Why is Ford sailing while Carney is flailing? Because the premier has one asset you just can’t teach

Is there a politician in Canada right now with savvier political instincts than Ontario Premier Doug Ford?

Whatever comes of the negotiations with the Trump Administration (see representative prior posts “What exactly is Ottawa's tariff strategy?” Mar 12-25, “How does Enemy #9 wind-up as the #1 Target?” Mar 7-25 and “Canada has win-win deals it can make to satisfy Trump” Dec 30-24), Ontario Premier Doug Ford seems to recognize that Canada must launch hundreds of different economic growth initiatives, simultaneously – “For The People” has morphed into “Protect Ontario.”

There’s strategy and there are tactics, and while Ottawa mandarins fuss about the former, perhaps this is one situation where elbow grease wins the day. We need more business, not new taxes! In an effort to teach U.S. President Donald Trump a lesson, and help fund some special programs for our furloughed auto workers, Ottawa will now charge you a 25% tariff if you import an Ansel Adams photograph, on the basis that this long-dead U.S. photographer printed his photos at a lab in Yosemite Valley. Almost 100 years ago.

If he was Russian, no problem.

Canadian taxpayers can’t afford to subsidize laid-off auto workers forever, without opening the pandora’s box of why one of the 89 workers recently laid-off at Toronto’s BenchSci is valued less than a Windsor auto worker. The poor ex-employees at BenchSci and Hudson’s Bay Company get to turn to EI, while an auto parts worker is topped-up by the rest of us.

That’s just not sustainable, complicated as the politics are. That’s where the savviness of Premier Ford comes into play — the focus for this week.

I’ve posted the first half of this week’s Star column below. If you want to see how the column ends, buy a print copy, use your Apple News, or subscribe to the Star online via my special discount code: www.thestar.com/informed.

Is there a politician in Canada right now with savvier political instincts than Ontario Premier Doug Ford?

As our relationship with the United States soured in March, during the waning days of Justin Trudeau’s government, Ford took it upon himself to fly to Washington for a meeting with fiery U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Ford was so effective that the BBC referred to him in a feature profile as “the blunt-speaking Canadian premier taking on (U.S. President Donald) Trump.”

The week before, Ford had “ordered” the LCBO to remove U.S. alcohol from its shelves across the province. As the Star’s Robert Benzie reported at the time, Ford said that “we need to make sure America feels the pain.”

European winemakers such as Antinori, in Italy, have hustled to pick up the slack. Vintners in Oregon will regret having given Canadian tipplers an excuse to become better acquainted with the liquid wonders of Florence.

According to a report last week in the Wall Street Journal, “The U.S. alcohol industry is reeling from Canada’s booze boycott.” Embracing his new role as Confederation’s bad cop, Ford comes across as a spurned lover — not wild-eyed crazy — when he criticizes Trump. That makes him an effective foil for Prime Minister Mark Carney.

While Ottawa was busy fumbling with feel-good counter-tariffs, the business-development skills Ford honed at Deco Labels in Chicago kicked into gear.

When Carney recently announced a massive increase to Canada’s military equipment budget, it wasn’t immediately clear how Ontario businesses might benefit. Rather than wait to find out, Ford dedicated $215 million to supporting the province’s shipbuilders.

Ontario’s marine sector supports 67,000 jobs, and while area shipyards get a decent amount of work from both the private sector and the Canadian Coast Guard, the largest federal contracts invariably land in Halifax, Quebec City and Vancouver.

Canada is in the process of retiring a dozen Mulroney-era coastal defence vessels, and Ford is working with Algoma Steel, Ontario Shipyards and Italy’s Fincantieri (the largest shipbuilder in Europe) to replace that key arm of the fleet. It’s worth remembering that Ontario produced more naval vessels than any other province during and after the Second World War — then got distracted by the Canada-U.S. Auto Pact in the 1960s.

With the Big Three automakers about to pull up stakes in the province, Ontario needs a new mission.

Stimulating shipbuilding seems as if it would be more feasible than adding new pipelines, despite Ford’s recent memoranda of understanding with the Alberta government and Premier Danielle Smith. According to Greg Ebel, CEO of Enbridge, Canada’s largest pipeline firm, it’s “a challenge to do more in a place like … Ontario relative to Ohio or, say, Texas. The issue is one of government policy setting the conditions … to get investment to occur. Let’s be honest: the (federal) government has not done that yet, and it’s not clear they intend to.”

To read the rest of the piece, hit the link.

MRM

(this post is an Opinion Piece)