Premier Doug Ford confirms he will call snap Ontario election next week
Ontario Premier Doug Ford plans to call a snap election Wednesday, using the threat of 25 per cent tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump to justify his early call.
That election call would send Ontarians to the polls on Feb. 27, more than a year before the June 2026 fixed election date.
“With a strong mandate, we will be able to fight with Donald Trump to make sure we stop the tariffs,” he said Friday at a press conference.Ford, who already has a large majority government, suggested he is not satisfied with the 79 out of 124 seats his Progressive Conservatives currently hold.
“We need the largest mandate in Ontario’s history,” he said.
“When you have a strong mandate in politics, and you have a strong mandate from the people for the next four years to last over the four years of the Trump administration, I can tell you, the opposition treats you with a little more respect, as opposed to being vulnerable. Always people think, ‘OK, they’re going into an election.’”
This is, of course, absolute nonsense. Mandates don’t get any stronger than a majority government, and if your own party hasn’t turned against your awful policies and borderline criminal behaviour in great enough numbers to bring it down by now, chances are they’re not going to do it when everyone including the opposition actually agrees that Trump is one of the province’s biggest issues and that all parties need to unite to face it down. Trump will still be president next year when we’re supposed to go to the polls, and if you’re doing a good enough job in the eyes of enough people then, you’ll get your new mandate.
This is yet more selfishness from Ford. A blatantly transparent power grab that sadly I’m pretty sure he’s going to get away with. Every poll I’ve seen has him ahead, and though I never have and never will understand the reasons for that, there’s nothing that’s making me doubt them.
But boy oh boy, would I ever love to see him have to eat shit over this. It would be great if he lost and I’ll certainly do what little I can to make that happen, but I think it would almost be more hilarious if his nice, comfortable majority became a slim, precarious minority. If he loses outright he could just leave in disgrace. A minority, that he would have to wear every day and you know it would drive him nuts. Watching him suffer through every public moment would be kind of fantastic, I think. Especially for everyone his government has made suffer through its mismanagement, cruelty and neglect.