Ford shifts his focus toward Bonnie Crombie as legislature returns

Article content

I didn’t think the Ford government would get to the point of passing gimmicky legislation so quickly, but here we are.

Article content

Often, governments pass legislation that mean nothing but might excite part of their base or generate positive headlines when they are on their way out.

Article content

In the last week, the Ford PCs have promised to introduce two bills to ban future governments from taking specific actions, which means they are bills that mean absolutely nothing.

Well, meaningless except for trying to make things difficult politically for their new opponent, Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie.

First, Ford took great joy in standing at a Pioneer gas station in Mississauga and announcing that any future government would need to have a referendum to impose a provincial carbon tax.

Now, Ford is promising to ban all future Ontario governments from bringing in new toll roads – the 407 will, of course, be exempt.

Article content

Article content

One of the central tenets of our Westminster Parliamentary system is that no current government can bind the hands of a future government.

You can’t pass a law telling a future government, in a future parliament, how they must act. The government of the day can simply ignore it and pass a new law which will, of course, take precedence over the existing law.

This is why, in reality, bills requiring a balanced budget, or a fixed election date, are meaningless.

In 2007, the government of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper passed a fixed election date law calling for elections every four years and then promptly ignored it, calling an election the next year. Harper broke that law that he passed the very next year in 2008 and won more seats than he had previously.

Article content

The federal Liberals denounced Harper’s move but, of course, in 2021, just two years after the previous election, Justin Trudeau called an early election in the middle of a pandemic hoping for a majority.

Neither the actions of Trudeau nor Harper were illegal because of that central tenet — you can’t bind the hands of a future Parliament. Sure, the government or the majority of MPs can accept and endorse what you have previously said or called for, but there is no requirement to do so.

Still, politicians love to try to push though such laws even though they know they are effectively meaningless. It’s often a way to try to stay relevant, which at this point isn’t something the Ford government needs to be doing.

Ford and his PC Party won re-election in June 2022, just 20 months ago, with a bigger majority than they received from voters in 2018. Right now, they are also continuing to ride high in the public opinion polls that we can see.

Article content

The most recent Abacus Data poll, released in January, shows the Ford PCs with 38% support, the Ontario Liberals with 27% support and the NDP with 23%. The numbers remained virtually unchanged from the poll that Abacus released in December just after Crombie won the Ontario Liberal leadership.

So far, Crombie hasn’t moved her own party’s polling numbers, but she has obviously spooked Ford, who has taken to calling her “the queen of the carbon tax.”

Outside of election periods, Ford’s PCs haven’t spent much time talking about the NDP or their leader, Marit Stiles. As MPPs return to Queen’s Park on Tuesday, Ford is focused on a party leader who doesn’t even have a seat in the legislature and whose party doesn’t have official party standing.

Crombie has changed the focus in Ontario politics, whether she can change the trajectory of her party and the province is a bigger test.

Right now, though, she has Ford’s attention.

[email protected]

Article content