Give Ford a Better Idea

 

As politically unwise as was and is Justin Trudeau’s refusal to recognize or parley with the Ottawa protesters, Doug Ford’s reaction is even worse. He seems to have turned on a major part of his base. He has probably killed any hope of reelection. As Erin O’Toole just demonstrated, this is not a time in which Tories can ignore their base. Their base is upset.

Trudeau’s actions can be explained by the urgent desire by the “deep state” to set up a system to permanently track and gather data on the citizenry. This is not just a conspiracy theory, either; some of it has come to light in recent parliamentary and congressional investigations. Some of it is visible in the “deplatforming” and “cancel culture” movement. This really has to be what the vaccine mandates were about; since they are now politically risky, and have no definite medical or scientific value.

Doug Ford may be part of this to; he has his own deep state whispering in his ear. But this hypothesis may not be necessary in his case. It is enough that Ford is indecisive. This is something we already knew. He flip flops often.

For a long time, he did not know what to do about the current protest. Queen’s Park was silent, and conspicuously absent from the Ottawa discussions among levels of government.

But when the Ambassador Bridge was closed, Ontario businessmen would have rung him up, directly and personally—as a fellow businessman and, as it were, Rotarian. Ford is always going to want to please the person he has most recently spoken to. Rumour is that he first spent some time with the deep state hoping they would agree to dropping mandates. But evidently they would not. So he acted as he did. The path of least resistance was to get tough.

This being so, the smart strategy for those who oppose the mandates, or simply oppose this getting violent, is to make sure this does not remain the path of least resistance. Resist, and he is likely to back down.

I urge all who have a Conservative MPP—I do not—to contact them and warn that you will not support any violence to end the protest. It must be done by compromise and negotiation.

The present danger is that, by clearing the Ambassador Bridge by what looks like force or intimidation, if he can, Ford will have solved his immediate problem, but will have increased the odds that the main protest in Ottawa, and the protests elsewhere, will also end in arrests, and possibly bloodshed. It will encourage this approach.