Newly re-elected Ontario Premier Doug Ford takes photos with supporters at his election night event in Toronto on Feb. 27.Laura Proctor/The Canadian Press
Doug Ford should not, on paper, have been able to easily cruise to re-election.
Not when the Ontario Premier called a provincial campaign less than three years into a four-year term, on the dubious premise that he needed a fresh mandate to stand up to U.S. President Donald Trump – then did his best to keep his head down, going long stretches without public campaign events.
Not when the province’s health-care system is racked by shortages of family doctors and hospital beds; universities and colleges are in dire financial straits, slashing programs because of lost tuition from international students; housing is not getting built at near the rate needed.
Not when his government is under RCMP investigation, for a scrapped plan to open up protected land to developers.
Not when all this could have fed anti-incumbent waves that recently swept across Canada – helping drive Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from office – and the Western world.
But Mr. Ford has been confounding opponents, and much of the political class, since his 2018 ascent to the Progressive Conservative leadership and Premier’s office, after previously being best known for a combative stint as a Toronto city councillor during his late brother Rob’s tumultuous mayoralty.
And in winning his third straight majority government on Thursday, claiming 80 of 124 seats, he proved the resilience of a brand that fuses fairly conventional centre-right pragmatism with a singular strain of anti-elite populism.
In doing so, he offered some lessons about what voters are seeking, during a time of rampant cynicism about governments and public institutions, that politicians across the country might heed.
It’s tempting to just chalk up his win to timing, which was certainly a factor.
He’d been plotting an early election for months, ahead of both a looming federal election and any results from the RCMP’s investigation. But calling it just after Mr. Trump took office and declared economic war on Canada meant regular concerns about provincial issues were overshadowed, opposition leaders struggled for oxygen, and winter conditions contributed to predictably low voter turnout.
It also allowed Mr. Ford to theme his campaign around protecting his province from U.S. aggression. He ably donned a metaphorical Captain Canada cape (and literal Canada Is Not for Sale hat) as he stepped into the leadership vacuum left by Mr. Trudeau’s resignation, including during trips to Washington that blurred the line between Premier and campaigning party leader.
“He’s risen to the moment and been rewarded for it,” said Innovative Research Group president Greg Lyle, whose polling showed Mr. Ford dominating rivals as the best leader to deal with Mr. Trump’s tariff threat.
But Mr. Ford was hardly on the ropes before Mr. Trump upended Canadian politics. After a fairly disastrous first year in office – during which his government was marred by ethics controversies, needless fights with municipalities, haphazard spending cuts and a dysfunctional Premier’s office that nearly caused a caucus revolt – he has rarely trailed his opponents.
While not beloved, with some surveys showing him with a relatively low approval rating among premiers, he’s proven acceptable to wide swaths of the electorate – including some that other Conservative leaders are unable to reach, reflected by union endorsements during this year’s campaign.
Asked to explain his support’s durability, political strategists and pollsters point partly to Mr. Ford improbably fitting into Ontario’s history of premiers who enjoy long tenures by staying in the middle of the road.
Despite initially appearing to be a new version of Mike Harris, the one hardline modern conservative to have held the job, he’s instead proven closer to Bill Davis, the Red Tory who governed from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, or even Liberal Dalton McGuinty, who more recently ruled for a decade. In fact, he has less of a discernible ideology, beyond a general desire to create a business-friendly environment, than either of them.
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His performance in this campaign’s leaders’ debate was largely a case study in Mr. Davis’s oft-cited adage that bland works, as Mr. Ford deflected attacks on his record by calmly reciting that his government had spent more on health or education or other policy areas than previous ones.
He also repeatedly invoked his comfort working across party lines, particularly his recruitment of former federal Liberal minister Jane Philpott to lead a primary health care strategy. His team is fond of citing various other examples, including Vaughan Mayor Steven Del Duca (a former Ontario Liberal leader), Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow (one of Canada’s most prominent New Democrats) and Chrystia Freeland when she was federal finance minister.
All that might seem at odds with the populism that makes up the other part of his equation. But in some ways, they go hand in hand.
That’s because his populism is of an unusually benign variety, by current standards – a far cry from the right-wing version associated with Mr. Trump, despite initial comparisons between the two (and a hot-mic episode when Mr. Ford said he was initially happy that Mr. Trump won November’s U.S. election).
Although a nasty edge sometimes surfaces, as when he was recently recorded at a police dinner crassly calling for bringing back the death penalty, Mr. Ford usually doesn’t play to voters’ darkest impulses. Instead, he tends to follow public opinion, not lead it, while coveting widespread approval.
“He’s a populist, but not a conventional one,” said Kory Teneycke, Mr. Ford’s campaign manager. “His version is more centred around a desire to be liked – even by those who would never cast a ballot for him – as opposed to chasing hot-button issues that polarize the electorate.”
One of the most obvious ways these instincts manifest themselves is his tendency to quickly reverse decisions when there’s backlash.
Most politicians are willing to climb down occasionally, but rarely with as much gusto. In one prominent example, he rapidly and tearfully abandoned a mid-pandemic curtailment of civil liberties. In another, he repeatedly pronounced himself very sorry for the Greenbelt fiasco, without making much attempt to explain it away. Both times, as in other instances, it succeeded in blunting public outrage.
Mr. Ford’s hypersensitivity to public sentiment is fed by his unusual efforts to avoid the bubbles that government leaders can find themselves in. Nearly seven years in, he still gets raised eyebrows when he gives out his cell number at public events, and prides himself on returning some of the calls and texts that ensue – evidence of what Mr. Lyle called a “customer service ethos” that makes him come off like a small-business owner.
Lack of isolation might also help explain how he’s kept a folksy, jargon-free communications style. While he shows less ability than most premiers to go deep on policy, he could never be accused of talking down to voters.
On some issues, such as crime and traffic congestion, he expresses exasperation as though he’s an aggrieved member of the public. And that approach might help avoid a public sense that he’s complacent about problems he’s struggling to fix, more so than if he tried to explain why matters are better than people think.
“People feel like he gets up every morning, and asks his staff what we’re doing today to make people’s lives easier,” said David Coletto, who heads the polling firm Abacus Data.
Mr. Coletto suggested that Mr. Ford’s occasional embrace of proposals that strike many policy experts as outlandish, such as alleviating Toronto-area traffic by building a massive tunnel under Highway 401, can serve that perception. They’re attention-grabbing signals, he said, that the Premier is willing to try anything to address frustrations.
He also has a knack for choosing the odd bone to throw to his party’s base without running afoul of the broader electorate. His push to remove bike lanes from major Toronto throughways, for instance, has angered some urbanites, but an Abacus poll showed it has majority support.
Whether it adds up to a formula replicable by other politicians – or desirable to replicate – is an open question.
For one thing, Ontario historically has more patience for non-ideological pragmatism than most.
For another, Mr. Ford may be uniquely able to pull off some of his manoeuvres. For instance, Mr. Teneycke suggested he’s less susceptible than most politicians to coming off weak when he apologizes and backtracks, because of the generally tough way he presents himself.
“Aside from [former Alberta premier] Ralph Klein, I’m not sure I’ve seen any leader with a comparable ability to say, ‘Sorry, folks, we got that one wrong’ and truly put the issue behind them,” Mr. Teneycke said.
As for his approach’s merits, however, Mr. Ford’s go-along-to-get-along management means big, bold initiatives have been limited.
He can point to a major Toronto subway line finally being built after endless dithering by other governments. He’s also been stronger on clean-energy projects than many expected, including new electricity sources and partnership with Ottawa to attract electric-vehicle battery factories. But on health, education and other grounds for premiers to be judged, it’s not clear he’s on pace to leave Ontario in better shape than he found it.
Members of his own party can be frustrated by the lack of governmental reforms; tensions with Pierre Poilievre’s more ideological federal Conservatives are well known.
Eventually, laws of political gravity may catch up to him. Lack of progress on some of Ontario’s biggest challenges could make for voter fatigue. So could ethics baggage, particularly involving his government’s close relationships with developers.
And there have been glimpses, including a lukewarm reaction to his expensive push to allow alcohol sales in convenience stores, that suggest his radar for proving himself on Ontarians’ side could falter.
Still, Mr. Ford has already made it further, in a less divisive way, than most contemporaries.
And showing that it’s possible to feed modern appetites for populism, without turning everyone against each other, could in itself stand as something of a legacy, worth studying for other Canadian leaders trying walk the line between being angry and being out of touch.