This is the second 2025 Ontario provincial election edition of Doorstep Postings, the periodic political commentary column written by Josh Lieblein for The CJN,
Just what exactly did anyone expect to happen when Donald Trump pushed the button that read ’51st State’?
Did we think that Canadians would demand better of our current leaders? Did some poor fool imagine that we would blame the bums who led us to the low point where America could so obviously call our bluff as a nation?
Pleasant meeting with the Premiers.
— James Blair (@JamesBlairUSA) February 12, 2025
To be clear, we never agreed that Canada would not be the 51st state. We only agreed to share Premier Eby’s comments.
Further, we said the best way to understand President Trump’s position is to take what he says at face value. @SergioGor https://t.co/gw7jPiBsVh
When another blast of snow rolls through Ontario, as it has done for months during this brutal winter, folks batten down the hatches, lock the doors, and abandon anyone who isn’t part of the immediate family outside to freeze.
And so it is when it comes to a country-threatening crisis like this one. Just like it was during COVID, in stubborn defiance of the ever-growing cracks in the social fabric, Canadians are engaging in pointless signalling behaviours all over again. Booing anthems at hockey games instead of baking sourdough bread; building fortresses of French’s ketchup bottles instead of toilet paper hoards. Nobody’s going to tell them they can’t!
And oh yes: demonstrating record faith in our completely faithless, feckless politicians.
We have to retaliate when subjected to the treatment we're getting from Trump. So yes, Cathal is right. Send them the message. Boo the hell out of them.https://t.co/tIpD98yuFW
— Lawrence Martin (@LMartinOtt) February 15, 2025
Why is Doug Ford’s popularity through the roof? Because admitting that Doug Ford talks a good game but is completely out of his depth when dealing with the full might of the American empire is talking down Canada. Criticism, no matter how good faith it is, is not what people want right now. Doug and his government are doing their best, even though their best isn’t very good. Yes, as terrifying as it sounds, this performance is actually the best they are capable of. Do you want to think too hard about that sobering fact at a time like this? I sure don’t!
According to the Queen’s Park Observer, at the B’nai Brith debate for York Centre, PC Solicitor General Michael Kerzner “suggested [bubble-zone] legislation is unenforceable and unconstitutional, and that real change needs to come from Ottawa and the Criminal Code”. As a lawyer,…
— Jason Cherniak (@Cherniak) February 13, 2025
Doug’s own Jewish solicitor-general goes to a debate and announces that bubble legislation around community buildings is a no go. They tried it in York Region and it didn’t work, says Michael Kerzner, a man who says (often) that he will never stop standing up for the Jewish community, that he heroically will never take his kippah off. So now it falls to Justin Trudeau to fix the Criminal Code to deal with the problem, because apparently all the standing up and sign-waving and kippah-wearing in the world can’t solve the problem that has bedevilled our community since Oct. 7.
Commitment, integrity and being part of my #YorkCentre community means everything to me, it's in my DNA!
— Michael Kerzner (@TeamKerzner) February 12, 2025
The stakes are just too high, everything is on the line. @fordnation, leader of the @OntarioPCParty, is the only leader who will always stand up and #ProtectOntario pic.twitter.com/af7yN7U14l
Immediately, the partisan machine kicks into high gear. How dare Kerzner abdicate responsibility at a time like this, they shout in outrage. Liberals will—in addition to making sure Ontarians have more doctors than they know what to do with—leave the Progressive Conservatives in the dust when it comes to protecting Jewish safety.
Except they absolutely will not, because if they did somehow form government, they would engage in the same sort of theatrics as the current administration—talking about record investments and their overflowing personal feelings on the matter. They know it, the Tories know it, everyone knows it. But the show must go on. And besides, who’s going to get away with bashing a Jewish solicitor-general at a time when antisemitism is through the roof? (Certainly not us at The Canadian Jewish News!)
I recognize the race in Eglinton–Lawrence is a clear two-party contest between Liberals and Conservatives. To prevent a Conservative win and more years of neglect, I’m stepping aside to avoid a vote split. Please read my statement below.#ONPoli #EgLaw #TOpoli pic.twitter.com/djY4zCn2x5
— Natasha Doyle-Merrick (@DoyleMerrick) February 13, 2025
Meanwhile, the NDP candidate dropped out in the riding of Eglinton-Lawrence and endorsed the Liberal candidate instead. Stephanie Smyth, a former journalist who’s worked with B’nai Brith, is clearly leaning on the Conservative-inclined voters in St. Paul’s to strategically pick her to defeat two-term New Democratic Party MPP Jill Andrew in one of the few ridings Doug Ford is making no effort to win.
When stuff like this starts happening, partisans and pundits shift to high alert. Could this spell the end for Michelle Cooper in Eglinton-Lawrence, and frustrate Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee plans to install a Conservative candidate of their very own? Could the St. Paul’s showdown be the spark that leads to a trend of anybody-but-Conservative drop-outs across the province, something political shut-ins have fantasized about for the last 20 years?
No, it won’t, because the Liberals and NDP have gone through with the rigmarole of finding warm bodies to carry the banner, and the result would lead to a mess of parties at Queen’s Park, which will lead to—horrors of horrors—political division as Donald Trump stares us down.
"There aren’t too many 61-year-old first-time candidates in politics, so in that respect, Stephanie Smyth is different. But she’s hardly a newbie to this line of work, having 'held politicians to account for 35 years,'" she tells @spaikin #onpoli https://t.co/lyRBx2gTpi
— TVO Today | The Agenda (@TheAgenda) February 10, 2025
Doug Ford may have repeatedly violated something called the Caretaker Convention, and he may have slapped his party logo on an ad he shot in Washington, D.C., that accomplished who the hell knows what as far as convincing Trump not to mess with us, and he may be under investigation by the RCMP for however many cases.
Yet, even with all this rule-breaking there’s no indication that Trump and his goons have come to care about us in the slightest or whatever Doug Ford has to say! But if you’re going to delude yourself into the notion that Mark Carney is the saviour of the nation because he doesn’t say things like ‘Canada Is Broken’, then I’m sorry, but you have to also agree that Doug Ford is Ontario’s man of the hour. You can’t do the ‘My Country Right or Wrong’ thing and then exclude the elected representatives you dislike.
So Bonnie Crombie had a press conference this morning that no one attended so she held the exact presser 20 minutes later. Yikes. pic.twitter.com/we3Rr3rcpE
— Jeff Ballingall (@JeffBallingall) February 10, 2025
This is why Conservative voters who feel jilted by Pierre Poilievre are migrating towards Carney, and lots of Liberals feel fine parking their votes with Doug Ford. What is Bonnie Crombie going to do about that? (For one thing, she actually challenged Ford to a push-up competition.) Stop short of using the F-word while calling for something called the Fight Tariff Fund, or FTF, for another. (More like WTF.) NDP leader Marit Stiles can’t even get voters to pronounce her first name correctly. (It’s pronounced ‘Maw-rit’.) They both know they’re screwed—and they’re campaigning like it while pretending to go through the motions.
BREAKING: Marit Stiles wins debate and shows Northerners she's on their side. Retweet if you agree it's time to elect an Ontario NDP government that will fight back against rising costs. This is big.#ONyourside #ONpoli pic.twitter.com/t7MUgo8wQe
— Ontario NDP (@OntarioNDP) February 14, 2025
This is what happens when we, as a nation, default to immune response-level responses instead of calm, cool-headed planning. Not only that, but if we admitted Doug Ford was what he was, then we would have to admit that we are the sort of people who would vote for that kind of guy. And that would be a very strong point in favour of Donald Trump’s assessment of us, wouldn’t it?
Josh Lieblein can be reached at [email protected] for your response to Doorstep Postings.
