Scott Stinson: Ontario byelections give Doug Ford a chance to prove the haters wrong

Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Photo by TIM KROCHAK/Postmedia/File

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Doug Ford has spent much of the past few months being mad.

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He was mad at the opposition MPPs who harangued him about his government’s brief ownership of a private jet, even though he agreed to sell the “gravy plane” just as soon as it became clear that nickname was going to stick.

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He’s more recently been mad at his own MPPs who ran up Toronto hotel bills, purportedly for late-night work, even though they lived within normal commuting distance of Queen’s Park (and didn’t work late all that often). That one cost Willowdale MPP Stan Cho his cabinet post.

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He’s been mad at Mark Carney — or at least disappointed by him — after the prime minister backed away from supporting the Ontario premier’s plan for a huge expansion of Toronto’s island airport.

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He’s been mad at Donald Trump for a host of reasons, most of them quite valid.

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And through all of that he’s been mad at a media that asks him about softening poll numbers and spending controversies instead of talking up his government’s accomplishments. On that last note, he’s insisted that things are much better in Ford Nation than the press gallery would have you believe. He says he doesn’t trust the public polls, and that his internal numbers suggest he would easily win a fourth consecutive majority.

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Now he has a chance to prove it. Sort of.

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Ontario announced three byelections on Wednesday, to be held on Sept. 3. All three of them are in the Greater Toronto Area, and two of them — York-Simcoe and Hamilton East-Stoney Creek — are ridings that were held by the Progressive Conservatives. Even allowing for the fact that byelections are usually challenging for the governing party, Ford’s PC candidates will be running against Liberals who won’t have their next permanent leader in place until late November, and Marit Stiles’ NDP, who are still trailing the leaderless Liberals in some polls.

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The opportunity is there, in other words, for the PCs to defend their seats and prove that the Ford brand remains durable.

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But the opposite is also true: There’s also an opportunity for the Liberals and NDP to land electoral blows on the premier and ensure that his bad-news spring turns into a bad-news summer.

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As an indication of how much the PCs would like to avoid that outcome, they followed up the morning’s byelection announcement by trotting out Peter Bethlenfalvy, finance minister and president of the Treasury Board, to declare that eight provincial agencies would undergo reviews on “efficiency, governance and productivity.” It was both vague on details — there were no savings targets announced, or even a suggestion as to whether significant savings are expected — but also a big, flashing indicator that the Ford government would like to once again be known as a government that is concerned about wasteful spending.

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As opposed, that is, to one that almost flushed $30 million on a private jet while also giving its MPPs licence to bill taxpayers for Toronto hotels instead of just driving home after a late night of work like everyone else in the province. Those dual controversies, if the polls that Ford doesn’t believe are to be believed, have dented his support somewhat. An Abacus Data survey published this week still had the PCs with an eight-point lead over the Liberals, but down from a healthy 12-point lead they enjoyed not long ago.