Like Trump, Doug Ford Won't Need You After the Election

Last year, during the American presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to lower the cost of groceries, energy, and eggs “on day one” of his term. Shortly after being elected, and more than a month before even being sworn into office, he walked it back saying it “would be hard” to lower grocery prices. Now, a month after the election, American eggs are at all-time record high prices and continuing to skyrocket, and Trump no longer talks about it. We can expect the same from Ontario premier Doug Ford, who called an election two years and eight months into a majority mandate with nothing to offer.

His argument for the early election is that he wants a strong mandate to fight the American tariff threat. He already had the mandate he would need until June of 2026, and so this is a completely spurious reason.

We know that over the years Doug Ford has heaped praise on Donald Trump. In 2019, during the first Trump presidency, he said “So, uh, God bless the president and don’t get me wrong. Full disclosure: I’m a big Republican, I’m a supporter. Conservative minded.” And in case you were wondering if that was an old opinion that had evolved, it was very recently that he stated that he was “100%” happy that Trump had won a second mandate.

This week, the official White House social media page posted the following image of Ford’s hero across several platforms:

While Donald Trump systematically dismantles the American government and its democratic institutions as he claims a crown the Constitution was expressly created to prevent from existing, Doug Ford’s government has been under investigation for some pro-oligarchic moves of his own with questionable deals around the Green Belt, in particular.

When Ford was elected in 2018, he had promised Ontario $1 beer in the “buck-a-beer” campaign, which was beyond his power but was a great marketing gimmick. Like Trump’s egg prices, it was full-priced baloney and beer prices rose 10%.

He wanted to make alcohol accessible through grocery and convenience stores and spent somewhere north of $400 million to do so, between breaking the exclusive contract with the Beer Store and a net loss to the province from the revenue drop at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, the LCBO.

The reason? Spring Mag offers a fairly compelling explanation, and it has nothing to do with being more like the already wide open alcohol market in neighbouring Quebec:

The suspicion that Premier Ford’s privatisation agenda is driven by personal financial interests gains further credence when examining his family’s business dealings. Ford’s family owns Deco Labels and Tags, a label-making company involved in packaging for beer and other products. Deco Labels’ website claims it is a “preferred printer” for major grocery chains like Loblaws, Metro, and Sobeys. The intertwining of Ford’s political decisions and his family’s business interests cannot be overlooked.

Deco Labels and Tags’ website doesn’t dispute the family connection:

Deco Label started in 1962, from a humble beginning, one man and his dream, Doug Ford Sr. Today it is still a family run business and ranks as a Premiere label and Flexible converting company in North America.

When Trump announced his tariff threats last month, Doug Ford started wearing a “Canada is not for sale” hat, trying to establish himself as a kind of Captain Canada. He made a big show of canceling a $100 million contract with Musk-owned SpaceX’s Starlink. Then days later, with the tariffs deferred, he quietly uncanceled the contract, leaving the door only vaguely open to reversing course yet again in the future.

Then, while doubling down on his Canadian unity message, the Ontario government — in an election writ period — spent $8 million of public funds on an American Super Bowl ad, not long after being admonished by the senior public servant for using public funds to bring partisan staff to the US and then use videos of the event in campaign ads.

With his majority government, he has the power and mandate to play the roles and games he wants, at least as far as Ontario is concerned, for nearly another year and a half. What did Doug Ford really hope to accomplish, then, with an election barely half way through his mandate? Why now?

There are a lot of reasons that could be behind this early provincial election; not a single one of them has to do with improving the lives of Ontario residents or unifying Canadians.

What it comes down to is that Ford wants a new mandate now, while everyone is distracted by his idol Donald Trump. His promises are irrelevant as his track record proves.

And once he’s back in, he, like Trump, won’t need the voters any more; he’ll have his crown and will be free to go back to cutting health care, focusing on booze sales, and selling off protected lands to his favourite developers.