the NDP’s blue-collar voters. More importantly, Ford’s political opposition is mostly in tatters.
The NDP is spinning its wheels (sorry Dippers) and the Liberals are practically non-existent without official party status and a leader who doesn’t have a seat in the Legislature (and, according to party insiders, has an image problem).
Even with the possible emergence of an Ontario wing of the People’s Party to eat up some PC votes, for the current opposition at Queen’s Park winning is not the goal. It’s holding Ford to a minority government that will be considered a victory.
The ever-shifting pandemic could still have something to say about Ford’s political fortunes (and future).
Cohn’s view is that there have been “missteps and missed opportunities,” but that the premier’s handling of the COVID crisis “per capita” has been better than most jurisdictions.
That’s not saying much. It’s also insensitive to the families of more than 10,000 Ontarians who’ve died (many unnecessarily) because of Ford’s penchant for playing chicken with the virus and putting politics ahead of science. He’s doing it again.
With COVID case numbers hitting 1,290 on Thursday, the highest single total in more than six months (280 of those in schools), the province continues to make excuses for why rapid testing kits are still not being made widely available to Ontarians for free. They were supposed to be a “game-changer” in combatting the virus, as the premier said. Instead, they’re $40 a pop at the pharmacy for those to can afford them.
With the Omicron variant now floating around in the breeze, testing and tracking is more important than ever. The current testing and contact tracing system, however, is a mess. And therein lies the rub.
Every time Ford has been called upon to take the steps necessary to stem the next tide of the coronavirus, he’s hesitated so as not to upset his populist (and anti-vaxx) base. And every time, the rest of us have had to pay the price, including with more lockdowns and deaths than necessary and hospital ICUs being overrun so badly that patients have had to be flown hither and yon for treatment while regular surgeries and services had to be put on hold.
Ford dithered for weeks on vaccine passports. When it was clear that there was no way of getting around them if we wanted to open the economy and avoid another lockdown, he half-assed it with a regime that included little or no requirement for enforcement (or mandatory masking in large venues indoors like arenas for that matter).
Proof of vaccination restrictions, in fact, were set to be lifted gradually starting on January 17. But on Thursday, news leaked out of Queen’s Park that the province is now expected to reverse course and keep restrictions in place. In other news, the province will also be embarking on a holiday “testing blitz” in high-traffic areas.
There are no plans, however, to close elementary schools before the holiday break, despite the growing spread of the virus. It’s also unclear if the province plans to institute a regular testing regime of once or twice a week at schools as recommended by the head of the COVID science advisory table last week.
Modelling released this week, meanwhile, suggests that even without the Omicron variant in full swing, daily COVID case numbers could reach as high as 3,000 by January 1. Ontario’s medical officer of health Kieran Moore says “our fate is in our hands.”
Actually, it’s been in the hands of a government that’s been more concerned with political expediency on the coronavirus file.
How many Ontarians that will matter to come next spring’s election remains open to interpretation, as are the motives for Ford’s reported repentance.
As a footnote, Cohn interviewed Ford in an event at Ryerson in the early months of the pandemic when all of Ontario was showering him with praise for his Premier Dad act and seeming transformation into a kinder, gentler premier. Cohn asked the premier about what had changed for him. It’s the kind of softball question politicians typically hit out of the park. Ford could have easily offered some syrupy response. But he wouldn’t bite.
