There is no shortage of opinion pieces about Donald Trump’s trade war. The threat of a 25 per cent tariff on virtually all US imports risks pushing Canada into a recession by the middle of 2025. In response, Canada has placed a 25 per cent retaliatory tariff on $30 billion in US-imported goods, while Ontario has applied a 25 per cent surcharge on electricity exports to the US on March 10.
I think it goes without saying that the tariffs’ implications are far-reaching and potentially devastating. Canada’s economic prospects appear to be in limbo, which is no small feat to overcome for those fearing impending waves of unemployment and inflation.
However, what I find most concerning is how the trade war has conveniently allowed recently re-elected Premier Doug Ford to position himself as a charismatic defender of not only Ontario but Canada as a whole.
It’s easy to want to turn into a hero-type when things seem uncertain, but I worry that Ford’s everyman charisma and capitalization on anti-Trump rhetoric is simply distracting Ontarians from his growing pile of unkept promises.
Snap election: Ford vs Trump
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Ford called a snap election at the height of the US-Canada trade tensions. Much of the Progressive Conservative (PC) Party’s platform during the recent provincial election focused on protecting Canada from Trump’s hawkish economic sanctions. While on the campaign trail, Ford was seen sporting a “Canada Is Not For Sale” baseball cap.
I also don’t think that Ford fashioning himself as the leader best equipped to take on Trump is a politically innocent act. It’s an ideologically charged appeal to national identity and industry: note Ford’s emphasis on protecting Canada rather than Ontario alone.
Despite being the Premier of Ontario, Ford has rapidly emerged as a self-proclaimed spokesperson for the everyday Canadian. By appearing on American Fox News to discuss Canada’s response to the tariffs, Ford became one of the main international representatives of Canada.
His appeal to national heroism goes hand in hand with his populist approach. Ford leans heavily into the idea that he’s just your average hard-working Canadian. I mean, he loves Tim Hortons breakfast sandwiches and advocates for Canadian-made goods.
Take the PC Party’s landslide majority in the 2022 provincial elections. Ford’s win was at least partially due to the migration of blue-collar support towards the conservatives. Private sector unions previously thought to be the domain of the New Democrat Party (NDP) endorsed the Progressive Conservatives and the PC Party seized several NDP seats in industrial regions.
Ford is no doubt aware that his national patriotic appeal transcends traditional political boundaries. His alleged commitment to maintaining Canadian values aligned with conservatives in 2018 but his win in 2022 proved that he’s also capable of reaching NDP and Liberal strongholds.
Protection Ontario and the politics of defence
When you look past the Canadian nationalist veneer, the overlap in Trump and Ford’s politics is jarring.
It’s clear from his victory in the 2018 provincial election that Ford is adept at mobilizing Ontarians on the basis of national identity and blue-collar relatability. Unsurprisingly, the tariff war provides a prime opportunity for him to leverage this.
This is most overtly expressed in Ford’s recent electoral campaign. His final flagship campaign advertisement frames Ford as uniquely qualified to defeat the ‘Big Bad Trump’ with the following voiceover: “We need a fighter. Someone who protects us — our jobs, our families. That’s Premier Doug Ford.” This is immediately followed by clips of Ford shaking hands with tradesmen in blue hard hats, as well as his Fox News appearance.
The message is loud and clear: Canada is on the brink of collapse and only Ford can rescue us from imminent chaos. Things seem to be reduced to a ‘Trump Bad, Ford Good’ dichotomy. Trump’s half-baked plan to squander the Canadian economy is of no small consequence, yet I’m hardly convinced that Ford is our saving grace.
While Ford may view himself as diametrically opposed to Trump, their domestic policies aren’t that different.
Both are committed to ‘tough on crime’ attitudes and Trump has described his approach to homelessness as “cleaning up the streets,” in a similar fashion to how the PC Ontario government has been clearing homeless encampments. They are both in favour of a conservative-leaning education curriculum, with Trump accusing American curricula of indoctrinating young people with racial, sexual, and political material while Ford’s right-wing supporters criticized Ontario’s sexual education for its “radical agenda.” They both want to get rid of bike lanes. The list goes on.
When you look past the Canadian nationalist veneer, the overlap in Trump and Ford’s politics is jarring. Conveniently, they also both have a vested interest in privatizing public land.
The Greenbelt controversy
For someone who claims to be putting Canada first, Ford sure has come under fire for a number of extractive development and privatization projects. Perhaps the most controversial of these is Ontario’s Greenbelt controversy — this having been somewhat concealed in the recent provincial election.
Although Ford pledged that the protected land, which safeguards forests and wetlands, would be left untouched in 2021, he claimed only a year later that opening protected Greenbelt land would allow for further housing development.
Those who stood to benefit from opening the Greenbelt were not everyday Canadians, but rather the billionaire developer De Gasperis family, who owns 32 properties in three locations within the Greenbelt land that the government is proposed to open up for development.
To Trump suggesting that Canada is prime real estate, Ford has staunchly declared “That property’s not for sale.” Yet, Ford’s actions with the Ontario Greenbelt suggest that Canada is in fact for sale, it’s simply a matter of who he deems worthy of exploiting it.
In addition to his backtracking with the Greenbelt initiative, Ford made a number of other promises that have gone unfulfilled.
In 2022, Ford’s Housing Task Force set out to build 1.5 million new homes in the next 10 years. Even so, Ontario’s homebuilding is still lagging behind other provinces and is not expected to meet its housing goals. Similarly, Ontario’s school repair backlog and hallway medicine crisis — when all available hospital rooms are full and patients have to be treated in hallways — have both been exacerbated since Ford took office in 2018.
However, it’s not just about the promises that weren’t kept, it’s also about the policies he’s implemented.
Without there being any mention of it in his 2022 campaign, Ford shut down the Ontario Science Center with one day’s notice. He also spent at least $600 million in provincial public funds to ensure that convenience stores could sell beer and wine sooner than anticipated — using roughly three times the amount his government said it would originally cost. For someone whose last election slogan was “Get It Done,” I find myself wondering what effective policies he actually got done.
To say that I believe Ford’s words and actions don’t align would be an understatement, though this is especially disappointing given the immediacy of the tariff war. You don’t need to be a political scientist to see that Ford’s politics are selective: his messaging aligns with whatever hot-button topic allows him to appear most favourable. The tariff war was his bread and butter this election cycle.
While the looming threat of a recession is a genuine and immediate concern, Ford’s decision to centre the tariffs is merely illusory. Whether he’ll deliver on his commitment to taking on Trump is yet to be seen, but his track record doesn’t inspire much faith in me.
Emma Dobrovnik is a fourth-year student at St. Michael’s College studying political science and criminology. She is the president of the Association of Political Science Students and a Domestic Affairs columnist for The Varsity’s Opinion section.
