The election call last Sunday caught few off guard. Most people knew our freshly minted Prime Minister did not want to waste time before jumping on the campaign trail. As a novel commodity, Mark Carney appeals to many Canadians who were tired of former prime minister Justin Trudeau but remain uncertain about Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. Carney looks and acts with an air of confidence and sobriety. In comparison to Trudeau, he acts like a grown-up. Contrasted to Poilievre he seems stable and serious. Polls heading into the election measure this appeal and reveal that Canadians had dismissed Trudeau and held no confidence in the Opposition leader.
In the early days of this campaign, Poilievre faces several challenges. Beyond the obvious need to reintroduce himself and his party, he has to show the strong differences between himself and Carney. He will need to focus less on populist themes and turn this election into a referendum on the last decade of Liberal rule and how Carney will only want to tinker when significant change is needed. Lastly, Poilievre, not known for building political alliances will need to at minimum develop a truce with if not repair the problems between himself and newly re-elected Ontario Premier, Doug Ford. Both men fall under the same party hue but approach their jobs and politics differently. Poilievre’s ability to contend with these differences will likely determine his and his party’s political fate on April 28.
At the end of February, Doug Ford won his third consecutive majority government in Canada’s most seat-rich province. Ford won 80 out of 124 seats and will extend his lease on being premier for four more years. If he serves his term to completion, he will have been premier longer than anyone since William Davis in the 1970s and 1980s. But Ford, first considered a populist when elected in 2018 has undergone a political transformation. Butting heads with Trudeau during the early days of his administration, Ford began to find common ground with Trudeau during COVID. As the province and country exited the pandemic, the two began to work together on various projects. Trudeau promised massive government subsidies for companies like Honda that would invest in Ontario. He also ponied up money for housing starts, but most provocatively Ford backed up Trudeau during his declaration of the Emergency Act in 2022. In a CBC Report, “Ford responded that he ‘stood shoulder to shoulder with the prime minister’ on that decision and described the protest’s disruption of international trade and the lives of Ottawa residents as ‘unacceptable’” (Doug Ford & Truck Convoy). These indicators should have been signals to federal Conservatives that when a national election call dropped, the provincial conservative party would not necessarily join forces with the federal conservative one.
The Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) should not find Ford’s decision to stay neutral or even favour Carney surprising given what has preceded this overdue election. Playing footsie with the Liberals for three years should hint enough, but Ford’s overall disinterest in Poilievre’s advances has been in the open for some time. Early in his tenure, Ford determined that his longevity rested on his ability to crowd the centre in Ontario politics. Taking a page out of the Bill Davis handbook, Ford identified strategies to keep him the choice of the moderate voters in Ontario who often vacillate between the two parties. Ford has also proven to be an inveterate pragmatist. He appears willing to work with whoever will help him find solutions. When Trudeau looked like a possible partner during COVID, Ford, who had formerly dissed Trudeau reached out. Both men saw reasons to work together and soon Ford and Trudeau held common ground.
Conversely, Ford has never received any overtures from Poilievre with warmth or welcome. In fact, as far back as last year, TVO’s Steve Paikin wrote about the lack of relationship between the two men considering they have overlapping interests. At the time of the article, in April 2024, Poilievre was headed for a massive victory and Ford feared facing an electorate that had just defeated the Liberals. As Paikin reinforced, “You have to go back more than six decades to find the last time the Ontario Tories won an election while the federal Conservatives were in power. John Diefenbaker’s Conservatives held power nationally from 1957 to 1963. The Ontario PC Party won the 1959 election under Premier Leslie Frost” (Do Ford and Poilievre Get Along?). This explains why Ford called an early election, did his federal cousins no favours, and gave himself some flexibility in dealing with a new Liberal prime minister.
Paikin had a chance to ask Poilievre one question and in that one answer found enough to know that things between the aspiring prime minister and Ford are civil at best. He asked Poilievre to describe his relationship with Ford. “He’s the premier,” Poilievre began after a pause. “I’m the leader of the official Opposition and the next prime minister of Canada. And my relationship with him is the same as it is with everyone.” He did not call Ford his friend, he did not say a word about the traditional special relationship that the federal government held with Ontario, the home of Parliament. He implied that his relationship with Ford was no different than with anyone he knew in government. If that continues, reports in the Toronto Star, denied by both camps, may hold some truth. The Star reports that Ford refused to endorse Poilievre but backed off that claim when Ford and Poilievre both indicated that the conversation never happened. What did happen should not bring federal Conservatives any relief. Ford conceded he would not be helping the federal leader in the election, but he did plan to vote for his local Conservative candidate. Ford also refused to commit his caucus to supporting the federal team.
When asked if he preferred Poilievre or Carney, he replied, “I don’t know either (one) of them, to be very frank.” And when pressed, “Who would you like to get to know better,” he shrugged. “Either one. I’ll work with anyone” (Ford says Provincial MPPs too busy to help Federal candidates). If federal conservatives expect any help from the Ontario Progressive Conservative brand, they had better be prepared for a chilly reception if not an unequivocal no. As Nicolo Machiavelli, the fifteenth-century diplomat and author wrote in The Prince, his political classic about power, “The ends justify the means.” Ford’s desire to rule Ontario may mean sacrificing some federal seats to have a working relationship with a Liberal government that owes its power to Ontario. It would not be the first case of politics making strange bedfellows and likely not the last.
Dave Redekop is a retired elementary resource teacher who now works part-time at the St. Catharines Courthouse as a Registrar. He has worked on political campaigns since high school and attended university in South Carolina for five years, where he earned a Master’s in American History with a specialization in Civil Rights. Dave loves reading biographies.
