Doug Ford, Canada’s Angry Populist, Elected Ontario Premier
CNBC, 8 June 2018, Doug Ford, brother of late Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, rides populist wave to victory in Ontario
Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford won the Ontario election to lead the government as premier.The election led to the Liberals losing official party status.
Extract: Doug Ford rode a populist wave to power in Ontario on Thursday, capturing a Progressive Conservative majority by harnessing voters’ economic anxiety and anger with a scandal-plagued Liberal government.
The Liberals lost official party status in a stunning collapse after leading the province for the past 15 years and capturing a majority government just four years ago. Premier Kathleen Wynne, who narrowly hung on to her seat, resigned as Liberal leader and lost all but 7 ridings.
The NDP under Andrea Horwath will form the Official Opposition, marking a turnaround for a party consistently stuck in third place since Bob Rae’s New Democratic government was defeated in 1995.
Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner captured the party’s first-ever seat in Ontario.
The Progressive Conservatives won 76 ridings, while the NDP got 40.
Under Ford, the Progressive Conservatives recaptured the province they have not led since 2003, overcoming the failings of the past three elections that saw them unable to defeat the Liberals.
But Ford’s campaign certainly wasn’t immune to controversy. He dismissed allegations that he was involved in selling bogus Progressive Conservative party memberships, a candidate was dropped following accusations he was involved in an alleged theft of customer data at a toll highway operator, and Ford was frequently accused of failing to be transparent by dodging calls to release a fully costed platform.
With about one week left in the campaign, the party published a list of promises and their price tags, but didn’t indicate how they would pay for them, what size of deficits they would run or for exactly how long.
Then in the waning days of the election, Ford family drama — that laid mostly dormant in the public sphere since the death of his brother, former Toronto mayor Rob Ford — burst onto the scene with a lawsuit from Rob Ford’s widow against Doug Ford.
Ford, who has positioned himself as a champion of “the little guy” and has been compared to U.S. President Donald Trump, is wealthy businessman.
He was first thrust into the national spotlight because of his defences of his scandal-plagued brother, whose admission of using crack cocaine made international headlines. He grabbed his brother’s former city council seat when Rob Ford was mayor, and stepped in as a Toronto mayoral candidate when cancer forced his brother to give up on running for a second term. For more, please see the hyperlink below:
Newsweek, 8 June 2018, REMEMBER TORONTO’S CRACK MAYOR? HIS BROTHER DOUG FORD HAS JUST BEEN ELECTED ONTARIO PREMIER
Extract: The brother of late Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who made headlines worldwide as Canada’s “crack mayor” on account of his drug use, is the new leader of the province of Ontario.
Doug Ford’s victory brings a nearly 15-year reign of Liberal power in the province to an end.
In his victory speech, Ford paid an emotional tribute to his younger sibling, saying, “I know my brother Rob is looking down from heaven.
However, just days before the election, Renata Ford, Rob Ford’s widow, launched a C$16.5 million lawsuit against Doug, accusing the politician of being “negligent” as a business manager of the company Deco Labels, which the Ford brothers had inherited from their father. For more, please see the hyperlink below:
Slate, 8 June 2018, Even Canada Is Not Immune to the Rise of Populis–How Doug Ford, brother of Rob Ford, quickly surged
Extract: The similarities between Doug Ford and Donald Trump are obvious: A rich entrepreneur, Ford has a long history of dubious business partners and revels in attacking political and cultural elites. When he was his brother’s right-hand man on Toronto’s city council, he called critical journalists “jihadists,” told an advocate for autistic children to “go to hell,” explained why neither he nor his brother would attend Pride events by saying he didn’t want to see “buck-naked” men, and complained that in his constituency, there were more libraries than Tim Hortons restaurants.
The election in Ontario is a perfect example of the power of populism. Doug Ford’s brother, Rob Ford, was disgraced as mayor of Toronto because he literally lit up a crack pipe on camera. He eventually died. But his brother has proved capable of taking his mantle and now rules over one-third of Canada’s population. Even when things went wrong, Ford populism did not vanish. It went into hibernation, reemerging with Doug Ford’s election as premier of Ontario. For more, please see the hyperlink below:
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