Election Writ 2/4: Will the tariff pause trump Ford?
Ontario PCs start with a big lead but their big issue might be off the table.
Welcome to the Election Writ, a special-edition newsletter to get you up-to-date on the ongoing campaign in Ontario.
Doug Ford launched this Ontario election asking for a strong mandate to deal with Donald Trump’s tariff threats. Now that the tariffs have been paused for 30 days, does that mean Ford is now in the midst of a campaign without a raison d’être?
The unsatisfying answer is that it depends.
It depends on how Bonnie Crombie and Marit Stiles use this tariff reprieve. Can they successfully make this election about something other than Donald Trump? To date, both leaders have been unable to pierce through much of the blanket coverage of the tariffs, along with Ford’s central role in the Canadian side of the story.
But it also depends a lot on Donald Trump.
We’ve been provided with example after example of just how unpredictable and volatile the U.S. president can be. While the tariffs have been paused until after the election, the chances that he puts them back into place in a fit of pique before than are greater than zero. And a pause is just that — a pause. While we might not have the tariffs today, that doesn’t we won’t have them in March. Or April. Or 2026. Or beyond.
This uncertainty is still a card the Ford PCs can (and will) play. Who do voters trust to deal with Trump not just over the next few weeks, but the next four years?
The polls are pretty clear that the answer to that is Doug Ford. A recent survey by Relay Strategies had the PCs ahead of the Liberals by 29 points on dealing with Trump — a wider voting intentions lead than the PCs enjoyed over the Liberals in the same poll.
But if the tariff discussion drops off the radar over the next few weeks, Stiles and Crombie will be given an opportunity to change the conversation to something more favourable to them. The problem is that it isn’t clear if it would make that much of a difference. That poll by Relay had the PCs favoured over the other parties on both healthcare and cost of living, though the gap was far smaller. The PCs were ahead of the NDP on cost of living by 17 points and by just nine points on healthcare. The PCs are less competitive on these issues, but they still win on them.
Now, to what is in this instalment of the Election Writ:
News on the Independent candidates to watch, plus when there will be at least one leaders debate.
Polls show PC leads of different sizes, plus what they say about the leaders and what resonate with voters during the first week.
A bigger PC majority if the election were held today.
This week in Ontario election history.