Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been able to maintain popularity at home during his three years in office despite a challenging, at times combative relationship with the Trump administration since 2017. But amid a conservative rise at home, the young leader of the country’s Liberal Party is about to face a new front from Canada’s most influential province.
The Progressive Conservative Party firebrand Doug Ford, brother of the late former Toronto mayor Rob Ford, will be sworn in as the premier of Ontario on Friday and assume a highly influential position in a province he calls “the engine of Canada.” Ford won a contentious election against incumbent Kathleen Wynne, a fellow member of Trudeau’s Liberal Party and the country’s first openly LGBT premier, on promises to fight back against what he considers elite government control. “The party with the taxpayers’ money is over,” he declared in his victory speech.
The win, capped with other familiar pronouncements from Ford like “We have taken back Ontario!” drew almost immediate comparisons to the populist and anti-establishment wave that President Donald Trump rode to win the White House. And it raises concerns in Trudeau’s camp that a similar sentiment could eventually force him from power.
“When you look at the response of millennials, when you look at the response of Ontarians, there’s just a growing concern that it’s become increasingly difficult for most people in the province to meet their financial obligations, and growing concern about what the future for their children and grandchildren will look like,” says Donald Abelson, a political science professor at the University of Western Ontario. He attributes the sharp rise in popularity of conservative candidates across the country that now matches support for liberals as the result of “a kind of all-out assault on liberal leadership both provincially and nationally.”
“That has to be of some concern to Trudeau,” Abelson says.
Ford previously said he would have voted for Trump. And despite adopting some phrasing reminiscent of the U.S. leader’s brash style of speaking, Ford has struck — at least rhetorically — a far more conciliatory tone in victory, pledging to work with supporters of his opponents.
“You fought a hard, very hard campaign, and I’ll tell you, Ontario is better for it. We have had our different approaches, but we all share in the same goal of a better Ontario, and I want to work together to deliver on our mandate, a mandate for the people,” he said in the victory speech. “My friends, a new day is dawned in Ontario.”
During the campaign, Ford began to distance himself from Trump and his political approach, particularly amid perceptions that he, also the son of a wealthy businessman, was perceived as anti-immigrant or nationalistic.
Vice News reported in May on the concerted efforts Ford as a candidate undertook to appeal to immigrant communities and others known there as “new Canadians.”
“In the U.S., Trumpian populism is focused in the white working class,” pollster Frank Graves, president of research firm EKOS, told Vice. “It’s not limited to that, but has had very little success with black, Hispanic and other populations. That doesn’t seem to be the case in Canada.”
Canadians also have little appetite for the kind of overt squabbling that often defines political confrontations in other Western countries.
“The public likes to see our politicians getting along — just like in the U.S., everybody’s for bipartisanship,” says Nelson Wiseman, director of the Canadian Studies Program at the University of Toronto. “The influence is more at the subconscious level: Some people will think, how come Trudeau’s facing such opposition? There must be something not good enough about what he’s proposing.”
Ford has assumed uniquely outsized power among provincial premiers through his new role in Ontario, one of Canada’s 10 provinces and three territories but home to 40 percent of its population and the source of 40 percent of Canada’s gross domestic product.
Provinces in Canada also have more influence over the lives of their citizens compared to states in the U.S. For example, Canada has no federal ministry of education, relying instead on a system where the federal government feeds funds to the provinces to manage such things for themselves.
Ford has already staked out ground to challenge key policies of the Trudeau government, including pledges to withdraw from a cap-and-trade arrangement with California and Quebec that is considered a model for environmental collaboration. He has indicated he will oppose other cornerstones of the Liberal platform that Wynne touted during the campaign, including a new plan for access to prescription drugs and free college tuition.
Trudeau, of course, has some tools with which to counter. Ford’s withdrawing from the cap-and-trade agreement could prompt the prime minister to impose new federal carbon taxes, for example.
“That’s an example of where the federal government can flex their muscle: They can tax anything they want, but they can’t spend it anyway they want,” Wiseman says.
As premier, Ford also has opportunities to rally national support against Trudeau by uniting with other conservative provincial leaders, particularly in provinces like Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, to form a unified bloc against Trudeau.
Yet experts also point to Ford’s relative inexperience in national politics as perhaps the greatest hindrance to his ability to undermine the Trudeau government.
“It’s something he probably thinks about, but I doubt it consumes him,” Abelson says. “I really think that given the enormous challenges he’s going to have being premier, he’s going to focus primarily on what he knows best.”
Residents expect Ford to be the type of premier who is not going to cater to elites, but will rather “roll up his sleeves and address issues that are critically important to most Ontarians,” Abelson says. “I think fewer Ontarians are concerned about the political fate of Justin Trudeau at this point.”
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Faces New Troubles With Doug Ford originally appeared on usnews.com
