64 toronto life December 2018things forward often means forcing things forward. “Dean has
zero government experience,” says one PC insider, “and now he’s
in one of the most powerful positions in the government. He rules
by fiat. He doesn’t know how to get things done, so he just bellows
and screams at the end of the table. He has a simplistic, either-
you’re-with-me-or-against-me attitude.”
French was Ford’s main ally during his crusade to cut city
council. And when they won that fight, Ford told his staff that,
six months from now, no one would even remember it. He was
probably right. Especially as he turned his attention to the other
even more controversial matters. To thunderous applause in the
legislature, he rolled back Liberal labour reforms that would have
raised the minimum wage in January. He cancelled funding for
the expansion of universities in Milton, Markham and Brampton.
The government has been great at killing things, but it has had
a hard time successfully building anything of its own. The debut
of Ford’s Ontario Cannabis Store in October was marred by slow
delivery, misshipments and complaints. While he had loudly
promised, in July, the “largest-ever” consultation on a redrafted
sex-ed curriculum, by October that consultation only consisted
of the quiet rollout of a website late on a Friday afternoon. And a
hundred days into its mandate, the Ford government had yet to
release any kind of emissions plan to replace the cap-and-trade
legislation it had repealed, focusing instead on taking Trudeau
to court over the federal carbon tax while also dismissing the
$3-billion loss that winding down cap-and-trade represented.
The big question hanging over Queen’s Park is how exactly
Ford plans to balance the books. He repeatedly, unbelievably,
insisted that he could fix a deficit the Tories claimed was far
larger than expected—$15 billion—without slashing service or
job cuts. And yet it wasn’t clear how he’d square that particular
circle—even to his own caucus. “The province of Ontario is
seriously in debt,” Victor Harding, the president of the Provin-
cial University Rosedale PC Association, says. “We have the
largest debt of any sub-national government in the world right
now. How is Doug Ford going to deal with this debt without
either cutting programs or heads?”
When Rob Ford was a councillor and, to a certain extent,
when he was mayor, if a constituent had a problem and city
staff couldn’t fix it, Rob would fix it himself. Doug liked to joke
that even if it was just a cat stuck in a tree, Rob would try to
climb up and get the cat. Doug takes a different approach: he’ll
cut down the tree. And if the cat doesn’t survive, well, there
are a lot more cats out there. Both approaches deliberatelydisregard what our government is designed to do. You can’t
climb up to get all cats out and you can’t just cut down all the
trees. At some point, you have to plant new ones.I
n late September, I drove to the Veneto Centre
in Vaughan to attend Ford Fest. It was the first
time the massive annual barbecue was held
outside of Etobicoke. When I turned onto
Kipling, the designated parking had spilled
into the neighbouring streets. Seven thousand
people were there, or so said Ford’s staff. I
found one last spot and walked several blocks, where there was
another half-hour line to get into the festival itself.
Inside, it was a sea of red, white and blue. People wore Doug
Ford buttons, Stop the Gravy Train buttons, Michael Ford but-
tons. Boomer music pierced the cool air, courtesy of DJ Dan Jacobs,
Steve Clark’s chief of staff: Lighthouse’s “Sunny Days,” Boston’s
“More Than a Feeling.” The party was ethnically and demo-
graphically diverse, with an average age, I guessed, of around 50.
A couple of cabinet ministers—Christine Elliott, Rod Phillips—
worked the crowd. I skipped the ridiculously long lineup for free
burgers and grabbed a bag of chips.
Ford took to the stage, beaming as he always beams, dressed
in his weekend uniform: white shirt, navy blazer, dark jeans. He
wore only one expression: Can you believe this shit? He expressed
concern for two police officers shot the day before at a Burlington
gas station, then the victims of the tornadoes in Ottawa. In per-
petual campaign mode, he rhymed off a few of the things his
government had accomplished: ending the York strike, Buck-a-
Beer, and, to the greatest applause, cancelling cap-and-trade. “We
got Kathleen Wynne’s hand out of your pocket,” he said, “and
now we’re going to get Justin Trudeau’s hand out of your pocket.”
He talked about the deficit the Liberals left behind, how there
would be consequences. “We’ll show them,” he said, “that you
don’t just get to walk away.”
“Lock her up!” several people chanted. “Liars,” a woman beside
me muttered. “Scrap Trudeau!” a guy behind me yelled. A woman
at the front of the crowd waved a black T-shirt that read “Next
Stop Ottawa.” When Ford finished his speech, he stayed on stage
and people lined up again, this time to have their pictures taken
with him. It was hard to tell how many people were there over
the course of the next couple of hours—500, a thousand. He was
definitely more popular than the burgers.
I went to the bathroom and there, in a hallway between the
stage and the washrooms, was the core of the Ford family—Randy,
Diane, Karla and a couple of the daughters—just hanging out. It
was startling, like running into the Kardashians at Old Navy. It
was the Fords’ event, I knew, and being one with the people was
the whole point of the thing, but it was still weirdly refreshing.
Few political families, I thought, would subject themselves to
such casual exposure in such a dingy location. As green rooms
go, it wasn’t glamorous or comfortable. There was no food or
drink, nowhere to sit down, no security, no privacy. You could
smell the washrooms. They were waiting, it seemed, for Doug
to wrap up, but they were also, obviously, holding court. Friends
and fans stopped to say hi, hug them, tell stories. Randy stood
about a head taller than the crowd, in his trademark cowboy hat
and boots and a grey corduroy jacket. Diane was wearing
Skechers and a soft, blue-and-grey coat with a pattern of a wolf’sDoug has said that
Rob was “too real.”
As far as voters are
concerned, Doug is
just real enough
The fifTy MosTinfluenTial 2018DOUGFORD_SEND.indd 64 18-10-31 12:36 PM