Ontario highway project and federal conservation targets prominent in July environment lobbying
Environmental advocacy led lobbying activity for the sixth consecutive month.
Ford helps undermine Ontario’s public health system, then eyes more privatization
OTTAWA—Swallowing a bee while discussing the possible privatization of Ontario health care, Doug Ford reflexively thought he might have to undergo emergency treatment. “I’ll be rushing to the hospital to get this bee out of here,” the premier speculated as he tried to continue with a press conference last week in rural Dundalk, Ont. Luckily, Ford […]
Open minds, not dated rhetoric, needed to fix ailing health-care system
OTTAWA—Go to any media outlet web page, paper, podcast, radio station, or TV station across Canada and you’ll find an identical story about a challenged health-care system or a system in crisis. You know the range of headlines: they focus on wait times, cancelled surgeries, health-care worker burnout, health-care worker shortages, growing angst over all […]
NDP must counter Poilievre’s skill harnessing anger of people who feel left behind, say labour experts
Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s union endorsements in the province’s June election were more a media coup than a real shift in the labour landscape, say labour experts and NDP strategists, but they reinforced a wider perception that conservative parties are becoming a home for working-class voters who are angry about being left behind by larger […]
Ford’s brand strength, low public appetite for change key to PC win in Ontario, say politicos
The strength of the ‘Ford brand’ that easily overmatched what the Ontario Liberals and NDP had on offer, combined with a low-key communications and media strategy, pushed Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative Party into a second straight majority government, say politicos, with pollster Greg Lyle saying the premier “essentially won the job a year […]
Ontario’s perfect storm for apathy
OAKVILLE, ONT.—The Ontario election’s historically low voter turnout has generated lots of anxious handwringing. University professor and author Emmett Macfarlane bluntly summed up much of that anxiety when he tweeted, “The worst government in the history of the province and (censored) couldn’t even be bothered to vote. A pox on uninformed, apathetic citizens, most of […]
Federal Conservatives should look to Ford’s Ontario campaign for a more pragmatic, open-minded approach, say strategists
Ontario voters responded to Doug Ford’s more collaborative, open-minded approach to politics by sending the Progressive Conservatives to a second straight majority, say both a Liberal and Conservative strategist, but it’s not clear if any of the leading contenders for the federal Conservative leadership are interested in following that model. Shakir Chambers, who worked under former […]
What, if anything, does Ford’s victory in Ontario actually tell us?
OTTAWA—The outpouring of analysis on the re-election of Premier Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservative majority in Ontario makes interesting reading, but it may not amount to much. Ford benefited from the advantage of incumbency and having two main opposition leaders—the NDP’s Andrea Horwath and the Liberals’ Steven Del Duca—who couldn’t find a way to […]
In Ontario, economic anxiety prevails
Last Thursday night, it took only 18 minutes for the major networks to declare Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservatives the winners of the 2022 Ontario election. Later, we would learn that his team won a record 83 seats in the legislature. In 1995, Mike Harris similarly swept the Ontario election, winning 82 of the […]
Ontarians deserve better leaders
So far, the Ontario election campaign feels like a giant letdown, and E-Day hasn’t even arrived yet. No matter who takes office, it seems most Ontarians will wake up on June 6, look at the news, sigh and shrug. The outcome seems bleak, no matter what the result. As of writing, Ontario Progressive Conservative Premier […]
