Doug Ford

Doug Ford deserves credit where it is genuinely due. During the COVID-19 pandemic he showed the kind of decisive, no-nonsense leadership that Ontarians needed — cutting through political noise and making difficult calls under pressure. That is not nothing, and it should be acknowledged. But leadership is not measured by one chapter alone. Ontario's economy today — the cost of housing, the strain on household budgets, the state of public infrastructure — demands an honest accounting. A Premier who holds that office through years of these conditions bears responsibility for the choices that led here, even when global forces played a role. The greenbelt controversy was a serious lapse in judgment that raised real questions about who the government was truly serving. It took sustained public pressure to reverse a decision that should never have been made. Transparency and integrity cannot be optional when it is convenient. Ford connects with working people in a way few politicians do, and that authenticity is real. But connection must translate into outcomes. Ontario deserves a Premier who brings that energy and applies it with the discipline and accountability the province's challenges demand.

Doug Ford won his third consecutive majority government in Ontario in 2026, cementing a political record that confounds his critics while frustrating his supporters on the file he made most central to his mandate: housing affordability. Ford declared himself a "housing Premier," pledged 1.5 million new homes by 2031, stripped planning powers from municipalities, opened Greenbelt land amid enormous controversy, and built a governing identity around getting housing "built faster." The results have been disappointing. Ontario's housing starts have lagged well behind the pace required to meet the 1.5 million target. The Greenbelt scandal — in which land was selectively removed from protection in ways that benefited donors and insiders — cost the province two cabinet ministers, millions in repaid proceeds, and significant credibility with the public on the claim that development policy was being driven by housing need rather than political relationships. The land was ultimately returned to the Greenbelt after public pressure. Ford's fiscal record is also complicated. Ontario ran structural deficits through his tenure during a period of the longest economic expansion in recent Canadian history, limiting the province's capacity to respond when economic headwinds arrived. Healthcare capacity — hospital beds per capita, surgical wait times, emergency room wait times — deteriorated under his watch despite significant nominal spending increases, because healthcare costs grew faster than provincial investment and because the structural reliance on private nursing agencies to fill gaps created by staff departures created a cost spiral. What Ford does well is political resilience and the retail politics of opposition maintenance. He has consistently outflanked the Ontario NDP and Liberals in speaking to the economic anxiety of suburban and working-class Ontario voters in a way that his predecessors could not. The governing record, however, is thinner than the political success would suggest.