Doug Ford has stripped himself of credibility with a Trumped-up snap election

On a mid-winter Wednesday morning in Windsor, with a chill wind blowing across the Detroit River, Doug Ford posed for a phoney photo-op. Against the backdrop of the Ambassador Bridge that ties us inextricably and unpredictably to Donald Trump’s America, Ford cast himself as our reliable protector against a volatile U.S.

president. He did it — he called an early election no one wants, at a time no one imagined. So much for “Get It Done” — his 2022 campaign slogan.



Back then, the Progressive Conservative leader earnestly sought a full four-year mandate to get it done if re-elected as premier — on housing, on hallway health care, on the economy. Ford solemnly sought a contract with voters, expiring only in June 2026, to do all those things. All undone this week, 15 months ahead of schedule.

Promises unkept? Never mind, for there are new promises to keep us safe. The politician who first won power in 2018 — posing near the American border to proclaim earnestly that “Ontario is open for business” — now says business in Ontario is so vulnerable that he needs a new mandate. The mother of all mandates, crushing the opposition for four more years, all justified by his latest campaign slogan: “Protect Ontario.

” Protect? Or a pretext to protect Ford himself — after seven years as premier — from a police probe, from a housing shortfall, from a doctor shortage? For the next four weeks we’ll be watching a scripted campaign without a point for a politician without a purpose — other than perpetuating his time in power. Riding high in the polls, with the province at its lowest point, Ford succumbed to the exhortations of the PC campaign machine. He called a snap election in hopes of a no-surprises campaign.

And yet, despite the urgent call to arms, the truth is that this early election was a long time coming. Long before Trump regained power, well before anyone imagined a tariff war, Ford’s Tories had been urgently planning an early election since early last year. Mindful of the fiscal, political and criminal risks that might get in the way of a third term as premier, they contrived to find a new pretext to pre-empt any bad news.

First they imagined that digging a tunnel under Highway 401 would clear the way to the campaign trail. Then they tried to drive a wedge by bulldozing bike lanes, but that too failed to gain traction on the trail. Belatedly they brought beer to corner stores, until it became a billion-dollar boondoggle.

And so the PC brain trust cooked up a fresh casus belli : Trump’s threat to wage economic warfare with 25 per cent tariffs was just the livelihood-threatening crisis that Ford’s spin doctors ordered. Now the legislature has been dissolved so that the Tories can be deployed into battle with all the precision of a military campaign. Stumbling through snow banks, trudging through slush and salt, bracing against the winter wind, New Democrats, Greens and Liberals will try to recruit supporters and rouse the anti-Ford vote on the doorstep.

It will be an uphill climb, which is precisely why the governing PCs have chosen February for this exercise in democracy, hoping that winter will discourage even the most diehard opponents from rising up against them. But in politics, the best-laid plans and the best-looking polls have a way of melting away when the winds change. His high standing in the polls belies the big risk he is taking.

Ford claims with a straight face that he needs a bigger mandate to spend “tens of billions” bailing out Ontario’s economy and protecting its workforce, yet he conveniently ignores the public pledges from his opposition rivals to offer a united front in the legislature. That would be a true show of strength, but the Tories don’t want unity, they crave adversity — notwithstanding Ford’s eloquent pan-Canadian orations. True, his big lead appears to be baked into the polls.

But the foundational premises upon which this election is based are lodged in quicksand. Ford faces three wild cards: What if Trump doesn’t impose 25 per cent tariffs this Saturday as threatened? His nominee for commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, suggested on Wednesday in Washington that they weren’t coming as long as Canada acted on its border, while Ford was cheerfully fear-mongering in Windsor. We will see by late February just how successful Ford is in wooing Washington under the media spotlight after he makes two separate trips.

The presidential audience he pined for a few weeks ago still isn’t on the schedule; what if Mr. Ford goes to Washington and nobody notices — other than a few Ontario reporters tagging along to see what a campaigning politician sounds like on the stump, stateside? We will know before voting day whether the president has absorbed Canada through military, economic or political coercion. Assuming we remain an independent country, Ford’s favourite pose with a baseball cap — proclaiming “Canada is not for sale” — will wear thin on his head.

If all these political pillars sink, Ford will have a lot of explaining to do — not just about his early election call over a short-term emergency that wasn’t so urgent, but about the long-neglected problems closer to home. Not just on hallway health care and housing shortages, but on spending boondoggles that have beset his government on the Greenbelt and beer in corner stores, adding up to billions of dollars. The more Ford’s credibility dissolves over a trumped-up election campaign against Trump, the more his believability will be doubted on election issues closer to home.

And the more his major opponents — the NDP’s Marit Stiles and Bonnie Crombie of the Liberals — will have the opportunity to call him out..