Friday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he was going to stay out of the fall federal election, and wouldn’t be campaigning for federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer.
Also on Friday, at a protest rally in Ottawa, I saw firsthand why Ford won’t be campaigning for Scheer — it’s because Ford is already campaigning to re-elect Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Hear me out for a second: it’s clear the Liberals are going to try to use Ford’s performance in Ontario to stoke fears about what secret post-election plans Scheer might not be telling Canadians about. It’s a pretty obvious route, given Ford’s current lack of popularity.
But back to that Ottawa protest: I was standing on the fringe, near the Ottawa City police officers standing by their bicycles. The cops are an odd combination: short sleeve shirts, tattoos, bicycle shorts, bulletproof vests, sidearms — but hey are approachable enough that one poses with a passerby for a selfie.
“Didn’t expect it to be this big,” one of the cops says, looking at the growing crowd.
It’s late afternoon, sunny and hot, political years away from an election, but a remarkable group is gathering: they stream towards the front of the Ottawa courthouse from several directions and from many different concerns. Parents concerned about cuts to services for autistic children; teachers concerned about layoffs and increased class sizes; people concerned about cuts to legal aid, about cuts to public libraries and cuts to environmental projects; Indigenous protesters; trans protesters. The list goes on; some groups arrive banging on pots and drums: others are ringing bells. There’s inevitable electronic bullhorn, cranked up high enough that whatever’s being chanted comes out as a burbled noise soup.
It’s not until the caribou people arrive that I realize why it’s a Doug Ford issue, but an Andrew Scheer problem.
The caribou people come down Laurier: they’ve been spooling around the area for a half an hour or so, slowing traffic, waving cardboard signs shaped like caribou heads, with branches for antlers. One of the protestors was a rather creepy white-sheeted figure with a papier mache caribou head: they’re called Extinction Rebellion, and they’re all about a single issue — the “global climate emergency.”
And here they are, forming up in a ragged line along the back of all the rest of the protesters.
All ages groups, children to the elderly. All shapes, all sizes. One compelling, overarching issue: that Ford’s Conservatives promised one thing, and delivered something else.
One speaker spells it out: parents of autistic children were told that they wouldn’t face cuts — they were told they’d never have to protest in front of the Ontario legislature again. Yet she’d been on that very legislature lawn eight times after Ford government cuts.
The message is repeated, and repeated again: Doug Ford used false pretenses to land government, and then made policy changes he’d intended all along but kept hidden.
The message is repeated, and repeated again: Doug Ford used false pretenses to land government, and then made policy changes he’d intended all along but kept hidden.
More than that: he lied. Hundreds of people shout their agreement in Friday afternoon heat.
The caribou heads bob up and down, drums and pots are pounded furiously.
And that’s the danger for Scheer: Ford is giving a whole host of disparate groups a combined focus — and that is, right or wrong, that a Conservative government says one thing to get elected, and then does what it secretly wanted to all along.
A lot of mud is going to be thrown in the leadup to the federal election.
How much of it will stick to Andrew Scheer?
Who knows? “I’m so anti all of that. That’s awesome,” a passing woman in a black dress says. But she keeps walking.
A magnifying glass draws sunlight to a focal point, and then even sunlight burns hot.
Doug Ford is the magnifying glass.
Russell Wangersky’s column appears in 36 SaltWire newspapers and websites in Atlantic Canada. He can be reached at [email protected] — Twitter: @wangersky.
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