TORONTO — Ontario Premier Doug Ford officially set a provincial election in motion Tuesday for Feb. 27, more than a year before the next fixed election date.
The election had been set for June 2026, but Ford said he needs a new mandate to deal with four years of a Donald Trump presidency in the United States.
Ford has said Trump's threat to impose 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods would hit Ontario and its auto sector hard, and the provincial government would need to spend tens of billions of dollars to protect jobs and the economy.
Cabinet has discussed an "economic action plan" to respond to tariffs from the United States, the premier said earlier Tuesday.
Officials say the economic action plan has not yet been approved by cabinet and therefore won't be implemented during the campaign — and Ford instead suggested it will be rolled out as announcements.
"We want to move forward and make sure that we give certainty," Ford said.
"Right now, President Trump ... has put uncertainty to every single Canadian, a lot of other countries around the world, and this isn't going to happen overnight. It may not happen Feb. 1, I'm sure something's coming, but this is going to be a battle for the next four years, and I want to make sure that I have a strong mandate to outlast President Trump."
Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said merely announcing such a plan once tariffs are in place doesn't make sense.
"If the premier has an economic action plan ready to go, why not just implement it?" Schreiner wrote in a statement. "Why not work across party lines to protect Ontario workers, Ontario jobs and Ontario companies?"
NDP Leader Marit Stiles said the threat of tariffs is precisely why Ontario should not be plunged into an election campaign right now.
"While the people of Ontario are anxious about the grave threat of tariffs, Doug Ford is pursuing his own political gain," she wrote in a statement. "People need a premier who will fight like hell for every single job that’s at risk, not run to the polls over a year early."
Opposition parties have insisted an early election is not necessary, because they would support stimulus spending and Ford already has a mandate after voters handed him a large majority last time. Going to the polls now is opportunism to capitalize on good polling, they charge.
“Doug Ford’s Ontario has failed you," Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie wrote in a statement. "He’s wasting $175 million on an early election instead of using it to fix our broken health-care system and make your life more affordable."
The premier visited the lieutenant-governor Tuesday to dissolve the provincial legislature, and writs ordering elections in all 124 of the province's electoral districts are to be issued on Wednesday.
Ford has said he needs the "largest mandate in Ontario's history."
His Progressive Conservatives won 83 seats in the 2022 election, though that now stands at 79 due to various resignations.
Ford has said he plans to continue acting in his capacity as premier, including visiting Washington, D.C., in February with a group of other premiers, while also campaigning as leader of the Progressive Conservatives.
Critics have said he shouldn't campaign and act as premier at the same time, but Ford has dismissed that.
"I'm the premier," Ford said Tuesday morning.
"I'm going to work hard, which I have been, 18 hours a day, to make sure our province is prosperous and we have economic development, and make sure we have a loud voice when we're negotiating against these tariffs."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 28, 2025.
Allison Jones and Liam Casey, The Canadian Press