This has truly been a strange federal election in many ways. For starters, one of the key players, Mark Carney, was parachuted into the Liberal leadership virtually overnight and subsequently became prime minister without a national vote. This has never happened before in Canada’s history. Then the Liberals called a federal election in the shortest possible time period legally permissible. One might almost think the Liberals didn’t really want Canadians to get to know Carney. As various questionable elements of Carney’s past – use of offshore tax havens, investments he has overseen in pipelines in other countries but not in Canada, association with groups like the World Economic Forum (WEF) whose mantra is “you will own nothing, and you’ll be happy,” his net zero fixation which has a habit of damaging the standard of living of average citizens, among others – come to light, one can only wonder what else we could uncover if we had the time. At a minimum, Canadians should be highly skeptical.
Even during the brief campaign to date, Carney has chosen his words very carefully when he says he wants Canada to become an energy superpower but doesn’t necessarily plan to build pipelines. If Carney’s energy superpower vision involves constructing a massively expensive electrical grid powered by costly and unreliable wind and solar, as seems very possible, that is not an energy superpower at all. If Carney plans to continue Trudeau’s policy of hobbling Canada’s vast oil and gas riches, which would be consistent with his background, that will doom Canada to mediocre growth or worse should he win the election.
Another truly odd element of this federal election concerns the role Ontario Premier Doug Ford has chosen to play. A few weeks ago, the organization this author heads up, the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses Canada (CCMBC), published an article entitled “Shame on you Doug Ford.” It upset a number of people who believed it to be an anti-Conservative message and found it confusing, as we had issued an endorsement of federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. It didn’t seem to make sense that we were now being critical of the Ontario Conservative Premier. But Ford is as much a Conservative as Carney is someone in touch with small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). There is zero evidence of it.
Carney himself praised Ford recently for “standing up for Canada” in U.S. media outlets. Carney went on and made a nasty aside about Alberta Premier Danielle Smith who he implies is not standing up for Canada, despite all facts to the contrary. Smith has actually been a steadfast defender of Canada’s interests in the face of Trump’s tariff threats, and has arguably worked harder than any other Premier to achieve a better deal for Canada.
An alliance between a Conservative premier and a Liberal candidate for prime minister during a federal election is a pretty weird scenario but consider these facts. Ford has been an enthusiastic promoter of continuing his Liberal predecessors’ bad energy policy. Although he was elected in part on a promise to fix the mess the Liberals made, he has actually just continued Kathleen Wynne’s disastrous and expensive subsidization of electricity rates instead of actually fixing the problems that hiked rates in the first place. This subsidy to keep residential rates lower than they would otherwise be is now costing Ontarians more than $6 billion annually.
Another foolish policy is Ford’s joining the Trudeau government with his approval of multi-billion-dollar taxpayer handouts to the electric vehicle industry and EV battery plants. These investments are already looking pretty shaky as consumers reject EVs, more practical problems with EVs emerge and some industry participants approach bankruptcy.
Ford also engaged in some posturing about counter-tariffs policy, the effect of which has been to hurt Ontario and Canada. His initial threat to cut off electricity exports to a few US states was quickly reversed as Trump upped the ante on tariffs against Ontario exports. Cutting off electricity exports would have just hurt Ontario in any case, as the province at least is paid something by US states for the excess electricity produced by wind generation Ontario does not need but was constructed solely for virtue-signaling purposes by the previous Liberal government.
More recently, Ford has promised an $11 billion handout to Ontarians to compensate for the effect of his own mishandling of the tariff issue, at a time when Ontario is deeply in debt and has no money to spare. Most businesses would prefer a process of negotiation with the US, not the imposition of retaliatory tariffs which just hurt Canadian businesses and jobs.
Ford initially sold himself to Ontarians as a critic of environmental extremists, prepared to dispense with the foolish and costly Green Energy Act implemented by his Liberal predecessors. Yet now he seems to be parroting the Trudeau -Carney big government, big taxes, green agenda that has produced Canada’s lost decade from 2015 to date.
If Ford really believed that the green agenda was the wrong way to go as he’s said in the past, why isn’t he now calling out Mark Carney’s very ideological and damaging green credentials? Why isn’t Ford, self-proclaimed man of the people, calling out Carney’s elitist career in high finance and central banking – a career that served elite interests and not those of everyday citizens? Why isn’t Ford letting older Canadians in Ontario – a traditional conservative constituency – know that their pensions and savings are at risk because of the flight of capital occurring thanks to the Liberal policy framework, one Carney has said he endorses?
Ford’s own ministers have begun to stand up – Caroline Mulroney being a great example – to endorse Poilievre, but Ford is nowhere to be seen on that front. Instead, he is foolishly allowing his staffers to spar publicly with federal conservative campaign organizers.
If anyone is troubled by these comments, it is worth noting that our Coalition represents the interests of our members and is not concerned with currying favour with any particular government. That is the path of far too many corporate interests in Canada, a path that has hurt our country for too long. And our members want governments that are about managing their limited responsibilities, not the lives of citizens. Ford seems to have lost any sense of that core Conservative belief. Pierre Poilievre gets it. So again, shame on you Doug Ford.
She has published numerous articles in journals, magazines & other media on issues such as free trade, finance, entrepreneurship & women business owners. Ms. Swift is a past President of the Empire Club of Canada, a former Director of the CD Howe Institute, the Canadian Youth Business Foundation, SOS Children’s Villages, past President of the International Small Business Congress and current Director of the Fraser Institute. She was cited in 2003 & 2012 as one of the most powerful women in Canada by the Women’s Executive Network & is a recipient of the Queen’s Silver & Gold Jubilee medals.
