Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s decision to call a snap election could backfire politically by alienating voters
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The worst-kept secret in Canadian politics is out. Ontario Premier Doug Ford confirmed that he’ll be calling a snap election on Wednesday. Ontario voters will be going to the polls on Feb. 29.
Why on earth is Ford doing this? He achieved one of Ontario’s largest majority governments in history, winning 83 out of 124 seats in the June 2022 election. He’s leading in most opinion polls by 20 points or more.
Hence, a snap election by the popular Ontario Premier seems completely unnecessary.
Ford has other ideas. He’s been musing about an early election call since last year, which made no sense at the time, and he ultimately ruled out. In recent days, he’s told the media that he supposedly needs a “clear mandate” to take on U.S. President Donald Trump’s forthcoming 25 per cent tariffs on all Canadian (and Mexican) products. The executive order for the tariffs may be announced as early as Feb. 1, according to what Trump told a reporter in the White House.
Hold on. Why would Ford need a clear mandate when he already has a clear mandate? The Ontario Liberals, NDP and Greens, combined, can’t defeat him in the Legislature. He can pass any piece of provincial legislation his heart desires without the slightest concern that his government would fall.
Furthermore, there’s a real possibility that his overall majority could drop in this snap election, and the “clear mandate” he hopes to achieve would be unsuccessful. There’s also the massive expense associated with this unnecessary exercise. The 2022 Ontario election cost an estimated $145.3 million and will likely be higher this year. Who do you think will pay the tab? You guessed it-Ontario taxpayers.
There’s one thing I can think of (and it’s a rather dicey reason) that may be bothering Ford. That is the low voter turnout during the 2022 election. Only 44.06 per cent of eligible Ontario voters went to the ballot boxes. That was a record low in the province, topping the 48.2 per cent in 2011 when Dalton McGuinty was still Premier.
If that’s weighing heavily on Ford’s mind, he should really give his head a shake.
Ontario elections use the first-past-the-post model, in which political candidates can win ridings with a plurality of one vote of all the votes cast. It’s an imperfect voting system, to be sure, but that’s completely beside the point. As I wrote in a June 7, 2022 column, “You can’t control how many people ultimately vote, but you can motivate your supporters to vote. Ford and the PCs did it best and that’s why they won.”
If Ford wants to take on Trump and his forthcoming 25 per cent tariffs—which he’s been doing for weeks in Canada and on U.S. television—he’s free to do so. There’s not a political roadblock in sight. His mandate is so crystal clear that he could see his own reflection for the foreseeable future.
So, why is he trying to use an imaginary hammer to crack the impenetrable veneer?
Snap elections, as a rule of thumb, are unwise. It’s a roll of the dice that can put a stable government into political jeopardy, especially if the voters see through the reasons or reasons that are given.
Some snap elections have failed miserably. The 1911 federal election, which brought down Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberals over the issue of reciprocity, immediately comes to mind. There was also the 1976 Quebec election that led to the rise of Rene Levesque and the separatist Parti Quebecois, the 1990 Ontario election that then-Liberal Premier David Peterson unwisely called and opened the door to Bob Rae and the NDP, and the 2015 Alberta election that caused then-PC Premier Jim Prentice to go down to an embarrassing defeat to Rachel Notley and the NDP.
Others have been quite successful. Recent examples include then-BC NDP Premier John Horgan’s gamble in 2020 during COVID-19 and Premier Dennis King and the PCs winning a huge majority government in Prince Edward Island in 2023.
Ford’s decision, which he believes is the right one, mostly comes out of left field.
The Premier will be going to the polls roughly 18 months before the next Ontario election would have likely occurred. That’s really on the early side of an election writ. It’s a scenario not unlike Peterson’s. He was three years into his mandate and quite popular but called a snap election to try to get ahead of a rumoured recession and the Patti Starr affair related to illegal political contributions. It’s feasible that Ford may be trying to get a few steps ahead of the Greenbelt scandal and Ontario Place saga, or has seen some unnerving figures related to the affordability crisis and escalating energy costs.
While Ford could suffer the same political fate as Peterson, he’s likely popular enough in the province to avoid a similar election disaster. This doesn’t mean he should go to the polls and take that risk. He could have stopped this early election with a simple snap of his fingers.
Michael Taube is a political commentator, Troy Media syndicated columnist and former speechwriter for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He holds a master’s degree in comparative politics from the London School of Economics, lending academic rigour to his political insights.
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