The Way We Were

The pandemic entente between Doug Ford and Justin Trudeau is over. Susan Delacourt writes: 

This back-and-forth is a sign that the 2020 entente between the Ford and Trudeau governments is probably over. Gone are the days when Ford and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland held late-night “therapy” calls and when the Ontario premier lavished daily praise on all Ottawa was doing to help out with the pandemic.

Ford has recently released an ad demanding that Trudeau close Canada's borders to international travel. This week, at one of his daily briefings, Trudeau responded:

Trudeau . . . betrayed some frustration with Ford’s government on the same score on Friday when he spoke to reporters and was asked about the ad.

“Doug Ford asked me to restrict international students. There’s been about 30,000 international students come into Ontario over the past months because they were approved by the Ontario government,” Trudeau said.

“If the Ontario government wants to do more to restrict the volume of people coming into Ontario, we are more than happy to work with them on it, but it’s been a week since we’ve received that request directly from the premier (and) they haven’t followed up, except with personal attacks which doesn’t make sense and quite frankly won’t help Ontarians.”

That response was followed up by a letter from Inter-Governmental Affairs Minister Dominic Leblanc:

“We welcome your specific requests for further refinements to the mutually agreed list of acceptable international travellers,” LeBlanc writes in the letter, sent formally to Health Minister Christine Elliott and Solicitor-General Sylvia Jones, in reply to a missive they dispatched to Ottawa in the last week of April.

“The federal government stands ready, however to date we have not received such a request.”

Ford's strategy is pretty transparent:

Most political observers have recognized Ford’s anti-Ottawa salvos for what they are: an attempt to shift blame away from himself as Ontarians grow weary, frustrated and angry with the never-endemic.

The latest polling from EKOS shows that Trudeau’s Liberals now enjoy 42 per cent support in Ontario, while approval for Ford’s handling of the pandemic has dropped from 80 per cent last year to just 19 per cent this month. In a post on Twitter highlighting the tumble, EKOS chief pollster Frank Graves said: “That is unimaginably low. Biggest issue of last 80 years. Worst marks ever.”　

We're back to the way we were.

Image: CTV Toronto News

Ford Is A Gift --To Trudeau

Many of us in Ontario feel nothing but contempt -- visceral contempt -- for Doug Ford. But Tom Walkom writes that, for Justin Trudeau, Ford is a gift that will keep on giving:

The Liberals’ real not-so-secret weapon is Doug Ford.

In the morality play that is Canadian politics, the Ontario Conservative premier can easily be portrayed by left-liberals as a black-hatted villain. He is big, brash and unapologetic.

In 2015, the Liberals successfully typecast then Conservative leader Stephen Harper as a malevolent genius — a kind of Lex Luthor to Trudeau’s Clark Kent.

They are having less luck with Harper’s successor, Andrew Scheer. With his easy smile and dimpled cheeks, Scheer does not easily fit the supervillain stereotype. So the Liberals tried something else.

First, they tried to define Scheer as a puppet of Harper who, in their storyline, was still the hidden mastermind behind Canadian Conservativism.

Scheer is incompetent. Ford is much more than that:

Ford is the left-liberal’s nightmare. He opposes carbon pricing measures to deal with climate change; he opposes employment standards aimed at alleviating precarious work.

From his time at Toronto city hall, he has a reputation as a blowhard and bully. And while he does not espouse the protectionist policies of Donald Trump, he looks and acts like the U.S. president.

Ford handily defeated Kathleen Wynne’s provincial Liberals in this year’s Ontario election. But the federal Liberals are betting that this was a one-off event spurred not by love of Ford but by Wynne’s personal unpopularity.

In fact, by polarizing the electorate, Ford may well make it easier for Trudeau in Ontario. Ontario NDP supporters deserted their party in droves in 2015, in order to vote Liberal and defeat the Harper Conservatives. They may do so again to ensure that Fordism doesn’t gain a hold nationally.

Ford's opposition to Trudeau's carbon tax will work in Trudeau's favour:

While too low to do any substantive good [it] is just high enough to assuage Canadian guilt and allow voters to think they are making a sacrifice for the environment.

Second, the Liberals are proposing to rebate this new carbon tax back to Ontario voters via a formula that miraculously will leave the average person financially better off.

The carbon tax may not do much for the planet. But it could well keep Doug Ford from damaging it further.

Image: CityNews Toronto

What's Around The Corner

Justin Trudeau shuffled his cabinet yesterday. He's getting ready for the next election and for more immediate battles. And the most pressing battle will be with Doug Ford. Susan Delacourt writes:

The more you look at this so-called pre-election shuffle, the more you see Doug Ford’s victory rippling through the some of the biggest changes to the federal Liberal ministry. If shuffles had ad slogans, this one would be: Built Ford Tough.

It's of considerable interest that Trudeau has raised former Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair's profile:

There’s Bill Blair, an old enemy of the Ford brothers, in a job that will inevitably put him soon on a collision course with the new premier. Or as the Conservatives’ deputy leader Lisa Raitt predicted at her post-shuffle news conference, a relationship bound to be “fraught” with difficulties.

But Donald Trump is also not far from Trudeau's musings. Jim Carr is now the Minister of Trade Diversification. And, by establishing a new ministry for seniors, Trudeau will be making a pitch for those of us over 65 who can be reliably counted on to vote Blue. Still,

Blair’s promotion may actually be one of the most interesting features of a shuffle that was altogether fascinating for what it says about the Trudeau government a little more than a year away from seeking re-election. Eighteen months ago, the deck was shuffled to deal with Trump. That’s still a big concern — witness Jim Carr’s transfer to minister of international trade diversification, which you could call Plan B for potentially faltering NAFTA talks. But Ford has clearly joined Trump on the list of shuffle-worthy worries for the Trudeau team. How do you deal with the Fords? Call the cops.

The battle will move to the courts first. By breaking a contract to build a wind farm in Prince Edward County, by breaking another contract with Brewers Retail and by challenging the Trudeau government's carbon tax, lawyers for the Ontario government will be kept very busy.

But, in the next election, Ontario will be Ground Zero. The cabinet shuffle is a signal that Trudeau knows what's around the corner.

Image: Huffington Post Canada

They'll Get Alot Nastier

John Ibbitson warns his readers that Ottawa and Queens Park are about to embark on a battle royal:

One of Mr. Ford’s first acts as Premier was to scrap his Liberal predecessor’s cap-and-trade carbon tax. In response, Mr. Trudeau is vowing to impose a carbon tax on Ontario and Saskatchewan (which also opposes the tax) on Jan. 1. 

Where we live, the Ford government has cancelled a wind farm, which was years in the approval process. The project has been underway for over a year now. Local people are working there and they will lose their jobs. The president of the company building the project claims the shutdown will cost the province $100 million.

No problem says, Mr. Ford, we've written a clause into the enabling legislation, declaring that the province cannot be sued. When Caroline Mulroney -- the Ford government's legal brain trust -- was asked yesterday how that would stand up in court, she refused to answer the question and walked away.

You see where this is heading. Trudeau and Ford have also fought over refugees. Ibbitson writes:

The two first ministers are also sparring over refugee claimants who have been crossing the Canada-U.S. border illegally. Before they met on Thursday, Mr. Ford said in a statement that his government will offer no co-operation in housing the asylum seekers, wrongly declaring “this mess was 100 per cent the result of the federal government, and the federal government should foot 100 per cent of the bills.” U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration policies surely have more to do with it.

In response, Mr. Trudeau told reporters after the meeting that the new Premier did not appear to understand Canada’s obligations under international law.

“So I spent a little time explaining how the asylum-seeking system works and how our system is supposed to operate,” he said. You don’t need the audio to hear the condescension.

So things are getting raucous in Ontario. And they'll get a lot nastier.

Image: Spencer Fernando