Ford drives on

I haven't bothered until now to post anything about the Ontario Provincial election campaign, which ended yesterday with a thumping victory for the Conservatives and their lumpen leader, Doug Ford. The election campaign was marked by a profound lack of engagement on the part of the electorate, which was duly reflected in a 43 percent turnout at the polls, by far the lowest ever. There seemed to be little reason to inflict any of this of the faithful readers of this blog. 

By and large the media don't much like Doug Ford. He's not one for making public appearances all over the place in order to maintain a high profile with the voters. He campaigned much less actively than his opponents this time out, and yet still managed to increase both his party's share of the vote and its representation in the Provincial legislature at Queen's Park.

The sour grapes in the media began even before the votes were tallied, because it was very obvious early on that neither the Liberals nor the New Democrats were going to lay a glove on the Tories.  Pundits suggested the public indifference to the whole event was playing into Ford's hands, but isn't that kind of missing the point? It's rarely if ever up to the incumbent government to inject excitement into an election campaign. The incumbent will always be judged primarily on its track record. It's up to the opposition parties to get the fireworks going, and the ultra-low turnout yesterday shows that they entirely failed to do so.

The leaders of the two largest opposition parties have already paid the price of failure, with both quitting even before all the votes were tallied. This was NDP leader Andrea Horwath's fourth election at the helm. Although her party retained its status as official opposition, she has chosen to make way for new blood, but given that she has been the face of the party since 2010, it may be hard to find a replacement with any kind of public profile. As for the Liberals, it says it all that their leader, Steven Del Duca, was not a member of the legislature before the election, and failed to win a riding he has lived in for many years. The party won so few seats that it will not have official party status going forward. There are unlikely to be many takers for the leadership.

We have to spend a moment to consider the role of the Toronto Star, Canada's highest-circulation newspaper, in all of this.  The Star hates all Tories but has a particularly strong animus for Doug Ford. When the COVID pandemic arrived, the Star chose to have one reporter -- Bruce Arthur, notionally a sports columnist -- focus on nothing but COVID, with a barely concealed mandate to blame absolutely everything on Ford. 

So much for that. Although there was plenty to criticize about how Ford handled COVID, it would be hard to argue that he did a worse job than anyone else in a similar position, and Bruce's incessant carping may well have turned a lot of people off.  In the wake of the election Bruce is calling for reform of Ontario's first past the post electoral system, in order to prevent the Tories from winning thumping majorities with only 40 percent of the vote.  Similar concerns were not often heard from the Star earlier in this century, when the Liberals racked up fifteen consecutive years in office. 

Four more years of Ford is not something we can look forward to. His team are mostly a graceless lot and some of his election pledges, notably an expensive and unnecessary new highway for the Greater Toronto area, are very bad indeed. But his success yesterday can have come as no surprise to anyone who had been paying attention. What's more, given the leadership vacuum on the Liberal and NDP benches, you would already make the Tories favourites for the 2026 election -- maybe under the leadership of Doug's nephew Michael, who was elected for the first time yesterday.