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Doorstep Postings: Doug Ford secures his place at the hollow centre of politics in Canada

Ontario's election instantly fades into the background of ~gestures broadly at everything~.
Chrystia Freeland and Doug Ford on June 14, 2018—a week after he first became Premier of Ontario.
Chrystia Freeland and Doug Ford on June 14, 2018—a week after he first became Premier of Ontario.

This is the mercifully final 2025 Ontario provincial election edition of Doorstep Postings, the periodic political commentary column written by Josh Lieblein for The CJN.

The man who just led his party to a third consecutive majority government in Ontario is not actually popular. He just got his highest number of seats ever, but in no way, in no respect, could he be called popular. Literally every other premier in Confederation is more popular than Doug Ford! Don’t confuse the issue by pointing out that what matters is whether Doug Ford is more popular than other politicians in Ontario, not how he stacks up next to premiers of other provinces. Doug Ford may be first in the seat count, but he’ll always be last in our hearts. 

And because Ford is not, has never been, and never will be popular, the election that just passed was not a slam dunk for Ford all the way through. Just because the polls refused to budge no matter how many bozo eruptions passed Ford’s lips, no matter how many times the still-unelected Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie commented on the premier’s balls or his lack thereof, no matter how much Ford cynically avoided the media, doesn’t mean that political observers didn’t rise each morning full of renewed hope that this was the day Doug’s rising negatives were going to catch up with him. And even after it became too obvious to ignore the fact that his negatives were not going to catch up with him during this campaign or anytime in the near future, these selfsame observers switched effortlessly to the narrative of the ‘progressive primary’, spinning out wild narratives about which ridings would be retaken by the forces of good through extremely strategic vote splits.

Of course, all strategic voting did was flip an insignificant number of seats one way or another, so now we have to move on to the excuses and justifications portion of the event. It was too snowy. Donald Trump sucked up all the oxygen. Voter cards showed up in the mail too late because of those bums at Canada Post. The people who were  running the Liberal campaign are ‘smart’ but they made a bunch of inexplicable rookie mistakes. Nobody said we needed good excuses, but we need them, and fast. The keys must be jingled.

Speaking of jingling keys, did you see how St. Paul’s is back in the Liberal fold? Did you notice how the red team won a seat in Etobicoke? And another random one in Scarborough? And another one in Ottawa? Bonnie Crombie may have lost her own bid for a seat (defeated by the once-overthrown Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown’s mother-in-law) and her party may still be in third place, but there’s no doubt who’s got the momentum coming out of this race, is there? Doug Ford could’ve won 90 seats, but he didn’t, so when you think about it, it’s almost like the Liberals won! 

Anyway, the narratives about Ford’s popularity and Crombie’s incompetence are already stale and being memory-holed as we speak.. New orders have been received, and all the energy that was poured into calling Doug Ford an incompetent booze-fixated murderclown while voting for him in ridiculous numbers has to be directed to stopping Pierre Poilievre at all costs. Mark Carney, despite displaying his troubles speaking French, despite actually saying that the Liberal Party of Canada agrees with Hamas, despite demonstrating that he does have a long way to go as a politician no matter how many banks he ran, must be defended from baseless smears. Yes, even by Conservatives. Conservatives like Doug Ford, and we will no doubt be hearing stories about how the provincial and federal Tories are at one another’s throats. Too bad for Pierre Poilievre—if only he’d been a team player he wouldn’t have this problem. (And where were the federal Liberals when Bonnie Crombie could have used their help? There you go confusing the issue again.) 

The NDP aren’t going to benefit from this abrupt shift in the wind, as nobody is interested in making excuses for Jagmeet Singh. But even as his entire party of erstwhile social democrats decamp en masse to support a central banker, Singh wins by losing, supplying the necessary votes to make Poilievre’s life difficult. Is the NDP a big orange emergency sign that reads ‘In case of possible Conservative government, break glass’? Does this prove the point conservatives have been making about the Liberal-NDP coalition for close to 20 years? Sure, if you want to be partisan about things. The rest of us are trying to keep the country from being eaten.


To that end, when will Wayne Gretzky stand and face the nation and answer for his support of Donald Trump? When will Ian Hanomansing be made to beg for his life for interviewing people who aren’t dead set against becoming part of the 51st state? And what about pro-Palestinian Canadians who went abroad to attend Nasrallah’s funeral, or got tossed in jail after months of screaming in people’s faces and calling them ‘genocidaires’? Oh well in that last case we need to be very concerned about their Charter rights as Canadians. (And just what have the pro-Palestinians said about Canada? It is worse than anything Wayne Gretzky or Kevin O’Leary has said? Never you mind about that.)

Does anyone even remember that the federal Liberals were effectively dead for the better part of two years? And that no matter how many muted calls for Justin Trudeau’s resignation went out during that dark period, he would still be PM if Chrystia Freeland hadn’t put the government out of its misery? You remember Chrystia Freeland, right? The former Minister of Everything? The superstar MP who joined Trudeau’s team early on, signalling that the Liberals were back? Well I’m afraid that’s all ancient history now. As soon as Team Carney get their hands on the controls, Chrystia Freeland’s political career will be at an end.

She and a bunch of other resigning MPs will be swept away like the remnants of last week’s snowstorm. In their place will be another cohort of loyalists who will be treated by our compliant media as proof of Carney’s ability to recruit star candidates to a once-again reinvigorated Liberal banner. We sent her to the UN, and she was finance minister for years, but the only thing anyone will remember of Freeland is her weird communication skills, her Nazi grandfather, and the selfish, non-team-player way she brought down a PM who only wanted the best for this country. But you know, the leadership race isn’t over yet! She and Karina Gould could form an alliance! It could happen!! You don’t know!! It’s not a Carney coronation even though that’s exactly what it looks like and what it was from the get go!

Many people ask me, “Josh, how is it that the Ontario PCs keep winning?” And the answer is obvious if you have been paying close attention through this article. The reason incompetent incumbents keep winning is because Canadians are walking nesting dolls, possessed of an endless succession of incorrect beliefs, forever and effortlessly passing from one to the next, because they know that at the centre there is nothing at all. 

Josh Lieblein can be reached at [email protected] for your response to Doorstep Postings. 

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