Martin Regg Cohn is a Toronto-based columnist focusing on Ontario politics and international affairs for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @reggcohn.
No wonder Doug Ford keeps milking Donald Trump.
Look at the latest polls.
The premier keeps defying gravity and soaring to new political heights: Ford’s Tories hit a record 53 per cent of voter support in an Abacus Data poll published in the Toronto Star this week.
Provincial Politics Doug Ford’s Tories soar to a record high in poll as Marit Stiles’ NDP struggles Robert Benzie
That’s an astonishing number for a premier still facing an RCMP probe on the Greenbelt. No matter how much Ford puts his foot in his mouth, mouthing off at the U.S. president keeps his head out of water.
The president is pure gold for Ford — the gift that keeps on giving.
Trump is also the grifter who keeps on taking — deflating the dreams of Ford’s rivals who lack his knack for making hay out of haywire.
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First, Ford called an absurdly early election last February to trounce all rivals, winning his third consecutive majority. Now, he is watching the opposition parties stall in the aftermath, unable to get wind in their sails from a windbag president.
Ford’s fortunes are tied to Trump’s failings and opposition flailing.
Ontario’s New Democrats have fallen to 12 per cent in the latest survey, trending downwards ever since Trump returned to the White House (their federal NDP counterparts are languishing in single digits, tumbling to seven per cent in the latest Abacus survey).
Ford is also outperforming Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie, whose provincial party is stuck at 27 per cent voter support. To put those numbers into perspective, Ford’s Tories are roughly twice as popular as the Liberals and enjoy at least four times more support than the NDP — a daunting distance for both parties to make up.
Abacus president David Coletto says Ford is striking a chord over Trump’s discordant antics, leaving the premier essentially untouchable until further notice: Ford keeps “pushing back against Trump, and that’s resonating with Ontarians … he’s tapping into the emotions people are feeling and it’s further endeared him to much of the province,” he told the Star.
By broadening his coalition, Ford is shrinking the available voter pool for the two major opposition parties, which are both holding leadership reviews next month. But changing leaders wouldn’t change the state of play, at least not now.
“The problem Crombie faces isn’t personal, it’s structural,” the pollster argues. “Any other Liberal leader would (also) be up against a deeply popular premier and a government whose support is not only wide but growing.”
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On the one hand, according to Coletto, Stiles is being dragged down by the slumping federal NDP. On the other hand, Crombie doesn’t seem to be benefiting from any lingering federal honeymoon enjoyed by Carney.
Let me try to explain that federal-provincial crossover contradiction. One reason Crombie can’t capture any of that Carney halo is that Ford has hogged the limelight for so long while working in tandem with the PM.
By playing the role of Captain Canada ever since the U.S. president returned to power, the premier keeps giving voice to vox pop. The reason that Ford is soaking up so much love — more than the federal Tories, Crombie’s provincial Liberals and certainly Stiles’s NDP — is that the premier captured the popular mood well before they pivoted.
As I’ve argued in recent columns, Ford is a free-rider who lets Carney do the heavy lifting and churning while he skims the cream off the top. The premier lambastes Trump at every turn and calls for tough retaliation, without having to face the consequences of overplaying his hand (after burning his own fingers when threatening to cut off electricity to border states, only to back down when unable to take the heat from Trump’s team).
Ford has tapped artfully into the zeitgeist in his own way, with his own words — complimentary and complementary to Carney without contradicting him — so far. The premier has played the role of bad cop to the PM’s good cop.
But the divergence of recent days suggests Ford may have less margin of manoeuvre in the months to come. For the first time, Ford disagreed with Carney’s decision to cancel retaliatory tariffs on American imports that comply with our North American free trade pact under the CUSMA regime (the PM arguing that we were merely mirroring an American exemption for our CUSMA-compliant exports — hence rewarding their good behaviour with reciprocity).
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Ford wasn’t having it. Again on Wednesday — flush with his flattering poll results — the premier repeated his increasingly hollow line that “We have to fight fire with fire,” even though Carney was merely matching what the Americans had just doused and dialed down.
Now we know why. Ford is having too much fun venting and voicing Canadian resentment with political impunity.
No harm done. Who can blame Ford for kicking the Americans in the shins if it makes us all feel better — and makes his polling numbers all the better?
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