Wanderings – The $189 million seat and the forever premier

Well that was fun. The snap Ontario election has come and gone and Premier Doug Ford has a new four year-plus year mandate and one extra seat. All that for the tidy sum of $189 million.

At the time the election was called, the Ontario PCs held 79 seats at Queen’s Park. And after the February 27 election, he has 80. That is one more than he had a month ago, but still short of the 84 seats he won in 2022. It falls short of the record mandate he was seeking to break, that of former-Premier David Peterson who won 95 out of 130 seats in 1987. As the pundit class has already pointed out, Ford’s win puts him into the upper echelon of Ontario political achievements. Not since Leslie Frost in the 1950s has a party won three majority governments in a row. Save that fun fact for your next trivia party.

When Ford called the election, and when his candidates were interviewed, they all parroted the same line – they needed a four year mandate to outlast the presidency of Donald Trump. In fact, thanks to the fixed election date law, our next provincial election is June 7, 2029. After this winter-reprieve election, candidates will need to stock up on sunscreen. And they will have a few extra months of a mandate to do so.

So now what? Great question to which the short answer is – wait and see. Ontario did their part. Okay, 45.4 per cent of Ontarians did their part. Now we get to wait to see what U.S. President Donald Trump does. If he enacts tariffs like he keeps threatening, then a trade war erupts and our economy takes a bigger hit. That’s when Ford will wear his Captain Canada Ontario cape and start the stimulus. What will that look like? Look back at the last six years.

The benefit of the Ford government is you get what you see – mostly. There isn’t a lot hidden about how the government does business, nor is there a lot hidden about the deals it makes, or the projects they are planning. Ford and his government know that some deals have bad optics – like Ontario Place and the bedraggled Science Centre – and they do not care. They have a mandate, a majority mandate – Ontarians voted for this. Or more specifically: the 42.97 per cent of the 45.5 per cent who voted. In other words, what 19.55 per cent of all Ontario wanted and who cared to participate in the election.

This means we will have a tunnel under Highway 401, and lots of other projects like this. This will be the stimulus to help carry the economy through any tough times that Donald Trump’s tariffs will throw at us.

What was interesting from Thursday night’s election results was Ford saying he wanted to be Premier forever. There is nothing alarmist about that, as there is no law on the books that says he cannot. Do Ontarians want Doug Ford as Premier for another 10, 20, or 30 years? Maybe his transit and tunnel projects will be completed by then?

We could very well be in for another provincial Tory dynasty. We’ve had that before. The PCs led Ontario for 43 consecutive years from 1948 to 1985. Ford’s history-making third majority does put him in the same level as premiers like Frost, James P. Whitney, and Oliver Mowat. There is a key difference between Ford and those aforementioned past Premiers – they built something. Whitney is responsible for much of the electrical grid and generation systems in the province; Mowat, the municipal government system and secret balloting; and Frost, the 400-series Highway system, OHIP, and unfortunately the provincial sales tax. Ford so far has largely tread water and replaced a very unpopular Liberal government – that’s all!

The next four-plus year mandate will be interesting to watch to see if Ford’s place in history is a footnote or deserved. It’s difficult to see right now if it was worth $189 million to find out. Time will tell.

This column was originally published in the March 5, 2025 print edition of The Morrisburg Leader.