(August 20, 2026) By: Bruce Livesey, The Breach<\/p>\n
Is the Ontario premier\u2019s corrupt, authoritarian, and inept governance finally catching up to him?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cDougie! Dougie! Dougie!\u201d<\/p>\n A tanned and beaming Doug Ford strode onto the main stage of a convention hall at a Disney resort in Orlando, Florida as delegates chanted his name.<\/p>\n Ford had been flown in as the keynote speaker for an International Leadership Conference put on by LiUNA, a powerful trade union in Ontario\u2019s building industry, but also a long-time backer of the Ontario premier and his Progressive Conservative (PC) government. Yet his trip to Florida in July 2025\u2014where he was accompanied by his labour minister and other staff\u2014cost Ontario taxpayers $11,709 to cover flights and hotels.<\/p>\n Ford\u2019s taxpayer-subsidized Florida sojourn came to light last month in the midst of a growing scandal over the fact that many of his ministers and MPPs were billing extravagances to Ontario\u2019s citizens. Indeed, 20 Tory MPPs and cabinet ministers had expensed taxpayers more than $121,000 to sleep in downtown Toronto luxury hotels despite their own homes being within commuting distance of Queen\u2019s Park.<\/p>\n As bad as the expense brouhaha has been for Ford, it was just one of a litany of scandals he\u2019s been juggling of late. Last week it was discovered that the Ontario PC party had run a covert surveillance operation against former Ontario Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie while she was vacationing in Jamaica back in 2023. There\u2019s also been the ongoing controversy around a $2.5-billion skill training fund which political staff were caught doling out to unqualified applicants who\u2019d often hired Tory-connected lobbyists. This was on top of the government buying a $28.9-million executive private jet for Ford to fly around in\u2014which he sold in humiliation amid public outcry over the \u201cgravy plane.\u201d And there was a ferocious backlash from locals after Ford seized lands along Toronto\u2019s lakeshore to expand Billy Bishop Airport so it can be used for jets\u2014at the behest of a J.P. Morgan-controlled consortium that owns the airport\u2019s terminal and had spearheaded an intensive lobbying effort around the proposed expansion.<\/p>\n Controversy has always dogged the blond-haired, bombastic 61-year-old Ford. Since becoming premier in 2018, he\u2019s overseen one of the most scandal-plagued governments in Ontario\u2019s history\u2014if not all of Canada. But like U.S. President Donald Trump, nothing really seemed to stick to him. He won two more elections over the past four years, the most recent one last year, giving him the sheen of being the Teflon Premier.<\/p>\n Now it seems his non-stick veneer has finally evaporated. In June, an Angus Reid Institute poll showed Ford was the most unpopular premier in all of Canada by a wide margin\u2014with only 21 per cent support, which was 10 points below the next most unpopular premier. (Ford lashed out at the poll, calling it \u201cfake.\u201d) His unpopularity has seeped into the mainstream media, with newspapers like the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail running editorials and op-eds highlighting the litany of problems that have grown under his reign: Ontario\u2019s overwhelmed and underfunded public services, severe housing crisis, and dire shortage of family doctors.<\/p>\n Ford once seemed invincible, sloughing off scandals. He used his impunity to create a system where corporations, the wealthy, and developers could donate to his party and pay his staffers-turned-lobbyists to get government contracts or laws that benefit them. But while Ontario\u2019s rich made out like bandits, voters are perhaps realizing that Ford\u2019s regime is immiserating their province while their lives are becoming precipitously unaffordable. Are years of corruption and authoritarianism finally catching up to Ford?<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re governing for money, you\u2019re eventually going to alienate your base,\u201d Randy Hillier, a former Tory MPP whom Ford threw out of his caucus in 2019, told The Breach. \u201cYou\u2019re going to alienate people because you\u2019re not doing things in the public\u2019s best interest.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEventually that catches up with you.\u201d<\/p>\n The Ford family rises to power<\/strong><\/p>\n Doug Ford grew up in Etobicoke, a prosperous western suburb of Toronto, the third of Doug Ford Sr. and his wife Diane\u2019s four children. The Ford patriarch was a successful businessman, having set up a company, Deco Labels, in the early 1960s.<\/p>\n By all accounts, it was a happy household. Nevertheless, all four of the Ford children ended up linked to narcotics\u2014either as addicts or drug trafficking. The eldest, Kathy, became a heroin addict and had boyfriends who were dealers; Randy was a drug user and drug dealer; and the youngest, Rob, who became mayor of Toronto in 2010, infamously flamed out due to his alcohol and crack cocaine appetites.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was not unique among the rich kids in that area,\u201d comments one reporter who\u2019s written about the Fords, and spoke to The Breach on condition of anonymity. \u201cFor whatever reason there were a lot of hard drugs in that neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n In the case of Doug Jr., he became a go-to hashish dealer, according to a 2013 investigation by The Globe and Mail, a business he flourished in for seven years until 1986. Then, at age 22, he was already working as a salesman at Deco, where he honed his people skills.<\/p>\n The Ford family\u2019s first foray into politics began in 1995 when Doug Ford Sr. successfully ran as a Tory for a seat in the Ontario legislature. Rob, a socially-awkward and fanatical right-winger, decided to follow his father into politics, winning a seat on Toronto\u2019s city council in 2000. \u201cRob was an odd guy to know,\u201d recalls Gord Perks, a Toronto city councillor. \u201cHe was very wound tight around certain things. Didn\u2019t seem like a terribly self-reflected or grounded person.\u201d<\/p>\n Much to everyone\u2019s surprise, Rob ran for mayor in 2010 under the slogan \u201cStop the Gravy Train\u201d\u2014a misleading claim that city council was wasting taxpayers\u2019 money. Myer Siemiatycki, a professor emeritus of politics at Toronto Metropolitan University, says the Fords projected the idea that government was oppressive and bad for businesses while appealing to older suburban voters who disliked downtown Toronto\u2019s liberal elites. \u201cThey were channeling a certain nostalgia and even a sense of pushback against the incredible multicultural transformation of Toronto from the 1960s through to the 1990s,\u201d he remarks. Rob\u2019s campaign manager was a controversial right-wing consultant and pollster, Nick Kouvalis, who was later key to Doug\u2019s political success.<\/p>\n With Rob running for mayor, Doug stepped in to run in his brother\u2019s now-vacant council seat. And shockingly, Rob and Doug both handily won the election.<\/p>\n The Ford brothers set out to run Toronto\u2019s city with a bullying vengeance, pushing a harsh right-wing agenda\u2014which was to gut city services and play hardball with public sector unions. To that end, they tried to cut cash for transit, libraries, and community and recreation centres; ripped out bike lanes; and privatized services such as garbage collection. One of Rob\u2019s chiefs of staff would menace city councillors who opposed the mayor. Doug was caught threatening a young activist.<\/p>\n When Margaret Atwood protested proposed library cuts in 2011, Doug was quoted as saying he wouldn\u2019t recognize the famous author in the street. \u201cNeither of [the Fords] had much respect for institutions or experts,\u201d maintains Perks. \u201cRob was kind of a bull in a china shop. And Doug, although he was charming and stuff, if he didn\u2019t get his way, he could turn mean.\u201d<\/p>\n But the stress of running North America\u2019s fourth largest city soon drove Rob to booze and drugs. He was showing up at public events drunk, accosting women, and partying with escorts. In 2013, reports spread that there was a video of the mayor smoking crack. Rob\u2019s out-of-control behavior quickly became an international media circus.<\/p>\n Yet as Rob spiraled, Doug seemed more interested in the Fords maintaining control. When city council voted to strip Rob of his powers in 2013, Doug was enraged, taunting members of the public who showed up at council to hear the debate, calling some of them a \u201cdisgrace.\u201d The following year, after another video of Rob smoking crack emerged, the mayor finally went to rehab. Soon afterwards he was diagnosed with cancer and passed away two years later.<\/p>\n In 2018, Rob\u2019s wife Renata sued Doug and his brother Randy for $16.5 million, accusing the brothers of not providing her and her two children with any money from Rob\u2019s estate (Doug was the estate\u2019s trustee). Renata was by then broke\u2014forced to take a high-interest second mortgage on her house, with just $28,000 in savings while spending $40,000 a year more than she earned. The lawsuit never went to trial and it\u2019s believed Doug eventually gave her some money. This July, Renata\u2014who also struggled with substance abuse\u2014passed away, with no cause of death given.<\/p>\n In 2014, Doug ran for Toronto mayor but lost. Noteworthy was how powerful developers donated to his campaign, including the Bratty, De Gasperis, and Mantella families.<\/p>\n Doug lucks into becoming premier<\/strong><\/p>\n Doug was not in the wilderness for long. Four years later, he rose to become Ontario\u2019s premier\u2014through a stroke of dumb luck.<\/p>\n An election was scheduled for 2018 and the leader of the Ontario PC party was Patrick Brown, a former Tory MP. The presiding Liberal government was highly unpopular and everyone knew the Tories were poised to win. But in January of that year, CTV ran a story in which two anonymous women claimed Brown had propositioned them inappropriately. Brown was immediately pressured by the party to quit\u2014despite his claims of innocence.<\/p>\n Doug threw his hat in the ring to succeed Brown. While campaigning for the PC party nomination, he was caught on videotape saying he would open up a \u201cbig chunk\u201d of the Greenbelt for development. \u201cI\u2019ve already talked to some of the biggest developers in this country,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd again, I wish I could say it was my idea, but it was their idea as well.\u201d<\/p>\n The Greenbelt is two million acres of protected farmland, forests, wetlands, rivers, and lakes in Ontario\u2019s Greater Golden Horseshoe. It provides water and clean air, and curbs urban sprawl. But the Greenbelt\u2019s land was coveted by developers who wanted to build on it.<\/p>\n An architect of the Greenbelt is one of Ontario\u2019s former senior planners, Victor Doyle, who left government after Ford was elected premier. \u201cMy last hurrah with the government is that I wrote a paper talking about the multi-million-dollar sophisticated communication strategy of the development industry to undermine the Greenbelt,\u201d he tells The Breach. \u201c[That strategy] bore fruit because the Conservatives, the Ford guys, swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.\u201d<\/p>\n The provincial election was that June. Ford sold himself as a friend of common working people: he would allow \u201cBuck a Beer\u201d be sold in corner stores and scrap the province\u2019s carbon tax while chopping $6 billion in provincial spending. \u201cHe\u2019s such a fucking great bullshitter with blue-collar people\u2014making them think he\u2019s on their side,\u201d fumes John Cartwright, former leader of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council.<\/p>\n By then, an astroturf group called Ontario Proud had emerged to back the PC party. Of its budget, $460,000 came from corporate donors, mostly construction and land development companies. Ontario Proud ran attack ads against the Liberals and NDP. During the election campaign, Ford promised \u201cwe won\u2019t touch the Greenbelt\u201d and pledged to end \u201challway medicine\u201d in hospitals. The Tories won handily, taking 76 of 124 available seats. The Liberals, meanwhile, were reduced to seven.<\/p>\n Handouts for cronies<\/strong><\/p>\n Yet Ford\u2019s initial effort to govern was an unmitigated disaster. \u201cHe was naive and lacked any maturity in understanding the political system,\u201d says Hillier.<\/p>\n Ford immediately chopped Ontario\u2019s climate plan, threw shade on the federal carbon tax and in his first budget slashed funding for social services, healthcare, education, the environment, First Nations, legal aid, and grants to university students. In the middle of the 2018 Toronto municipal election, he passed a law that cut the number of seats on council by almost half. Says Perks: \u201cHe\u2019s done more harm to Toronto than anyone in my lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n Ford also flirted with far-right racists: in 2018 he was photographed with his arm around Faith Goldy and her supporters while the white nationalist was running for mayor of Toronto that year.<\/p>\n More significantly, Ford established a system to enrich his cronies, backers, and the development industry in particular. \u201cHis team was there to make money,\u201d insists Hillier. How it worked was simple: if companies or wealthy individuals wanted government money or beneficial laws, they donated to the PC party and then hired one of the lobbying firms that employed former or current Ford confidantes and staffers to advocate for them.<\/p>\n Take the case of Kory Teneycke and Chris Froggatt. Teneycke was manager of Ford\u2019s 2018 election campaign, a role he reprised in 2022 and 2025. He had worked for Stephen Harper as a communications director and helped run Sun News Network, a right-wing television network. Froggatt was vice-chair of Ford\u2019s 2018 campaign.<\/p>\n Weeks after helping Ford first get elected, both men set up lobbying firms\u2014Rubicon Strategy in the case of Teneycke and Loyalist Public Affairs by Froggatt\u2014while they continued to give Ford strategic advice. Their firms quickly signed up dozens of clients, many of which had an interest in government affairs, like construction, cannabis and alcohol sales. \u201cAnd if you talk to people at other lobbying firms, they lost a bunch of clients to Teneycke and Froggatt because they knew they were the gatekeepers,\u201d says Duff Conacher, coordinator for the citizen advocacy group Democracy Watch. \u201cPay them and you get what you want.\u201d<\/p>\n Teneycke and Froggatt created a template soon copied by numerous other Tory insiders around Ford. In 2021, the Toronto Star did a data analysis and found that out of 12 Ontario lobbyists with the most registered clients at that time, \u201c10 had clear conservative ties and an 11th had helped raise money for the PC party. Among lobbyists with 10 or more active registrations, almost two-thirds had worked on conservative campaigns, for conservative ministers or were open about their conservative links.\u201d<\/p>\n During COVID, while most small retailers were shuttered, big-box retailers and discount stores, film studios, and construction companies didn\u2019t have to close their doors. It was later discovered these firms had hired Tory-connected lobbyists to press the Ford government to allow them to stay open.<\/p>\n Ford and his staff were also eager to appoint unqualified friends and family to government posts. Ford appointed his close friend, Ron Taverner, a superintendent in the Toronto Police Service, as head of the Ontario Provincial Police despite Taverner not meeting the requirements for the job. (Taverner stepped down after the controversy blew up.) In 2019, Dean French, Ford\u2019s first chief of staff, was forced to resign when it was revealed he had appointed two agents general to foreign posts, with salaries of $165,000 to $185,000 plus expenses\u2014one a 26-year-old lacrosse player who was friends with French\u2019s sons, and the other his wife\u2019s second cousin. Meanwhile, one of Ford\u2019s daughters, Kara, who has a two-year college diploma in broadcasting, works at a provincially-owned health care centre, where her salary shot up from $128,000 in 2022 to more than $211,000 last year.<\/p>\n Ford\u2019s developer friends were also getting gifts. For example, in 2018, Ontario\u2019s public utility sold a lucrative 40-acre parcel of land on Toronto\u2019s waterfront for a mere $16 million, although no appraisal of the property had ever been released. (As the Toronto Star noted, \u201cThere are single-family mansions and even a swanky condominium currently priced at more than $16 million.\u201d) The buyer was a company controlled by Mario Cortellucci, a powerful and controversial developer whose family has given enormous sums of money to the PC party for decades, including to Ford.<\/p>\n In the summer of 2019, Ford was booed at the Toronto Raptors\u2019 victory celebration after the team won the NBA title. By the end of that year, he was polling at 31 per cent. His ineptitude, budget cuts, and taint of corruption were lining him up to be a one-term premier.<\/p>\n The comeback<\/strong><\/p>\n The arrival of COVID in early 2020 changed his fortunes. \u201cClearly COVID saved his bacon,\u201d remarks Dimitry Anastakis, a business historian at the University of Toronto. \u201cAnd since that time, he\u2019s been able to kind of get away with all kinds of shit that nobody\u2019s looked into, and [which] he\u2019s been able to cover up.\u201d<\/p>\n Ignoring many right-wingers who opposed COVID restrictions, Ford listened to the doctors and closed down the province when the virus surged. He stopped lambasting the Trudeau government and began co-operating with them on a range of issues. He even condemned the convoy of right-wing anti-vaxxers who laid siege to Ottawa in 2022. When an NDPer, Olivia Chow, became mayor of Toronto, he worked with her too. And he distanced himself from the far right and began spending money on infrastructure projects, such as transit, and manufacturing electric vehicles.<\/p>\n Ford was also willing to backtrack on unpopular decisions. It\u2019s believed much of the credit for his change in political approach was due to Nick Kouvalis, whom Ford used as a pollster. Kouvalis was taking the temperature of voters, and Ford listened. \u201cWhatever somebody might think of Nick as an individual, he is one of the most skillful pollsters in the country,\u201d says Hillier. \u201cAnd there\u2019s no question in my mind that Ford did exceptionally well during COVID due to Kouvalis\u2019s focus groups and polling.\u201d<\/p>\n Ford\u2019s seeming move toward the political centre was underlined by a bitter feud which erupted between him and federal Tory leader Pierre Poilievre. During last year\u2019s federal election, Poilievre and his election team did not consult with Ford about how to win seats in Ontario. After Poilievre lost the election, Kory Teneycke blasted Poilievre\u2019s election team, quipping: \u201cBlowing a 25-point lead and being like 10 points down is campaign malpractice at the highest level.\u201d<\/p>\n But Ford\u2019s apparent moderation was a ruse\u2014after all, his quest to build an authoritarian regime and encourage corruption continued apace. The most blatant proof of this was the Greenbelt scandal.<\/p>\n Ford has promised to build 1.5 million new homes within a decade to ease the province\u2019s housing shortage (a promise that will not be met). Although, as Ontario Green Party leader Mike Schreiner notes: \u201cThe premier himself had said no to the two most important recommendations from his own housing affordability task force\u2014they said that we should legalize multiplexes and mid-rises along major transportation corridors across the province.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2022, Ford made the surprise announcement the government was going to allow 15 areas of the Greenbelt to be opened up to build homes on, encompassing 7,400 acres. What soon emerged was the fact that nine of the developers who would build on this land had donated significant sums to the PC party, totalling more than $572,000 since 2014, and had hired Tory-connected lobbyists to persuade the Tories to access the Greenbelt.<\/p>\n Moreover, most of the developers had bought up land in the Greenbelt prior to Ford\u2019s announcement\u2014clearly anticipating his pending decision.<\/p>\n When Ontario\u2019s auditor general and integrity commissioner conducted investigations, they found the process of land selection was largely controlled by housing minister Steve Clark\u2019s chief of staff, Ryan Amato\u2014not non-partisan bureaucrats\u2014and that many of the sites were chosen after receiving specific suggestions from developers. Indeed, 92 per cent of the land slated for development was requested by developers that dined with Amato at a building industry soir\u00e9e weeks before Ford made his announcement. Moreover, the land being made available was unnecessary for meeting the goal of building the 1.5 million homes. The owners of the 15 land sites could ultimately see a collective $8.3 billion increase to the value of their properties. \u201cThe process was biased in favour of certain developers and landowners who had timely access to the housing minister\u2019s chief of staff,\u201d said Bonnie Lysyk, the auditor general at the time, in a news conference.<\/p>\n The integrity commissioner found Clark violated sections of the Members\u2019 Integrity Act concerning conflicts of interest. Clark and Amato eventually resigned.<\/p>\n Still, Ford only reconsidered his Greenbelt plan when his own MPPs began to revolt\u2014they were facing angry voters in their ridings. In the fall of 2023, he cancelled it and apologized. \u201cI made a promise to you that I wouldn\u2019t touch the Greenbelt. I broke that promise. And for that I\u2019m very, very sorry.\u201d To this day the RCMP is investigating corruption allegations around the Greenbelt.<\/p>\n The scandals don\u2019t stop<\/strong><\/p>\n Despite the Greenbelt fiasco, Ford continued the practice of handing over precious forest, farmland, and wetlands to developers\u2014and offering taxpayer money to companies that hired Tory-connected lobbying firms.<\/p>\n Two highways currently being built, Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass, will cross land owned by developers friendly to the PC party. Their construction reads as a page from a familiar playbook.<\/p>\n A National Observer\/Torstar investigation in 2021 showed that eight major Ontario developers own 3,300 acres of land along or near Highway 413\u2014half of whom are connected to the Ford government. Moreover, three of those developers hired Peter Van Loan as a lobbyist. Van Loan was a former president of the PC party and campaign manager for Caroline Mulroney\u2019s failed 2018 bid for the party\u2019s nomination. He became a lobbyist the following year.<\/p>\n Then there is the Ontario Science Centre controversy: Ford closed the popular education centre in 2024 claiming that it needed to be torn down because the roof was unsafe. \u201cThe notion that there are a few roof panels wrong in the science center and therefore [it] had to be closed is such complete bullshit,\u201d says Cartwright.<\/p>\n Soon it emerged that Ford\u2019s long-time developer friends, the De Gasperis, had bought 60.5 acres of land adjacent to the centre in 2019. The De Gasperis and Ford have close ties: Michael De Gasperis once hosted Ford in a private luxury suite at a Florida Panthers hockey game in Miami in 2018. \u201cBecause the De Gasperis wanted an opportunity to get that land,\u201d says Cartwright, \u201cI would suggest that that was one of the principal reasons for the Ford regime declaring the science centre unsavable.\u201d<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not just developers who\u2019ve been cashing in, as witnessed with the controversy surrounding the Skills Development Fund (SDF), which Ford set up in 2021 to provide companies and unions with money to upgrade workers\u2019 skills. A total of $2.5-billion of taxpayers\u2019 funds was shovelled into the fund with applicants supposed to be assessed and granted money based on the quality of their proposals.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not what happened.<\/p>\n When Ontario\u2019s auditor general investigated the program last year, she found that more than half of the projects the labour minister\u2019s office gave money to were ranked as poor, low, or medium. Yet these applicants received a total of $742 million. Ford\u2019s government doled out $126 million to 64 firms that used lobbyists to push poorly-rated applications. Basically, the labour ministry\u2019s political staff would hand out money not to the best proposals, but to those who had hired Tory-connected lobbying firms. For example, Kory Teneycke, Ford\u2019s campaign manager and adviser, managed to land $100 million for clients of his lobbying firm, Rubicon Strategy.<\/p>\n In one instance, the auditor general found an organization that was active for only three years received $4 million despite having limited experience with training, no governing board, and no track record of managing public monies, after presenting an inflated budget with no capital expenditures quotes.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, David Piccini, the labour minister at the centre of the SDF scandal, has kept his job despite calls for his resignation. In July, it was also discovered that Piccini had spent $40,000 from his riding association on \u201cmeetings\u201d and thousands on luxury expenses like The Four Seasons Hotel and a limousine company.<\/p>\n Not surprisingly, Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said the SDF scandal \u201clooks like corruption\u201d because the Tories \u201cused this multibillion-dollar fund to exchange favours with insiders and hand out cash to the same folks that we see popping up over and over and over again.\u201d<\/p>\n Authoritarian Ontario<\/strong><\/p>\n Ford\u2019s government has become one of the most authoritarian and undemocratic on record. He\u2019s taken control of school boards and conservation authorities, undermined regulatory agencies and passed laws forbidding critics from running ads critical of his government or uncovering past or future scandals.<\/p>\n As Schreiner observes: \u201cIt\u2019s extraordinary how much power this government has centralized into the hands of the premier and the cabinet.\u201d<\/p>\n To ensure developers\u2019 building projects sail through unimpeded, Ford has passed a raft of laws that bar or limit public input. \u201cThey\u2019ve told a lot of these small municipalities and organizations, \u2018You know what? If you guys criticize us or don\u2019t play ball, we\u2019re going to do something to you,\u2019\u201d explains Doyle. \u201c\u2018We\u2019re going to cut off your funding. We\u2019re going to not send infrastructure your way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier this year, the Ford government passed a law that gives the minister of housing power to directly appoint and fire regional municipalities\u2019 heads of council, who in turn can overturn local council decisions and bylaws that affect development.<\/p>\n Ford has passed bills that undermine the Endangered Species Act, Environmental Assessment Act and the Environmental Bill of Rights, and which create Special Economic Zones that suspend various provincial and municipal laws\u2014including environmental and planning regulations. He\u2019s neutered local conservation authorities. In 2022 his government passed the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act that gives mayors almost dictatorial powers to override councils in order to ram development through.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s almost like every time they hear the word \u2018environment,\u2019 they kind of think, \u2018How do we wreck it?\u2019\u201d says Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence, a Toronto-based environmental advocacy organization. \u201cIt\u2019s really particularly regressive. \u2026 The attacks on conservation authorities and their ability to protect river valleys, forests, wildlife habitat adjacent to our communities just means that more and more sprawl will eat up all of those natural areas, make flooding worse, make people who buy houses in these areas have a lower quality of life.\u201d<\/p>\n Ford has also systematically underfunded the public service and assaulted their unions. \u201cWhen you\u2019re talking about Doug Ford\u2019s reign over the past eight years, I think it\u2019s been characterized by how quickly he can move public assets into private hands and reward those folks who are loyal to him,\u201d says JP Hornick, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU). \u201cSo his approach to labour relations has followed suit.\u201d<\/p>\n Prior to 2018, Ontario\u2019s public sector unions launched effective ad campaigns targeting the Tories before and during elections. To stop this, Ford passed Bill 307 that illegally restricted third-party political advertising. The unions challenged the law and got it finally struck down by the Supreme Court last year. But by then the damage was done: Ford had already called and won two elections while the law stood.<\/p>\n In 2019, his government passed Bill 124 that capped pay to the entire public sector to one per cent per annum for the next three years, estimated to save $9.7 billion. The unions took the law to court on the grounds it was unconstitutional\u2014and finally had it overturned five years later.<\/p>\n But Ford wasn\u2019t done: in 2022, the government passed Bill 28 to prevent a strike by 55,000 education workers and imposed a collective agreement on them which also banned their right to strike. The law used the notwithstanding clause to override the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. \u201c[Bill 28] deemed striking illegal,\u201d explains Laura Walton, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL). The education workers defied the law and walked off the job while the OFL rallied all unions\u2014including from across the country\u2014and threatened Ford with a general strike. Ford was forced to quickly repeal the law.<\/p>\n Leaving Ontario worse than he found it<\/strong><\/p>\n While Ford focussed on giving handouts to developers and seizing control of Ontario\u2019s democratic institutions, life in Ontario has grown noticeably unaffordable.<\/p>\n Overall, while the Ontario government is spending $244 billion today\u2014up from $161 billion in 2018\u2014this outlay has not kept up with inflation and population growth. As a result, Ontario has the lowest per capita spending in Canada. \u201cWe\u2019re not maintaining service levels, and we\u2019re definitely not improving service levels,\u201d says Ricardo Tranjan, Ontario research director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.<\/p>\n Ontario has a severe housing crisis, with 85,000 homeless people and nearly 2,000 homeless encampments. Seventy thousand children sit on waiting lists for autism services and more than 2.5 million residents have no family physician.<\/p>\n This underfunding of public services is most visible in Ontario\u2019s post-secondary education system, which ranks last in per-student operating grants: $10,481 compared to the national average of $17,424. Universities and colleges are now running massive deficits and slashing programs. By 2021, Laurentian University in Sudbury was so broke it was forced to seek creditor protection.<\/p>\n When nearly 200 wildfires started burning in northern Ontario last month, enveloping much of the province in smoke, what was mostly overlooked in this catastrophe was the fact that the fires likely rampaged out of control because the province had been cutting firefighter crews in northern Ontario for years. \u201cIn 2005 we had somewhere in the neighbourhood of 215 wildland firefighter crews when there were not nearly the size, severity, and number of fires,\u201d says Hornick, whose union represents firefighters. \u201cAnd now a quarter of the crews are short\u2014we are between 35 and 50 crews short by the government\u2019s own estimation.\u201d<\/p>\n In health care, while Ford promised to get rid of \u201challway medicine\u201d in hospitals\u2014whereby patients\u2019 beds are parked in hospital halls\u2014the situation has only gotten worse. Almost 2,000 patients across the province receive care in unconventional spaces on any given day. Most Ontarians admitted to hospital via ERs spend an average of 44 hours waiting for a bed. Ontario has among the fewest acute hospital beds per capita in Canada, while one in five beds is occupied with patients waiting for long-term care or rehab.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so what the Ford government has done, instead of opening capacity, he\u2019s passed a law to say that hospitals can kick elderly people out,\u201d says Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition. \u201cAnd they\u2019re allowed to threaten them\u2014that they will be charged $400 a day if they don\u2019t go.\u201d Mehra believes Ford\u2019s design is to wreck the health care sector to justify creating a two-tier system. \u201cEvery service that\u2019s cut from a hospital is privatized, and that\u2019s part of what the drive is there,\u201d she notes.<\/p>\n Ontario\u2019s economy has also been treading water. \u201cThe headline numbers on the economy aren\u2019t great,\u201d remarks Ontario\u2019s former chief economist, Brian Lewis, now a senior fellow with the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto. \u201cReal GDP per capita has hardly grown in eight years, investment\u2019s been weak.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a toxic combination: Ford enriching his cronies, while services and affordability are whittled away for those who once voted for him.<\/p>\n \u201cI think you judge people by their outcomes,\u201d observes Hillier. \u201cDo we have less homelessness in Ontario now than we did eight years ago? No, we have more. Do we have fewer drug addicts? Do we have greater employment? Have we risen the per capita standard of living and GDP?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOn every metric that can be evaluated objectively, we are in a worse position.\u201d<\/p>\n The fate of Ford?<\/strong><\/p>\n On a sunny day this past June, Ford held his annual public picnic called Ford Fest in a park in Scarborough. There, he was confronted by hundreds of members of OPSEU wearing purple shirts\u2014mostly community and health service workers who\u2019ve been on strike since May. They\u2019ve been striking to recover wages they lost under Ford\u2019s Bill 124, and to call out the province\u2019s chronic underfunding of services.<\/p>\n Union members drowned out the premier\u2019s speech with boos and jeers. \u201cIt was a really organic moment because they\u2019re pretty frustrated,\u201d says Hornick, who was at the event.<\/p>\n The Ford Fest confrontation underlines that Ford\u2019s unpopularity is no longer a matter of debate. Yet what fate lies in wait for a premier that can no longer outrun his own scandals?<\/p>\n For now, it seems Ford is trying to staunch the bleeding by preventing further wrongdoing from coming to light. Earlier this year, the government passed a law that shields records of the premier, cabinet ministers, parliamentary assistants, and political staff from access to information requests. Ford also limited the legislature to sitting for only 53 days this year, while spending tens of millions on law-and-order and public-relations ad campaigns.<\/p>\n While the PC party still retains 29 per cent support in the polls, its popularity is sinking. The leaderless opposition Liberals are polling at 33 per cent by comparison, with the NDP at 21 per cent. Ford may have finally become a long-term liability for the PC party.<\/p>\n Still, the party won\u2019t face the electorate for nearly four years. Will Ford be pushed out or resign sometime before the next election? \u201cThe party will move [against him] if they think there is a significant likelihood of losing power,\u201d predicts Hillier. \u201cThe leader only remains as long as the caucus has confidence in the leader\u2026We can see beneath that veneer a lot of [the caucus\u2019s] confidence [in Ford] is lacking.\u201d<\/p>\n