Ontario

Think about the last time you booked a flight. Did you flinch at the price? Did you double-check the total before clicking “confirm”? That’s the sort of small hesitation Ontario voters may be experiencing now.

Our latest tracking survey with the Star, conducted with 1,000 adults across the province last month, found the Progressive Conservatives and Liberals in a statistical tie among committed voters. And the proportion of voters having a strong desire for change has climbed 12 points since October, to 54 per cent. For a government that’s spent much of the past year with leads north of 20 points, this should serve as a warning sign.

He’s not a conservative. Simple as that.

Premier Doug Ford said Thursday he does not feel he’s lost touch with the average person, despite a backlash over a scrapped plan to buy a jet and new polling numbers showing his popularity declining.

“I’m in touch with the people on a daily basis,” Ford told CTV News Toronto in an exclusive interview.

He said no other politician “in the entire world” hands out his phone number to people as much as he does.

After being re-elected in 2004, U.S. president George W. Bush candidly revealed what he extrapolated from the vote.

“I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it,” Bush told reporters two days after the election.

Since being re-elected in 2025, Ontario Premier Doug Ford may not have been quite as blunt, but his third term in office has seen him blow through some precious political capital.

Catering to the Liberal-Left rather than the people who elected him is no longer paying off.

Ontario saw the largest unemployment rate increase in the country for the second year running, according to its financial watchdog, which also found that new jobs are still being created in the province.

A new report from the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario found job creation slowed in 2025, with 80,900 jobs created last year.

That figure is a drop from the year before and the slowest pace of job creation since 2015, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Ontario government’s decision to purchase and later return a $28.9-million private jet appears to have created turbulence for Premier Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservatives.

According to a new poll by Liaison Strategies, for the first time in its monthly provincial tracking, the PCs trail the Ontario Liberal Party by two percentage points among decided and leaning voters.

The Liberals, which do not have a permanent leader at this time, have the support of 38 per cent of decided and leaning voters while the Tories are in second place at 36 per cent.

Doug Ford’s poll numbers slump as government seems aimless

We are just over a month until we hit the eighth anniversary of Doug Ford being elected premier. He’s had some good times and some bad times over those eight years, and he’s surprised plenty of people by surviving as long as he has, especially after his first year.

The Ford government has passed a spring budget that includes provisions to let the premier and his cabinet ministers keep all their office records secret.

The spring budget changes Freedom of Information laws retroactively as well, meaning Ontario Premier Doug Ford would no longer have to comply with a court order to release his cellphone records.

The government used its majority to fast-track the bill and skip public hearings.