Ontario

While it may mean fuller jails in the next weeks to come, with one stroke of a pen, Ontario Attorney General Doug Downey has just ended the free hall pass for violent crime.

It will be too late to save slain Toronto Police Const. Marc Pinizzotto or the fellow Toronto copper who was shot this week in the thigh, but starting Monday there will be no more free bail in Ontario. That June murder and the August attempted murder were allegedly committed by people out on release conditions. In fact, almost every violent crime is like that.

In the last few months Ford has …

Declined Carney’s offer to increase TFW’s

Stopped paying welfare to foreign freeloaders.

And now bail reform.

Ford’s internal polls must have forced him to pretend he is a conservative.

News flash for Queen’s Park: Fatter paycheques for politicians don’t help average families.

Ontario MPPs gave themselves a 35% pay raise, bumping their salaries to $157,350 in 2025. They also gave themselves a shiny new pension plan.

The pay raise made Ontario MPPs some of the highest-paid politicians in Canada and the United States.

Doug Ford needed a good summer. He isn’t getting one. And it could end up being a big deal for his government.

Ford has always been a bizarre politician to watch. You will never hear me count him out. Ontario’s premier has made a habit of surviving things that would be unsurvivable for most politicians. Many have written Ford off as political roadkill, only for him to come roaring back and win another majority government. I take his political skill seriously, as should his opponents.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has seen his popularity dip in the wake of an MPP expense scandal but the total impact appears to be “marginal rather than transformational,” a new survey suggests.

Abacus Data surveyed 1,000 Ontario adults on behalf of the Toronto Star from July 23 to July 29.

It found that support for the PCs among committed voters has fallen from 42 per cent to 40 per cent when compared to a similar survey that was conducted in June.

A new poll shows the Ontario Liberals maintaining a narrow lead over the Progressive Conservatives, while Premier Doug Ford’s personal approval has dropped a sharp 24 per cent as his government faces mounting scrutiny over MPP hotel expenses.

Liaison Strategies’ Ontario Political Tracker, conducted July 20 and July 21, finds the Liberals at 38 per cent among decided and leaning voters, ahead of the PCs at 33 per cent and the NDP at 24 per cent. Among all voters, including undecided respondents, the Liberals sit at 33 per cent, the PCs at 29 per cent, and the NDP at 21 per cent.

Tourism, Culture and Gaming Minister Stan Cho has resigned from cabinet after a week of scandal over his spending on hotels in Toronto, despite living six kilometres from Queen’s Park.

Global News was first to report that Cho, whose home is seven subway stops from the legislature, had billed more than $16,000 to the taxpayer for hotel stays downtown over the past three years.

Canadian consumer insolvencies are rising fast, but nowhere are they rising quite like in Ontario. Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada (OSB) filings rose in May. They’re rising so fast that Ontario just saw its second-highest number of May filings on record, only behind the 2009 Global Financial Crisis.

Donald Trump knows the game. When a New York Times, RealClearPolling aggregate of twelve independent polls shows his approval at 39 per cent, he doesn’t hesitate. He dismisses the ones he doesn’t like as fake, and insists the real numbers are fantastic, spectacular: “MY REAL POLL NUMBERS ARE THE HIGHEST THEY HAVE EVER BEEN. THANK YOU!!! President DJT.”

It’s a coherent fiction, implausible but coherent.

Doug Ford can’t even do that.

Recently, Ontario’s Doug Ford was asked if his time as Premier was coming to an end. He replied: “I’m not Dalton McGuinty, God bless Dalton McGuinty. I’m not Kathleen Wynne.”

He’s not wrong. Premiers have left for a whole lot of different reasons. I would know. I worked for Mike Harris and Ernie Eves as a writer in the Cabinet Office, as a senior political staffer for Dalton McGuinty, and on Kathleen Wynne’s 2018 campaign team.

The endings of each of their tenures were different, but there were two big similarities.

He could try to be just a little conservative once in a while.

Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives remain the most popular party at Queen’s Park even though seven out of 10 Ontarians think it’s time for a change in government, a new poll suggests.

The Abacus Data survey found Ford’s Tories at 41 per cent support, while the Liberals, who elect a new leader Nov. 21, were at 32 per cent. Marit Stiles’s New Democrats, the Official Opposition, were at 19 per cent and Mike Schreiner’s Greens were at five per cent.

But 52 per cent of those polled said it was “definitely time for a change in government in Ontario,” with 18 per cent saying “it would be nice to change the government, but it’s not that important to me.”

Probably why Ford went anti-TFW all of a sudden.

Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty was just one seat shy of securing a third majority mandate when he led his party to win the 2011 Ontario election. It wasn’t a great result – the Liberals won 18 fewer seats than they had the previous election – but it was still a win, and Mr. McGuinty’s approval rating was a respectable (for a third-time premier) 38 per cent by the end of the year.

But almost exactly one year later, Mr. McGuinty called an emergency caucus meeting to announce his resignation as Liberal leader and the prorogation of the legislature. “After nine years as premier, it’s time for renewal, it’s time for the next Liberal premier,” Mr. McGuinty said.

Watching his latest costly mistake, it’s hard to believe Doug Ford is still the Premier of Ontario.

Despite being barely tolerated by his voter base, however, Doug Ford is still living off the fumes of political capital from the 2018 wipeout of the Wynne Liberals.

But the last of that accelerant will soon be burned up.