Ontario

Ontario is going to the polls next week with a year remaining in the Ford government’s present term; voters don’t generally like premature elections unless there is a good reason for them. Counterintuitively, the country did reelect Justin Trudeau in a premature election in 2021 on the basis of his handling of the Covid pandemic, which was in fact absurdly overreactive, authoritarian, and grossly expensive. He was assisted by the fact that the official opposition’s position was that they would establish a royal commission to evaluate the official reaction to the pandemic instead of coming out slugging and making the government pay at the polls for its poorly thought-out and executed response to the public health crisis. The current Ontario election is later in the mandate than the 2021 federal election was and the reason for the election call is to give Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government a strong mandate to deal with his province’s response to trade and related challenges arising from the United States government’s threat of sharply increased tariffs.

With the Ontario election campaign underway, the Star has a poll tracker so you can follow all the twists and turns ahead of election day on Feb. 27.

I’m surprised the Libs and NDP are doing sorta OK.

Toronto will vote stupid as expected.

Campaigning party leaders have talked about a lot of things during Ontario’s snap election, but somehow, even as they focus on the American tariff threat, they’ve come up short on the province’s longer-term economic problem, the most important issue of all.

All three parties are fixated on government spending plans, not the broader economy. Even PC leader Doug Ford, who is running to protect Ontario from tariffs, has little to offer but a weak and temporary economic fix.

In hockey, you would call it a 3-on-1 breakaway. Doug Ford stood on a TV studio stage in downtown Toronto on Monday night as three people trying to take his job took their best shots on net.

Ontario voters clueing in to the fact they are in the middle of a quick, unexpected election could be forgiven for thinking their choices on the Feb. 27 provincial ballot will be Donald Trump, tariffs or Mark Carney.

Political observers and some door-knocking candidates say that international and national headlines blasting Ontarians like a fire hose, stoking dire financial fears and debate over who best to lead Canada, are almost erasing the provincial election — likely to the benefit of the Progressive Conservatives.

Whatever happened to Bonnie Crombie? The Ontario Liberal leader was supposed to turn her party’s prospects around. Instead, Crombie has failed to make a meaningful dent in her party’s support levels during this current election campaign, her first and possibly her last.

Wednesday, in Toronto, Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie held yet another announcement about the importance of choosing her party to end hallway health care in the province. Once again, no full platform or detailed plan with costs was provided. Crombie spoke minimally, relying on attacks on Doug Ford and what she called a “tour” of personal anecdotes. Unfortunately for Crombie, the smooth functioning of this play on emotions relied on pesky reporters not asking any questions about her party’s not-so-wonderful health care record and comments Crombie made about her party’s former leader’s plan being “too costly.”

Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford touted his party’s border security measures amid the threat of U.S. tariffs, as the NDP focused on pocketbook issues Saturday with the promise of a monthly grocery rebate for millions of people.

Ford continued to hammer home his campaign message about protecting Ontario’s economy, saying that even though U.S. President Donald Trump has put off his tariff threats until early March, “an unprecedented economic risk” still looms.

Who is going to pay for this “rebate”?

BREAKING: Ontario NDP just announced food stamps for middle-class Canadians. You heard that correctly.

The economy is so bad under Liberal-NDP policies that working families can’t even afford food.

Socialism alive and strong in Canada
pic.twitter.com/XTUQSkg0Wy

— Marc Nixon (@MarcNixon24) February 8, 2025

h/t XC

Bonnie Crombie’s promise on the campaign trail Thursday was pretty straightforward – more family doctors.

Speaking in Scarborough, Crombie said that Doug Ford promised to end hallway health care and hasn’t, and her fix for the problem will be more family doctors.

“You’ll get a family doctor within four years, that’s our commitment,” Crombie said.

Can we stop pretending that the Ontario election has only one issue, which is authorizing Premier Doug Ford to spend tens of billions of dollars to protect Ontario from American tariffs?

U.S. President Donald Trump took much of the urgency out of Ford’s pitch Monday by delaying his onerous tariffs for at least a month. While the president’s end game remains unclear, the delay means Ford had to backtrack for now on crowd-pleasing announcements like pulling American booze out of LCBO stores and cancelling a broadband contract with Elon Musk’s Starlink company.

A defensive Doug Ford insists it was not reckless to call a provincial election against the backdrop of a trade war that could devastate Ontario’s economy.

The Progressive Conservative leader, who last week triggered the Feb. 27 vote 15 months early, maintained his hands are not tied during the campaign and he can still govern while electioneering.

“I totally disagree,” Ford said Monday as he accepted the endorsement of the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association in Etobicoke.

Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford insists Ontario is not vulnerable during a snap election campaign he called as a possible trade war with the United States looms.

338Canada Ontario | Electoral Projections [Jan 31st update: PC 99 seats (+8 from prior Jan 29th update), NDP 14 (-4), OLP 8 (-4), Green 2 (N/C), Independent 1 (N/C)]

The Progressive Conservatives hold the largest lead recorded for a party since “the turn of the century,” a new poll has found, with Doug Ford well out in front of the rest at the start of Ontario’s snap election campaign.

The survey, conducted exclusively for Global News by Ipsos Public Affairs, suggests if the election were held tomorrow the PCs would form a third consecutive majority government, with greater support than both the NDP and Liberal votes combined.