Before we step into the political waters of Ontario, I would like to remind you of an old unwritten rule of marriage.
I may criticize my mother. My spouse may not.
I was reminded of that rule this past weekend as the Twitter Tyrant unloaded on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
We, as Canadians, reserve the right to mock, ridicule and criticize our PM. However, don’t be doing it from afar.
Trudeau, sagging in the polls, was given an unexpected lift as Trump let go on him — many think simply to look strong before he met with fellow kook Kim Jong Un — and came away with nothing but vague promises after being far nicer to the dictator than he was to his supposed ally Trudeau.
Canadian politicians of all stripes immediately stepped up to support Trudeau. Both Conservative and NDP leaders stood in solidarity and the House actually passed a motion of support of his stance on the tariffs imposed by the U.S. and chiding our neighbour to the south on their president’s personal attack.
Even Premier Doug Ford said he stood “shoulder to shoulder” with Trudeau.
That’s not something you’re going to hear every day.
Premier Doug Ford. Wrap your tongue — and your brains — around that. With the former leader of the Ontario PC party, Patrick Brown, done away with by a media gotcha that Brown insists to this day wasn’t on the up and up, Ford swooped in this spring and wrestled the reins of the party away from any comers.
Ford ran with the same bombast and fear-the-other principles as President King Czar Donald Trump. Ford berates the “elites” and tries to come across as an everyman who will solve all your problems.
Ford managed to find himself in the lucky circumstance of snatching the leadership reins of a party poised to defeat an extremely unpopular leader.
In fact, Kathleen Wynne is so unpopular that prior to the election she just came out and said she didn’t have a prayer of winning. Which proved to be true — the Liberals only got seven seats.
And even with the PC poised earlier this spring for a huge majority, Ford, since he won the leadership, managed to turn a slam dunk into a tighter race — simply on the basis of being Doug Ford.
Ontario desperately looked for anyone else and polls indicated they really wanted to find it in the NDP and Andrea Horwath, but couldn’t.
After ignoring the NDP for the first part of the campaign, the PCs suddenly realized that they just might be in a race and the ads trying to tie the NDP to the old “Rae-days” began.
What I found interesting about the latest round of ads was not the “NDP will ruin the economy” trope. That’s to be expected. What I found interesting was that nowhere in the late run of ads was the name Doug Ford. Not one mention of him. It’s as if the Ontario PCs suddenly woke up and realized that their leader was not as popular as they hoped. Their only solution was to present themselves as the party of choice and make no mention of the leader. Which is what they did.
And it worked.
But the brouhaha over the insult to our mother… er Prime Minister was also lucky for Ford. Because as we are all distracted by the inexplicable behaviour of Toddler in Chief Trump, Ford is easing into his transition without the intense scrutiny of the national media all over him.
It appears for Canadian politicians, Trump is the gift that keeps on giving.