When Doug Ford looks at Donald Trump, he sees an opportunity

Never mind Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau. Forget the mayor and municipal council. Doug Ford can do it all and get it done.

He is one-stop shopping and one-stop voting. Our once-upon-a-time premier has been our acting mayor since winning his first provincial election six years ago. Now he’s acting like prime minister until further notice, or the next federal election — whichever comes first.



Perched at Queen’s Park, ensconced in his Etobicoke hideaway, he lords it over city hall and presides over Parliament Hill. Grabbing the gavel as rotating chair of the Council of the Federation this month, he now speaks, purportedly, for the premiers. Not to mention his inherited leadership of the family firm, Ford Nation.

From coast to Etobicoke to coast. Think of him as premier of premiers, prime minister of the 51st state, mayor of Toronto and ruler (or reeve) of Ontario’s 443 other municipalities. All in one.

Pasha, for short. In short, Ford now stands tall. He casts a long shadow, broadcasting and recasting his image on every possible platform.

See him on CP24’s all-news channel cutting a ribbon or slashing a program. Watch him on CPAC’s all-politics channel convening his fellow premiers. Look now — he’s on CNN appealing to America’s president-elect.

Look again — he’s on Fox News, trying again to get Trump’s attention. He’s all over X, ready to dance a jig with Elon Musk. In politics, appearing on every channel is a good way to change the channel.

Why worry about homeless people when you can adjourn the legislature for nearly three months during the worst of the winter chill and spend your days saving the country from America’s predatory depredations? He’s already booked a flight to Washington in late February, leading a delegation of his fellow premiers to meet congressional leaders and U.S. governors.

Ford has announced he will go to the White House to plead Canada’s case, if Trump will have him. “I just look forward to sitting down with him eye to eye, businessman to businessman, and saying, ‘You know, we need to cut a deal that’s going to be beneficial for Americans and Canadians,’” Ford said this week, after boasting about go-betweens trying to arrange a meeting between the leader of the free world and the governor of Ford Nation. Let us not be churlish, in this holiday season, about Ford’s multi-tasking, multi-asking, multimedia act.

There’s something to be said for Ford saying whatever comes into his head these days. Trudeau is absent without love or leave, as is his parliamentary opposition. Amid the opportunism, the premier sees an opportunity.

After six years in power at Queen’s Park meddling municipally, he can’t help fantasizing federally and dabbling diplomatically. He sees himself as Canada’s communicator-in-chief, no matter his mangled messaging. The disputatious among us might question his judgment about threatening to cut off Ontario’s energy exports to our dear neighbours in Dearborn, Detroit and beyond.

Certainly the premiers of Canada’s energy-abundant provinces — Newfoundland, Quebec and Alberta — were quick to dissociate themselves from Ford’s musings, lest his threats introduce uncertainty into the lucrative, long-term contracts they have signed and seek with other neighbouring states. Their jitters were unsurprising. If you are trying to lock Vermont into an eternal relationship, complete with expensive power lines, you don’t want to put it on the chopping block every time Trump creates a crisis that may turn into an empty threat from one year to the next.

That said, as much as Alberta’s Danielle Smith shuddered over Ford’s faux pas, her predecessors were willing to let us shiver: “Let those eastern bastards freeze in the dark,” Albertans were once fond of saying. On balance, however, there is method to the premier’s madness. The president-elect doesn’t think twice when uttering the equivalent of economic death threats to Canada, so why not fight mad with mad, madness with madness, Trump with Ford? No matter how unpredictable Ford can be, he deserves credit for trying to break through the noise, as federal Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc mused the other day.

His rhetorical approach and latest reproach provoked a riposte from the president-elect, who publicly dismissed the idea of Ontario cutting the cord on electricity exports. Turns out we got a rise out of Trump. And raised a few raised eyebrows among electricity consumers in Michigan (home of American’s next ambassador to Ottawa, Pete Hoekstra, lest we forget).

We won’t know until next year whether Ford’s crusade helps Canada. The question of the hour, however, is will it help him win another term as premier?.