Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford pitched himself Wednesday as the best steward of the economy in the face of looming tariffs, but the other party leaders say his record from the last seven years suggests otherwise.
Ford says he needs the strongest majority in Ontario history in order to effectively deal with the threatened 25 per cent tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump, and has called a snap election for Feb. 27, nearly 1 1/2 years before the scheduled June 2026 vote.
This election will cost about $189 million to run, the chief electoral officer of Elections Ontario said Wednesday.
Ford held his first official campaign event in Windsor, with a backdrop of the Ambassador Bridge to the U.S. to highlight the tariffs issue.
"The bigger the mandate I receive from you, the better we'll be able to protect our province, because this is a game to the president," Ford said.
"He seeks to divide and conquer. Whether he imposes tariffs next week, next month, or waits another year or more, Trump's threats are not going away."
But as focused as Ford has been lately on the tariff fight, he has taken his eye off the ball on other pressing provincial issues, Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie suggested.
"While the premier is running around the province pretending he's Captain Canada, he's not solving the basic issues that matter to Ontarians," she said at her campaign launch in Barrie.
"He said he'd fix hallway medicine. He didn't get it done. He said he'd cut your taxes, and he didn't get it done. He said he'd build 1.5 million homes. He didn't get it done. I've looked at the homelessness, mental health and addiction crisis that exists here in Barrie. He is not helping the situation here in Barrie on the ground, or fixing the doctors crisis."
Crombie was in Barrie alongside Liberal candidate in Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte, Rose Zacharias, an emergency and family doctor as well as past president of the Ontario Medical Association. They highlighted a promise to ensure everyone in Ontario has a family doctor within four years.
Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said the whole election is unnecessary. With potential tariffs on the horizon, which Trump has mused about implementing Feb. 1, Ontario would be better positioned to respond if they didn't come in the middle of an election campaign, he said.
"We should be here at Queen's Park working across party lines to show Donald Trump strength through unity, but instead, Doug Ford has called an election abandoning the people of Ontario when...people need him the most," Schreiner said.
"But you know, this should come as no surprise, because over the past seven years, since the Ford government has taken office, housing starts are down, housing costs are up, 2.5 million Ontarians don't have access to a family doctor, (there are) unprecedented emergency room closures and hallway health care out of control, overcrowded classrooms and the rich just seem to be getting richer while the rest of us struggle just to get by."
NDP Leader Marit Stiles touted her own bona fides in taking on the tariff fight, saying she has bargained and negotiated with American and multinational corporations to protect jobs. Meanwhile, she suggested that Ford called this snap election not over tariffs, but to protect his own job.
"He says it's because he wants us to hire him to be our negotiator with Trump," she said in a speech. "Doug Ford, our negotiator? Is he kidding? I mean, just look at Doug Ford's track record."
Stiles pointed to a 95-year lease for a spa on Toronto's waterfront, and that just Monday the province's financial accountability officer found that Ford's decision to speed up access to beer and wine in corner stores by one year will cost the province $612 million.
His government is also under criminal investigation by the RCMP, who are looking into Ford's decision to open up the protected Greenbelt lands to housing development. It is a now-reversed decision that the auditor general said stood to benefit certain developers to the tune of more than $8 billion.
Elections Ontario got little more notice than the public that an election campaign would begin Wednesday, Chief Electoral Officer Greg Essensa said, but had started preparations in May, when Ford first sparked early election speculation by refusing to rule out a 2025 campaign.
"Obviously, we planned for an election based on a fixed date, so we had our plans all centred around June of 2026," he said.
"I immediately had our organization sort of change our readiness date till April 1. We started moving that back to March 1 and February."
Nonetheless, Elections Ontario will be ready to run the election, he said, with all 124 returning offices set to open Wednesday. Due to the snap vote, advance voting days will be limited to three instead of the usual 10. As well, Essensa said he is working with Emergency Management Ontario to plan for contingencies should extreme weather hit on Feb. 27.
— With files from Liam Casey in Windsor, Maan Alhmidi in Barrie and Rianna Lim in Toronto.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 29, 2025.
Allison Jones, The Canadian Press