Front Burner - Will Ontarians choose Doug Ford again?

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

The rising cost of living and the lack of affordable housing are key issues in Ontario’s provincial election campaign which officially began this week. Another big issue is how voters feel about Progressive Conservative leader and incumbent Doug Ford. While Ford’s handling of the pandemic is likely to be part of what makes up the minds of voters, it is just one factor in who will form the next government. Today on Front Burner, we talk to Mike Crawley, the CBC’s Ontario provincial affairs reporter about what will sway Ontario voters.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Number one, premier! Thank you, thank you. You are hearing the leaders of Ontario's three major parties on the road meeting voters this week. The provincial election has officially begun. And while all parties have specific road meeting voters this week. The provincial election has officially begun.

And while all parties have specific pitches to voters, the campaign is being framed as largely this referendum on incumbent Doug Ford. Ontario is open for business. You may remember that just three years ago, conservatives in the country were distancing themselves from Ford, worried they'd be guilty by association. Then the pandemic hit, and his leadership went through a few ups and downs. Now he's sitting on a pretty comfortable lead in the polls. Today on FrontBurner, we're talking to the CBC's Ontario provincial affairs reporter, Mike Crawley,

about how he got here and what Ford's opponents need to do to affect the outcome. Hey, Mike, it is great to have you back as always. Hi, Jamie. So I wonder if we could go back three years ago. The year is 2019. The Raptors have just won the NBA championship. And Doug Ford gets on stage at the Victory Parade here in Toronto. And this happens. The premier of Ontario, Doug Ford. This is one year into his time as premier.

And at this point, he's super unpopular. And why was Doug Ford's approval rating so low at that at that moment in time? Yeah, man, getting getting booted. The Raptors victory parade was like the low point for Doug Ford. He was he was hurt by that personally. What was going on? Well, you know, he had basically had a year of chaos as premier. There were cuts. You know, if you looked at his budget, they were planning on making a bunch of cuts to public health. There were situations within

the way he was governing where he was appointing a bunch of cronies to political positions. He tried to get a buddy of his named to be the commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police. We look forward to having Ron Tavener as the commissioner of the OPP. Tavener is a superintendent and has 50 years on the Toronto Police Force. His appointment to be Ontario's top cop has been controversial because of his close ties to Doug Ford and the fact he didn't initially qualify for the job until the posting was modified and downgraded.

You know, it seemed that he had basically gone into Queen's Park kind of with his elbows up, trying to tear down a whole bunch of stuff and was starting to feel the political consequences. Yeah, yeah. I remember at the time there was this so-called Doug Ford factor, like during the 2019 federal election, Andrew Scheer was basically trying to completely distance himself from Ford.

Like the Liberals, the Conservatives need every bit of Ontario they can get. While Scheer has brought in Alberta's premier to campaign here Ford has not been asked. I told Andrew Scheer right from the get-go I'm not getting involved. Scheer only mentions Ford's name when asked. He says it's not an issue for his candidates. Not once. He was really like kryptonite.

Yeah what was fascinating during that campaign was how rarely Andrew Scheer would even mention the name Doug Ford and how frequently Justin Trudeau did. I mean, at times it almost seemed as if Justin Trudeau was campaigning against, you know, Doug Ford more than he was campaigning against Andrew Scheer. On the campaign trail, conservative politicians love to say they're for the people. But we all know too well what happens once they're in office. The middle class can't afford another Doug Ford. I think the guy loves me or something because he constantly mentions my name. It was, you know, an attempt by the liberals to, you know, create sort of guilt by association with using Doug Ford's unpopularity to smear the federal Conservatives.

OK, and then the pandemic hits. This morning, I've declared a state of emergency in the province of Ontario. We're taking this measure because we must offer our full support and every power possible to help our health care sector fight the spread of COVID-19. the spread of COVID-19. The first order... Ontario is thrown into lockdown in March 2020, and Ford starts looking a little bit better to a lot of people, hey? And what does he start to do

that seems to, like, change the perception of him? So just about every politician in the Western world really got a bit of a pandemic bump, you know, from people sort of rallying together and getting behind their governments during that crisis time. But I think what Ford did specifically was he was out there holding these news conferences every single day, you know, during the early part of the pandemic and trying to project an aura of calm, of support. But I want you to know that Ontario recognizes your sacrifice. And I want you to know, I want our dedicated men and women

on the front lines to know that Ontario has your back. You have an army of 14,000 people. And being with the people of Ontario and, you know, trying to give the impression that, you know, the government was acting decisively, doing the things that were necessary to keep Ontarians safe. And it showed. I mean, his approval ratings went through the roof in sort of March, April, May of 2020. Yeah. Yeah, I remember a lot of people at the time talking about what an excellent communicator

he was. He was sort of a bit folksy in the way that he was speaking to people, which is, I guess, how he speaks most of the time. And he had all these Doug-isms that people seemed to really like at the time. I'm going to come down on them like an 800-pound gorilla. And then you get a bunch of yahoos again. We've got a bunch of jokers out there. Well, they shouldn't be sharing anything. I don't care if it's those doobies, joints, whatever you want to call them or drinks. If we weren't so backlogged on MRIs, I'd send you to

the MRI to get your brain scanned because I just I don't think there's anything in there. But then as the pandemic trucks along, his government comes under heavy, heavy criticism. And, you know, for what? What are some of the most controversial moments that stood out to you? I mean, there were quite a lot. If you think about the horrible state of what happened to long-term care homes in Ontario. And, you know, Doug Ford kept insisting they were putting an iron ring of protection around long-term care homes. And yet, you know, people just kept dying.

The report to Ontario's Minister for Long-Term Care found chronic issues to blame, namely critical staffing shortages pre-COVID. The immediate recommendation... That Doug Ford resisted at first. Vaccine mandates is one that I think of in particular. You know, he kept saying the answer is no, we aren't going to do it. We aren't going to have a split society. But eventually, you know, came around to the idea that there should be vaccine passports in in Ontario. I think, though, Jamie, that the the real bottom point for Doug Ford was the crest of the third wave. Ontario had made a decision to reopen when really the second wave in the late winter of 2021 was not really over and schools

were reopened and you just saw the case numbers climbing and more people going into hospital. And the government just didn't seem to have control of things. And then all of a sudden, Doug Ford comes out with this, you know, stay at home, shut down, lockdown type announcement, but that includes the bizarre measures of closing playgrounds around Ontario and giving police powers to stop people and demand to know why they were outside of the house. And, you know, you saw this in his approval ratings after that period of time. It was really terrible. And there was a tearful apology from Ford a couple of weeks later where he admitted that he got it wrong. I want you to know that I hear you. I understand you're going through.

If I make a mistake, I correct it immediately, which we did on the weekend. And again, when it comes to playgrounds, you know, the people were telling me limit the mobility. And we corrected that. We moved too quick with uh with having people uh being pulled over per se you call it carding but i want to tell the people of ontario yeah i remember i remember people were just apoplectic when the playgrounds got got shut down and and as you mentioned this

uh law that would allow cops to just arbitrarily stop people. I remember at the time, advocates were begging the government to shut down the factories, the food processing plants, the warehouses that were permitted to be open at the time, but also to institute paid sick days. The government did bring in a kind of paid sick days measure eventually, but it wasn't really paid sick days. The government did bring in a kind of paid sick days measure eventually, but it wasn't, you know, really paid sick days. It was basically the government was going to pay the money to the companies to pay their employees who had to call in sick. And so there was a bit of a theme here from a lot of the critics that felt that Ford's measures during the pandemic favored business, in particular big business,

over small business and favored, you know, employers over employees. And of course, there was also criticisms of bad vaccine rollout, lousy testing and tracing programs. We've talked about pre-pandemic Ford and how he was all about cuspid. Now I want to talk about, you know, coming out of the pandemic Ford and his conservative party just dropped their latest budget, which is essentially their platform. And we're really seeing this 180 here. And can you tell me about about what we're seeing? The 180 here is quite dramatic. If you actually think back to pre-pandemic Doug Ford and the Doug Ford who campaigned four years ago to become premier, that was all about reining in government spending. It was all about bringing down the size

and cost of government. Money in the taxpayer's pocket is better than money in the government's pocket. I mean, Doug Ford campaigned to become premier on an almost anti-government kind of sentiment. And then now you fast forward to 2022 and he has got a budget that has more in spending than the last liberal budget before he got elected. It's really kind of remarkable what a change it is. He's trying to get across this theme of building Ontario. Yeah. So there's a, in addition to the operating budget, there's a whole bunch of money budgeted

for construction of highways and hospitals and long-term care schools. Although I got to say, they're doing a very good sell job with it because if you actually look at the amount of money they're putting in, Jamie, to construct stuff, they do this over a 10-year period and their 10-year construction budget is actually less than the 10-year construction budget that the liberals had in, but they're selling it. Doug Ford was for the last couple of months out there just about every day announcing, you know, money to plan the construction of this hospital or you know, we're going to,

here's a highway that we're going to rehabilitate or build. So they're, they're very much trying to emphasize this as a way of bringing Ontario out of the pandemic. I think it's also about trying to defend against the accusation that the PCs are about cutting, right? So that they can present a budget that says we're investing in the stuff that people want in Ontario. There really is no public mood out there right now for austerity, right? The public mood is we need you to build up the public services because we saw how starved our hospitals were, how underfunded the long-term care system was.

And so a government to come along now and say, we're going to reduce spending or rein in spending in the health care, long term care sector, that just totally wouldn't sell. Yeah. And just to be clear, these are just promises, right? Yeah. So they brought in this budget, but then immediately the legislature was adjourned. So the budget hasn't been voted on. It will only become a reality if the PCs are reelected. And, you know, as for the construction plans, a lot of this stuff is, you know, quite a ways down the road in the future. You know, they announced just about every long-term care project that's planned to be built between now and 2030. So they are very much future promises of things that are to be life-changing connection.

Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you.

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do you think, is there like a defining issue of this campaign? If you look at the polling data right now, what voters are telling the pollsters is that the number one issue that they care about the most is the cost of living, affordability. That is by far the number one concern for voters. You know, it's no longer the pandemic or the handling of the pandemic. It's just about how expensive things are, the price of groceries and the price of gas and the cost of housing. This is what is definitely mattering the most to people right now. And I guess considering that this is where people are right now and that Ford has this comfortable lead, is there a sense that people

feel like he's the best person to help people be able to afford their day-to-day lives, to be able to get a house? Yeah, that's one of the things that's fascinating to me as of right now, Jamie, is that although just far and away this is the number one issue for voters, it doesn't seem to be particularly driving public opinion towards which of the parties it is that you feel is the number one issue for voters, it doesn't seem to be particularly driving public opinion towards which of the parties it is that you feel is the right one. In other words, although people are saying that they care so much about the cost of living, it doesn't seem that any one of the parties is offering some solution that is attractive to the widest number of voters. If you break it down, the polls seem to suggest that the voters are looking for the parties to offer them something, but they don't

necessarily see that any of the parties has some magic formula to do this. I put down the wide support for Doug Ford to people feel he did a good job as premier. That's actually what's driving it. Or at least they're satisfied with the kind of job that he did as premier. It's also, I think, important that people are now at this stage looking at Doug Ford and comparing him to the alternatives, right? They're like, OK, well, if I don't want Doug Ford to be premier, who do I turn to? And Doug Ford is such a polarizing figure, right? And there are so many people who, you know, just can't stand him. I think that they're kind of blind to the fact that there's actually, you know, some widespread support for Doug Ford out there. You know, he

appeals to voters in the 905 suburban area around Toronto. He's polling well in northern Ontario. He's got surprising support among union members, in particular private sector union members, working class voters. Doug Ford appeals to them. And I think it's that character stuff and personality that is appealing to a lot of voters rather than, you know, his stance on the issues. Right. Voters don't always vote on the issues. They might say, here's the issue that matters to me, but they often vote on their gut about how they feel about about the leader. Yeah, people talk about that a lot, right?

Like, is this a guy that you'd want to sit down and have a have a have a beer with? You talk to tons of people who are looking at this super closely. And so when we're talking about the opponents, Andrew Horvath of the NDP, Stephen DelDuca of the liberals, what are people saying that they need to do to try to get some more traction here? So I've heard from quite a number of political strategists who do say that Andrew Horvath and Stephen Del Duca need to go after Doug Ford to kind of prick that aura of invulnerability that he's got. We know that this government particularly is favoring its buddies, while at the same time, families are looking for

an affordable place to live. And Doug Ford's focus has been his developer friends. This budget today offers not a single new idea to help support strong, resilient, and exceptional publicly funded education. No significant new ideas to help lead the kind of revolution that we need in elder care. They think there is some opportunity to get people to feel differently about Doug Ford. So I would say that look for them to go on the attack. And I'm seeing that very much from Del Duca at the moment. His attacks are focused very much on Ford, and he's ignoring Andrew Horvath and the NDP. It's kind of a bit

of a battle between those two parties as well to position themselves to be the one clear alternative to Doug Ford, you know, in the hope that the anti-Ford vote coalesces around their particular party. And when they're going after him, what are they going after him for? Yeah, that's a good question. So Stephen Del Duca seems to be focusing on competence. So he's talking a lot about his own competence. He's a former transportation minister in the previous liberal government. You know, he's not a particularly charismatic guy, but he seems to think that Ford is vulnerable on questions of competence. He's raising some issues around the kinds of decisions that Doug Ford made during the pandemic and pointing to them as questions of leadership. Andrea Horvath's line of attack on

Doug Ford seems to be to blame him for the mess that things are in. She has a bit of a tougher challenge because she has to attack on two fronts here, attack the Liberals and Doug Ford and the PCs. And so she sort of lumps them in together by saying the system was broken for 15 years under the Liberals, and then Doug Ford didn't fix it. Job number one is to defeat Doug Ford. Defeat Doug Ford, and then start to fix the things that are broken, that have been broken for a long time. So that seems to be the line of attack from Andrea Horvath. Just to end here, I'm picking up on something that you said earlier about how there is a sense that none of the parties are offering a really robust solution to affordability issues. Is there a feeling that there's a real missed opportunity here, at least at this stage in the race? I think part of the problem is that there's a lot of cynicism out there among voters

of what it is that a provincial government can actually do to make their lives more affordable. You know, Doug Ford and the PCs, they sent rebate checks to millions of Ontario voters of their vehicle registration fees. And they've got one of those. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, while everybody loves to have money in your pocket, I'm getting the sense that there's a lot of voters who saw that as a blatant attempt to bribe their

vote. And so they'll cash the check. But does it necessarily make them feel that that Doug Ford has some solution to make life more affordable? What we've seen so far from the Liberals, their biggest splash on affordability has been Bucca Ride, the $1 transit fares everywhere in Ontario. But it's a limited time only offer. It's only until 2024. That an Ontario Liberal government will reduce transit fares right across Ontario down to $1 per ride within 100 days of taking office. So it's a splash and it's dealing with a true affordability issue for a lot of people. It's not necessarily going to fly all that much with voters who don't use transit, obviously.

the NDP. They are, though, trying to pitch social programs as affordability issues. So, for instance, they're offering, promising a pharma care program and saying, hey, what that will do is it will save you money on what you spend on prescription drugs. Similarly, they're promising public dental care, again, saving money on that. We will be bringing a universal mental health care system to Ontario so people can get the mental health services and therapies that they need without having to wait and without having to pay. So it's an attempt to pitch these social programs as saving you money. I don't know the extent to which people are buying that. When is the election?

So election day is June 2nd. That's exactly four weeks from today. And I think we're going to see other issues emerge on the campaign trail. And I'm going to be fascinated to watch. Another key date to have on your calendar, too, is May 16th. That's when the big leaders debate happens. Hey, awesome. Well, I have a feeling that we're going to be talking to you again real soon then.

Thank you. You're welcome, Jamie. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.