You wouldn’t think it based on the last few weeks of headlines, but if an election was held today, Doug Ford would win another majority.
Ontario’s Premier hasn’t been able to buy a good headline in the last three weeks, not since news broke that he was buying, and has since returned, a private jet for government use.
In less than four minutes on a Thursday afternoon, Ontario lawmakers voted to drastically restrict more than 40 years’ worth of government information that had previously been routinely available to reporters, researchers and the public.
I know, because a provincial officer told me as much last week.
Canada doesn’t have term limits on its highest political offices, but perhaps it should have, if only for the benefit of the office holders.
Call it mercy legislation. An Act to Save Senior Politicians from the Humiliations of their own Hubris.
Doug Ford’s government has fired the entire board of Conestoga College citing “evidence of serious financial and governance mismanagement.”
The news from the province comes after the Toronto Sun broke the news that former president John Tibbits was given an exit package worth at least $3.8 million.
I like the moves Ford is making on education but why did it take him so long to be just a little conservative?
Think about the last time you booked a flight. Did you flinch at the price? Did you double-check the total before clicking “confirm”? That’s the sort of small hesitation Ontario voters may be experiencing now.
Our latest tracking survey with the Star, conducted with 1,000 adults across the province last month, found the Progressive Conservatives and Liberals in a statistical tie among committed voters. And the proportion of voters having a strong desire for change has climbed 12 points since October, to 54 per cent. For a government that’s spent much of the past year with leads north of 20 points, this should serve as a warning sign.
He’s not a conservative. Simple as that.
Premier Doug Ford is now officially Dr. Doug Ford.
On Saturday, the head of the Ontario government received his first honorary degree ever, a Doctor of Humane Letters from the Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan, a border state that has close ties with the province and Canada as a whole.
Premier Doug Ford said Thursday he does not feel he’s lost touch with the average person, despite a backlash over a scrapped plan to buy a jet and new polling numbers showing his popularity declining.
“I’m in touch with the people on a daily basis,” Ford told CTV News Toronto in an exclusive interview.
He said no other politician “in the entire world” hands out his phone number to people as much as he does.
After being re-elected in 2004, U.S. president George W. Bush candidly revealed what he extrapolated from the vote.
“I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it,” Bush told reporters two days after the election.
Since being re-elected in 2025, Ontario Premier Doug Ford may not have been quite as blunt, but his third term in office has seen him blow through some precious political capital.
Catering to the Liberal-Left rather than the people who elected him is no longer paying off.
Ontario saw the largest unemployment rate increase in the country for the second year running, according to its financial watchdog, which also found that new jobs are still being created in the province.
A new report from the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario found job creation slowed in 2025, with 80,900 jobs created last year.
That figure is a drop from the year before and the slowest pace of job creation since 2015, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Ontario government’s decision to purchase and later return a $28.9-million private jet appears to have created turbulence for Premier Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservatives.
According to a new poll by Liaison Strategies, for the first time in its monthly provincial tracking, the PCs trail the Ontario Liberal Party by two percentage points among decided and leaning voters.
The Liberals, which do not have a permanent leader at this time, have the support of 38 per cent of decided and leaning voters while the Tories are in second place at 36 per cent.
Doug Ford’s poll numbers slump as government seems aimless
We are just over a month until we hit the eighth anniversary of Doug Ford being elected premier. He’s had some good times and some bad times over those eight years, and he’s surprised plenty of people by surviving as long as he has, especially after his first year.
The Ford government has passed a spring budget that includes provisions to let the premier and his cabinet ministers keep all their office records secret.
The spring budget changes Freedom of Information laws retroactively as well, meaning Ontario Premier Doug Ford would no longer have to comply with a court order to release his cellphone records.
The government used its majority to fast-track the bill and skip public hearings.
The “gravy plane” mess lasted only a few days. But it sent a message. If Doug Ford hears that message, the Ontario Premier will soon retire.
The public learned last week that the provincial government had acquired a preowned Bombardier Challenger 650 jet aircraft. On Sunday, in the wake of opposition howls, the Premier announced the government would sell the jet. “I have heard and agree that now is not the right time for the expense of a government plane,” he declared.
The signs of growing arrogance in Premier Doug Ford have been unmistakable in recent weeks.
His move to make himself and cabinet off limits to freedom-of-information scrutiny. His contempt for the City of Toronto and the takeover of the island airport. His boast that he’ll win the next election irrespective of who runs again him.
Perhaps, given his record of electoral success, a little smugness is forgivable.
The instant Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles blasted out the words “gravy plane,” it became obvious that the private jet purchased by Ontario Premier Doug Ford was not long for this province.
It wasn’t simply that the act of spending $28.9-million of taxpayers’ money on a private aircraft for the Premier’s office was hideously off-brand, though that was a major part of it. Mr. Ford and his late brother, Mayor of Toronto Rob Ford, built their entire political brand on being custodians of the public purse; Rob Ford made a public spectacle of cutting up the free memberships handed out to city councillors when he held that job.
