Is there any major policy area Doug Ford's PC government in Ontario is actually managing well?
The health care sector? Nope. It's a disaster getting worse every year, hallway medicine exploding, health professionals overworked/underpaid and leaving the profession, millions still without a family doctor. The pride of Canada's health care system has been reduced to a simple mantra: "Hope you don't get sick anytime soon because you'll go through hell if you do."
The education sector? Nope. Schools are still falling apart. Teachers are constantly fighting with the province. Parents still need to fundraise so their kids receive more than the absolute basics, which they aren't even receiving. Not to mention the strained post-secondary sector, which is on death's door due to underfunding from Ford, who froze tuition fees in 2018 and stopped thinking about post-secondary education after that.
Transportation is a nightmare with our roads falling apart, and traffic gridlock gripping most of the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area. Long-needed transit expansions are delayed, delayed, delayed. The Eglinton Crosstown line has yet to open under Ford's management. This is especially galling because this was supposed to be an Eglinton subway route that should've opened 30 years ago, but thanks to another stupid Conservative, Mike Harris, was cancelled and literally filled in.
Harris also gave us the ripoff 407 highway which was supposed to alleviate GTA congestion but never did because Harris sold if off at discount prices to an international conglomerate that gouges Ontarians for every cent who dare to use it. Now Ford is trying to build even more highways, which will only fill up too and make the gridlock here even worse. Ford's solution - attack bike lanes in downtown Toronto.
Ontario is a shit show right now. A failed democracy in many ways. Our leadership has utterly failed to show backbone, push us forward and fix our collective problems. You can't truly blame the people for voting for folks when nobody on the ballot has seriously been trying to provide leadership.
Dalton McGuinty did some nice things, but also some dumb things. Most people missed the nice things he did because, unlike Ford who knows how to communicate, McGuinty was a meek communicator unable to counter the immense hate machine stacked against him on the right. Kathleen Wynne was all flash and promise, but ultimately a total political failure because she had no idea how to govern well and bring the people along with her in her decision-making. She alienated voters instead and let the neo-con hate machine overpower her completely. The near destruction of her Ontario Liberal Party is testament to that fact, and the OLP is still struggling to get back on its feet.
Why does such a mediocre state of affairs inspire such happiness from Ontarians? Because Ontarians are easily distracted from that mediocrity by Doug Ford's constant hot air about Donald Trump's threats against Canada. Ford is of course mostly powerless to do anything about the threat. He can only enunciate outrage and express the sentiments many Ontarians are also feeling about the horrid dictator to the south. One policy area Ford has gotten right - banning American booze from Ontario shelves - is a winner I do truly support. I used to drink American whisky bourbon as my spirit of choice, but have now given Canadian whisky another chance, not to mention Irish whisky and others. I'm super happy with the Canadian stuff, and I got to say I'm not going to go back to buying Kentucky bourbon after this trade dispute ends (should it ever.) Sorry, Americans, your president has fucked you over on this one. I'm sure Ford will stick to his guns on American booze because it literally is the only thing he is doing to stand up to Americans.
Ontarians are looking past the immensely sorry state of their own province and the many horrors Ford has created here to give him love and support.
Of course, Ontarians can be forgiven a bit for all of this because of the weak state of Ontario's opposition parties. Never an easy gig getting attention from Ontario's opposition benches, it's still true that the NDP official opposition has no idea how to do anything else but its usual NDP echo chamber pontificating. The NDP isn't seizing on the cost of living crisis we are in by getting out there, proposing bold policies and pushing Ford to do better. We never hear from Marit Styles.
And Bonnie Crombie, OLP Leader, remains as vacant and flailing as she was during the February provincial election campaign. Elected by her party to bring them back to contention, Crombie reportedly spent the first few months of her leadership on vacation in Florida in 2024, not organizing in Ontario, not doing the hard work she had signed up for by taking the leadership. Instead of rebuilding the OLP team, she simply re-hired the same D Team that had run the party into the ditch. Much help and advice was offered, but rejected by Bonnie's team - who couldn't put out a single press release without a spelling or grammar mistake in it - because Bonnie and her people knew better.
In May 2024, when rumours got really loud that Doug Ford would likely call an early election to take advantage of Justin Trudeau's unpopularity, it seems Bonnie didn't get the memo. Riding associations that had been dormant were left that way. Despite declaring a nomination emergency around that time, the OLP didn't bother to actually recruit or nominate much of anybody for months. By the time the early election got called in January 2025, the OLP barely had any candidates. The ones nominated were not government quality. There wasn't a star or credible potential cabinet minister among them.
In Toronto Centre, a riding which should've been high on the OLP's list to retake from the NDP, the association had been left dormant and by the time the election was called, had zero potential candidates willing to step forward. What a disaster! Of course, the local unknown / sacrificial lamb who did step forward still got 36% of the vote in the election behind Kristyn Wong-Tam's 45%, showing this riding was winnable had the OLP bothered to organize.
The total lack of good OLP candidates and serious organization meant the 30% of the provincial vote the party won (mostly thanks to the many Ontarians not fooled by Doug Ford's big anti-Trump show, as well as the near collapse of the NDP vote outside of its incumbent ridings) oddly translated into only 14 seats, one or two of which were damn lucky splits. Barely enough for official party status again in the legislature. Crombie, who promised to carry Mississauga where she had allegedly been a popular mayor, lost her own Mississauga seat and all other seats in that city. The OLP failed to win any 905 seats except for one lucky split in Ajax with a local candidate who was actually from Davenport in downtown Toronto.
It's true as long as Ontarians are stressed about the impacts of Donald Trump's lunacy, and Doug Ford continues to hit the nail on the head with his communications expressing our fears and outrages, the populist premier of Ontario will remain hard to beat.
One thing for certain is the OLP under Crombie will never be able to do it. Crombie has been exposed as an empty shell with no discernible messages or values to inspire those of us who are horrified by Ontario's sad state of affairs. Do any of us really believe life under Crombie would be any different or better than it is under Ford? Not really.
Hence, the bad poll results. Putting the NDP aside, who could finally get smart and learn how to appeal to the economic interests of those struggling and gain some economic credibility if they stopped gunning for the far left, I do think the OLP remains the only other potential governing party in Ontario.
Should Ontario Liberals decide to get real and smart, they'll dump Crombie next month at their Annual General Meeting and find someone capable of reaching Ontarians where they are. And help get us all out of this mediocre mess Ontario has fallen into.