April 15, 2026
Version published in the Hamilton Spectator, May 1, 2026
The period following the tabling of Ontario’s 2026 budget has been defined by a flurry of legislative changes and policy announcements. The government’s proposals have ranged from limiting the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to activities involving the premier and minsters offices, to taking effective control of public school boards, and aggressive support for the expansion of the Toronto Island Airport.
On the surface all of these moves might suggest an active government with a clear agenda. A closer look, however, suggests some familiar, but disturbing, trends in the behaviour of the Ford government.
One of the defining features of the government’s governing style, which has accelerated dramatically following its re-election in February 2025, has been to shift authority away from local and governments and independent agencies, and into the hands of the province. The government’s Bill 5 – The Protect Ontario Act, passed last June, has been perhaps the most extreme example, with its empowerment of the provincial cabinet to designate “Special Economic Zones” where no rules - provincial or municipal - may apply.
But the pattern extends much further. Bills currently before the Legislature would prescribe and constrain the scope of municipal planning activities, remove any references to climate change from the province’s planning policies, block municipalities from adopting green building standards and other climate and energy related measures, consolidate Conservation Authorities and bring them under closer provincial control, and to replace regional chairs in areas like Niagara, with provincial appointees.
These moves follow on from previous initiatives to constrain the work of local drinking water Source Water Protection Committees – themselves legacies of the May 2000 Walkerton water disaster. The widespread and arbitrary use of Ministerial Zoning Orders, and other overrides of local and provincial planning policies and decisions to favour development interests have become routine - most famously in the case of the Greenbelt land removal scandal - but in many other instances as well.
The province’s recent threats to expropriate the Toronto Island Airport lands, and (presumably) legislate the City’s agreement to amend the federal-provincial-city agreement governing the airport to allow for jets and higher traffic volumes fits within the pattern. There have been further provincial ‘reach-downs' into local matters on everything from bike lanes to speed cameras.
What emerges is a consistent pattern of the concentration of authority in the hands of province as the solution to all problems. In practice, this increasingly means the Premier’s office, as individual ministers, with the possible exception of the finance minister, seem to have little or no autonomy to act outside of direction from the centre.
This approach does accord with the often-sited description of the Premier’s governance style as being that of a municipal councilor or small town mayor. The goal appears to be to concentrate authority to be able respond to the requests of those who have the necessary access and connections to the Premier’s office. That model would account for, among other things, the government’s sensitively around Freedom of Information requests related to the activities of the premier’s office.
It would also explain why the Ford government again seems to be adrift, and following whatever direction comes to it from the right sources - notably developers, farmers, resource industries, and embedded incumbents in the energy sector. The challenge for the Ford government has always been that it has no clear idea what provincial government should actually do other than cut taxes and ‘red tape,’ and more recently, build big things (whether they make sense or not).
The government survived both the 2022 and 2025 elections, despite growing public dissatisfaction with its performance and sentiments of a need for a change, because it effectively had agendas imposed on it by external events: the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022; and the Trump ‘51st state’ crisis 2025.
In both cases, however, it is important to recall the thinness of the electoral mandates actually obtained by the Ford government. Both elections were defined by the lowest voter turnouts in Ontario history. In the result, in both cases, Ford’s overwhelming majorities in the Legislature actually rested on the ballots of the less than 20 per cent of eligible voters in the province who voted Progressive Conservative.
Recent polling suggests that the feeling of a need for a change in government in Ontario has reached the 70 per cent mark. The government is deep underwater on its handling of most substantive policy issues, particularly on high profile questions like housing and the cost of living.
Despite this, a significant change in direction from the government itself seems unlikely. The next election is likely three years off, and there are no apparent challengers to Ford’s leadership in either the PC cabinet or caucus. The official opposition continues to struggle to find an effective counter to Ford’s populist appeal, even as it takes on more authoritarian aspects, while the other major opposition party is again searching for a leader.
The federal government holds considerable potential influence over Ontario’s direction. It has variety of forms of approval authority over the Ford government’s increasingly grandiose infrastructure projects from highways to nuclear power plants and the Toronto Island Airport expansion. It is also, at least in theory, is the guarantor of the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and of those Ontarians more generally under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Both have been regularly threatened by the Ford government. Federal funding is a significant factor in the province’s plans for the auto, steel, mining and nuclear sectors. But so far Ottawa seems content to play the role of Doug Ford’s enabler, if not partner. Some greater distance may make sense for both substantive policy and political reasons, particularly given the Ford government’s recent polling numbers.
The overall result for Ontarians is a province where decision-making is more and more centralized and driven by those with the right connections and access. Local innovation and independent decision-making are being deliberately curtailed. The result is almost certain to be a province that is less creative, flexible, adaptive, democratic and dynamic, at a time when geopolitical circumstances require precisely those attributes. Although the fall of Hungary’s Victor Orban demonstrates that deeply embedded populist autocrats can be defeated, it could be a long three years for Ontario.