Ford plans to call snap election on Wednesday
Ontario Premier Doug Ford is expected to call a snap election next Wednesday, according to reports by both CBC and the Canadian Press.
If that happens, voters will be heading to the polls on Feb. 27.
Ford, first elected in 2018 and re-elected with an overwhelming majority in 2022, has suggested Ontarians need to give him a new mandate to allow him to deal with the threat of tariffs being imposed on Canadian goods by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Trump has said he plans to enact a 25 per cent tariff on Canadian goods crossing the border, a move that could have a dramatic impact on the Canadian and Ontario economies.
Ford, who already has a huge majority in the legislature, could be calling the vote as a means to get out in front of a potential Conservative government being elected federally, in a province where history suggests voters end to cast ballots for a party not in power in Ottawa.
Should the election be called, Ford will go against NDP Leader Marit Stiles, Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombi and the Green Party’s Mike Schreiner., who have said Ford is also trying to get out in front of the conclusion of an RCMP investigation into the Greenbelt scandal in southern Ontario.
Since Trump was elected, Ford has been seen wearing a blue Canada Is Not For Sale hat and he’s threatened retaliation if the U.S. president levies tariffs on Canadian goods, including threats to cut off power to northern states and to pull all American booze off LCBO shelves.
Federally, the Liberal leader is scheduled to be elected on March 9. Parliament is currently prorogued and both the NDP and Conservatives have said they plan to force an election at their earliest possible chance.
In Ontario, the election campaign is four weeks. – tbnewswatch.com
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As I have always said, the #1 job of any politician is to get reelected. Everything they do is aimed directly at that goal.
The whole ‘mandate’ story line is just a smoke screen. Ford sees an opportunity, if he acts now, to keep his majority government. I suspect he believes things are about to get financially worse for the province with possible US tariffs lingering over the horizon.
Living in the real world, which most of us do, it is obvious that a trade war with the US is a war Canada cannot win. A huge number of Canadian jobs are dependent on being able to export goods to the US. A lot of those jobs are here in Ontario. Finding other markets for those goods will not be easy, if not impossible.
Trump is a cagy negotiator. He knows exactly what he is doing. This is not unlike a drug dealer/addict relationship. The dealer gets the person addicted by making drugs easily accessible and relatively cheap. Then threatens to cut the person off unless they do what they want. Think human-trafficking. Prostitution. That is what we have here.
Canada is used to easy access to the US market. It got used to it. Depends on it. The thought of having that access cutoff is creating panic.
What does Trump want from Canada? Who knows? What I believe is that the tariffs are not the only thing he wants. There is more. We just do not know what that is yet. Maybe Trump does not know what he ultimately wants from Canada yet either. Right now, he is stirring the pot.