Is Doug Ford the negotiator he thinks he is?

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford has called an early election to strengthen, he claims, his capacity to face down the Trump administration over tariffs. Is he the tough negotiator he presents himself to be? Is he as suited as he thinks to the new governing ethos of Trump 2.0?

In 2024, Ford concluded a negotiation with the international behemoths of beer. To get beer into convenience stores — the lodestar of Ford’s political philosophy — the master negotiator paid the foreign-owned conglomerates who own The Beer Store $612 million to do something that he could have done for free 18 months later.

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When he announced his faster beer program, Ford said it would cost $225 million, already a windfall for the overseas oligopoly. This week, Ontario’s budget watchdog, the Financial Accountability Office, reported that he was off by some $400 million.

Fiscal discipline is not the Ford forte. Just last fall, he announced a $200 taxpayer-rebate program that cost $3 billion. Those cheques, in a remarkable coincidence, are arriving just as he called his snap election.

That cost is modest compared with the “tens of billions” Ford thinks he might need to fight American tariffs. If he adopts the same approach on tariffs as he did on beer, it is certain that he will.

The Ontario premier will not be negotiating with the Americans. But the Trump team might be eager to do so, knowing that they would have a soft mark on the other side.

After calling the election, Ford committed to continuing the billions he promised in subsidies to foreign manufacturers of electrical-vehicle batteries. No matter if the EV battery market has been battered in recent months, and that the new Trump administration intends to gut the EV industry. Foreign companies won’t have to worry about getting Ontario tax dollars.

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Is that the record of a leader suited to a bruising international trade negotiation? Ontario voters, to the extent that they grant Ford’s premise that he will be handling tariff policy, may take a different view.

As far as the bruising style favoured by President Donald Trump, Ford does not really get that either.

Consider, as this column did a few weeks back, Ford’s decision to incarcerate the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald in a “vertical coffin” at Queen’s Park. Allegedly to protect the statue from vandals, Ford has dithered for more than four years. Bonnie Crombie, the Ontario Liberal leader, said this week that it was time to make a decision and suggested that she, unlike Ford, would take Sir John A.’s side.

Trump’s ostentatious “day one” included the renaming of Alaska’s tallest peak in honour of president William McKinley, Trump’s tariff hero. Is it possible that Trump’s team — should they ever meet Ford — would find daunting a man who cannot even protect Canada’s founding prime minister on his front lawn?

Does Ford understand the effectiveness of the Trumpian threats-as-policy approach that gets attention? Surely he does, as Trump’s comments on tariffs have set the national agenda in Canada for two months. But can he do it himself?

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For example, this week the Toronto District School Board, after a study the outcome of which was never in doubt, announced that it would be renaming Sir John A. Macdonald Collegiate Institute, as well as other schools named after newly considered historical villains.

Ford should have immediately announced severe consequences for the TDSB should it pursue that path. He has the power. He slashed the Toronto city council in his early days as premier. This week the British Columbia government fired the entire Victoria school board over its woke ban on police in schools.

From Ford, launching his election campaign, there has been not a word about the school renamings. When the TDSB takes Sir John A.’s sign down, they should give it to Ford, who can toss it into the vertical coffin he built for our first prime minister.

Since the Trump tariff threats, Ford has styled himself as Captain Canada, courageously wearing a ball cap to make the point. What moxie! But this Captain Canada is on the side of sending taxpayer dollars to gigantic foreign corporations while crating up the heroes of Canadian history.

Ford is inviting Ontarians to send him into battle against President Trump. Ontarians will have to decide whether that is a good idea. The Americans would welcome it.

National Post

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