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Everybody I meet seems to think this provincial election is going to be a cakewalk for Premier Doug Ford and they wonder why we’re bothering to have it.
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Well, not everybody.
Certainly not Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie who was back in her old stomping grounds on Thursday to not only open her campaign office in Mississauga East-Cooksville but to also show the province she’s ready to battle Ford for the top job — and Opposition and NDP Leader Marit Stiles too.
The former mayor of Mississauga came with fighting words.
“You know we are all here today because Doug Ford doesn’t care about you,” Crombie said with force. “He’s called a snap election in the middle of winter because he is trying to outrun an RCMP investigation. He has waisted $189 million calling an early and unnecessary election.”
Time will tell if the excuse that Ford needs a mandate to deal with threatened 25% tariffs on Canadian goods by putting pandemic-like measures in place to save Ontario businesses is the way to go.
And time will tell if this will even be necessary.
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There were, again, mixed messages coming out of Washington on Thursday. Incoming Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said if Canada just shores up its border the punitive action of tariffs will not be necessary as they await a report to come in April on the current trade imbalances with Canada, Mexico and China and how tariffs could be applied to fix it.
But then later President Donald Trump once again said these tariffs are dropping on Saturday.
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If they do, and most people certainly believe they will, Ontarians will ultimately decide if flooding the province with money we don’t have is what they want their provincial government to do.
If those tariffs don’t happen, then no one is quite sure what this election will be fought over.
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The Premier is in an awkward position with this, and so are his opponents.
“So, what I am hearing is there might not be tariffs, so we may not have needed to go into an election,” mused Crombie.
But if these tariffs do come, she said, “I have told the Premier we would support any stimulus package proposed that would protect Ontario’s jobs.”
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In a strange way, Trump sets the tone for this vote. If he puts the tariffs on, Ford owns the ballot question. If he doesn’t, Crombie can shift the focus over to her strongest position of why so many Ontarians don’t have a family doctor.
Ford doesn’t want to talk about that any more than he wants to talk about that RCMP investigation into the Green Belt scandal.
The topic of the day is this idea of going into a defeated mode and throwing in the towel on capitalism in favour of Trudeau-style printing and borrowing money, and adding to the debt, to fund a social welfare state-style period to ride out a potential economic winter of pandemic-like darkness.
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Do voters want a caretaker form of crisis socialism like we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic? Or are such measures prudent and realistic and the only way of combatting the problem?
Ontarians will get to decide on Feb. 27.
While Crombie didn’t offer a different strategy from Ford’s on Thursday, she did show feistiness and energy that the Premier and Opposition Leader will have noticed.
Crombie’s debut offers a view to someone who is paying no attention to what the experts say and is forging ahead with a dream of writing an underdog story for the ages. You have to watch those underdogs – especially when they have been an MP, the mayor of a big city and know their way around the political game.
Not that it matters because everybody seems to think Ford has this thing all wrapped up. But it’s worth remembering what happened when former premier David Peterson called an early election in 1990 and Bob Rae pulled off an upset.
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