Doug Ford: Trump without the ideas

Winning just above 40 percent of the popular vote, Doug Ford's Conservatives won a thumping majority in yesterday's Ontario provincial election.  The left-leaning NDP, which at one point in the campaign was polling equally with the Conservatives, will be the official opposition.  Former Premier Kathleen Wynne's Liberals were massacred, electing only 7 MPPs and thus losing official status in the legislature.  And Ontario elected its first Green Party MPP.

Comparisons between Doug Ford and Donald Trump have been commonplace during the campaign, and to be sure, there are similarities.  Both are heirs to considerable wealth, posing as self-made men yet somehow still part of the aggrieved middle class.  Both have a tendency to bizarre off-the-cuff statements and general boorishness.  However, there are some important differences.  In Trump's case, you may not have liked the ideas he promoted during the election campaign -- abolish Obamacare, move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, cut taxes, toughen up on Iran and so on -- but you recognized they were all things he might actually be able to do if elected, and you could vote accordingly.

By contrast, the "platform" on which Doug Ford has been elected is a motley collection of half-baked notions, many of which are either meaningless in practice or outright impossible.  A small sample:

• Ford plans to cut the cost of a gallon of gasoline by 10 cents by way of a reduction in the Provincial excise tax.  This sounds all well and good, but I clearly recall that the last two occasions I gassed up the ride, there was a difference of more than 15 cents a gallon in the two prices I paid.  Given the day-to-day volatility in retail gas prices in the Province, Ford's plan would cut Provincial revenues without making any meaningful (or even noticeable) difference at the pumps.

• Ford promises to fire the CEO of Hydro One, the principal electrical transmission utility, on the grounds he is overpaid.  Indeed he is, but since Ms Wynne has privatized more than half the company, this is not a promise that Ford can easily keep.  And if he does, said CEO walks away with an 8-figure severance deal, which is hardly likely to go down well with the voters.

• Ford promises to find $6 billion in "efficiencies" in government spending, equivalent to about 4 percent, without firing anyone from the public service.  Efficiencies are a good thing, of course: they mean you can do more with less.  But since something of the order of two-thirds of public spending goes to salaries and benefits, that "less" can only mean fewer public servants.  This is an unsquarable circle, and this promise may be the one that comes back to haunt Ford early in his mandate, when he tables his first budget.

• And speaking of the budget, Ford offered no detailed costing of his ramshackle platform during the election campaign, contenting himself with a promise to restore the budget to balance some time in his four-year term.  However, independent analyses suggest that Ford's plans will actually lead to bigger deficits than either the Liberals or NDP were set to record if they were elected.  Expect Ford to follow the time-honoured tradition of "discovering" that the fiscal cupboard has been left bare by his predecessors, as a prelude to breaking all manner of election pledges.

The list goes on, but that's a representative sample.  There may be some comfort to be found in the fact that some good people have been elected alongside Ford, including a former senior banking colleague of yours truly.  But here, alas, we circle back to the comparisons with Trump.  Neither man looks much like a team player.  The adults in the room haven't restrained Trump, and it's unlikely they will be able to stop Ford from following his instincts, for better or worse.