It may offend the sensibilities of Canadians living outside Ontario, but it’s true: the premiers of this province aren’t just the top political representatives for 16 million Ontarians. If they want to they can (and almost always do) play a major role on the national stage. Sometimes they can be the dominant player.
Let’s look back.
In Canada’s centennial year 1967, Ontario premier John Robarts called his fellow premiers to gather on the top floor of the newly built Toronto Dominion Centre to discuss Canada’s second century. He was concerned about bombs blowing up in mailboxes in Quebec and thought the country could use a “Confederation of Tomorrow” conference to consider the road ahead. It was the first such meeting since the fathers of Confederation gathered in Charlottetown a century earlier — and only a premier with Robarts’s gravitas could pull it together. (There’s even a plaque in the lobby of the TD Centre marking the event).
Robarts’s successor Bill Davis also did his part. In the early 1980s, he partnered with the current prime minister’s father to repatriate the Constitution with an accompanying Charter of Rights and Freedoms. When at the 11th hour it looked like the deal was about to fall apart, only a premier with Davis’s skill and wisdom could call Pierre Trudeau and tell him he had to accept a compromise put forward by eight dissident premiers — or Ontario was out. Trudeau did and Canada got its Constitution and Charter.
David Peterson shed plenty of political blood in the late 1980s, playing a leading role in the effort to pass the Meech Lake Constitutional Accord, which he believed was essential for national harmony. Bob Rae followed up by affixing Ontario’s signature to the Charlottetown Accord in 1992. Neither of those agreements ultimately passed, but that’s not the point. Those men played the role an Ontario premier is expected to play on the national stage.
You can see where this story is going. If you told Ontarians in 2018 that our province’s 26th premier would continue in the tradition of playing a meaningful national role, many would have laughed — and not without cause.
Doug Ford’s first year as premier may have been the worst of any premier I’ve seen in my lifetime — a period spanning ten of the 26 politicians to hold the job. He seemed obsessed with cutesy but ultimately unimportant issues (remember “buck-a-beer”?) at the expense of serious governing. He was a bull, as current Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman once famously said, “who brought his own china shop with him” wherever he went. Ford’s focus was populist disruption and sticking fingers in the eyes of establishment gatekeepers.
But let’s give credit where it’s due: Ford has matured. With two majority governments under his belt and a 20-point lead in the polls, a more confident and reassuring Ford has emerged, playing the national role most Ontario premiers have wanted to play.
The timing of Ford’s emergence couldn’t be better. There is a massive leadership vacuum in Ottawa, with Justin Trudeau’s imminent departure from the prime minister’s office. Many of those whom we would hope might fill that vacuum are instead considering leadership bids to succeed Trudeau. With the incoming U.S. president musing about annexing Canada as his 51st state, not to mention threatening us with 25 per cent tariffs, this is the worst imaginable time for such a void.
Enter Premier Ford. As Donald Trump’s musings have become increasingly hostile (he recently threatened to use “economic force” to acquire Canada), Ford has been the one Canadian leader to push back, reluctantly suggesting if that’s the game Trump wants to play, then maybe Ontario will stop exporting electricity to border states. Or maybe we’ll take Alaska and Minnesota off his hands.
Last week, The Agenda discussed the idea of Canada becoming the 51st state. The thing went viral with viewership on television and social media well beyond our regular numbers. We were also excoriated on social media for even deigning to discuss such a stupid idea. (While I don’t see the problem with discussing even terrible ideas, I was highly encouraged at how many social media users thought becoming American was an appalling thought.)
The point is, those Canadians — 94 per cent of us according to an Angus Reid poll — need someone to articulate that intense opposition to Trump’s ramblings. Except for one comment (Trudeau’s “snowball’s chance in hell”), no national figure has adequately or forcefully voiced dissent to the vast majority of us who want Trump’s idea rejected with the repudiation it deserves.
Ford is doing that. He is meeting the moment, as good Ontario premiers are supposed to. But be honest — and I’m speaking particularly to the Ford-haters here — how many of you were convinced, to borrow a phrase, that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell he could do it?
At least on this issue, it’s snowing in hell today.