There’s a cautionary lesson in Doug Ford’s victory for Canadian politicians generally, Conservatives specifically and leadership hopeful Pierre Poilievre in particular: Boring politics is back, coloured in many shades of grey.
To an electorate fed up with heavy-handed government interventions into their pandemic-lockdown lives and wincing at increasingly stark political polarizations about nothing, noisy drama, contrived confrontations and ideology-driven platforms are out.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford coasted to majority re-election victory Thursday night boasting only mediocrity in performance and a yawning monotony in promises. First-term excellence was not required. Doing OK was good enough.
He said little throughout the campaign, kept his face off the front page and crept around the province vowing only that he would ‘Get It Done’ without exactly articulating what ‘it’ was or how ‘it’ would get done.
He posted a weak platform built on promises like new or wider freeways, this in a time when gridlock-causing commuters are working from home while climate change was storming great swaths of southern Ontario into darkness.
But voters appeared eager to move beyond the memory of COVID doing a grim-reaper rampage through long-term care, the horrific toll of the opioid crisis, the underfunded struggle against mental illness and the falling-behind state of Ontario health care.
Their preference was simple enough: Deliver a semi-competent, job-protecting, C-plus grade of government and it’s good for a massive majority payday which put him far ahead of his 2018 results - even in usually-hostile Toronto.
Of course, Ford was blessed with a weakling opposition which rarely hit the bullseye on his wide-open forehead. Liberal rival Steven Del Duca was cerebral in policy but toxic on television and uninspiring in personality, so much so he lost his own seat and will be departing as leader shortly if he hasn’t already.
More charismatic NDP leader Andrea Horwath has lost a trio of Ontario election attempts and her fourth similar-sounding effort was clearly one bid too far. She too will quickly exit as leader.
For a why-rock-the-boat electorate, Ford became a risk-adverse safe and steady force of personality. He sounded sincere in feeling our pandemic pain. When hitting too hard on COVID-control, he admitted mistakes and reversed course in the face of public outcry. And he barge-poled away from media before and during the campaign, the better to avoid inserting any feet into his mouth.
Voters in Ontario were not screaming for Conservative policy comfort food like fiscal austerity, smaller bureaucracies, deficit elimination or tax cuts, so Ford delivered mushy political pablum and free motor vehicle registration.
Ford simply put his PC party label into middle ground practice: Not too progressive. Not too conservative.
It’s doubtful, if not laughable, to suggest that Doug Ford is on track to match the iconic status of Ontario’s Bill Davis, New Brunswick’s Frank McKenna or Alberta’s Peter Lougheed. He’s more like an Ontario answer to Alberta’s common-touch premier Ralph Klein.
Or, as a long-time Tory told me, Ford is former premier Mike Harris, minus the heavy ideology-baggage, who aims to deliver a Common Sense Evolution.
Still, there’s no denying the impressive victory he scored.
After a decade standing in baby brother Rob’s mayoralty shadow on Toronto city council and playing silly ideology games while learning to be premier, Ford has scored a stronger mandate to get whatever it is done his way.
You can bet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s probable successor (read Chrystia Freeland) watched the Ford campaign closely as inspiration for her 2025 campaign, particularly with probable rival Pierre Poilievre as Conservative leader noisily rattling the cages of the status quo to shake-up the establishment order.
They can see a campaign where Poilievre is a rock-the-boat rebel without a cause, dividing his party and whipping up anger and resentment to advocate change nobody really wants. In other words, a steady, low-octane campaign could be the best Liberal pathway back to majority rule.
We’re getting way ahead of ourselves, but pan-banging federal Conservatives, believing the route to victory is a hard-right turn under contentious wild-child leadership, should pay close attention to victory by their Ontario cousins.
The voters in Ontario’s heartland, the political turf Conservatives desperately need to win federally, have decided they prefer to drive down the middle of the road in a kinder gentler basic Ford on cruise control.
That’s the bottom line…..
