Martin Regg Cohn: Mad that Doug Ford got re-elected? He’s not the one you should blame

Not everyone is celebrating the decisive victory by Doug Ford's Tories in Thursday's Ontario election.

But at least no one is disputing the outcome. And that's a big win for democracy here, compared to elsewhere - not least in the U.S., where the losers now try to take down the winners.

It's pretty clear the people gave us a mandate with 83 seats," Ford declared to reporters on the morning after.

And yet, within hours of Ford's re-election as premier, a new narrative emerged about his mandate. People aren't so much disputing it as diminishing it, pointing to a depressingly low voter turnout.

Barely 43 per cent of Ontario's 10.7 million eligible voters bothered to cast their ballots - the lowest turnout ever in Ontario. That's undoubtedly a downer, especially for someone like me who believes democracy is our duty (maybe make it mandatory?).

But don't fall into the trap of taking it out on Ford, or taking anything away from him because people stayed home.

That's more on the opposition parties than on the governing party. In fact, Ford's Tories did their job getting their votes out in droves.

It's the New Democrats, and most especially the Liberals, who failed to inspire their own supporters, especially young people, to show up. Some public opinion surveys in the weeks leading up to voting day showed the Liberals polling close to 30 per cent, yet their actual vote collapsed to barely 23 per cent.

That's a vote of non-confidence in the opposition, not a reflection on the Progressive Conservative victory. To be clear, there were never any allegations of voter suppression or repression - and voter depression or tedium is not the same thing.

Sorry - when you don't vote, by definition you disqualify yourself from the contest. It's not even an abstention, it's an absence - as in, there's no record of you asking to be counted, so your voice doesn't count.

That doesn't mean politicians shouldn't take non-voters into account - whether it's children still too young, or new immigrants not yet citizens. They are all part of society, they just don't get a say in it - especially those who can but don't vote.

Many will also look at the lopsided results and clamour for electoral reforms such as proportional representation to avoid the wild distortions that gave the NDP 31 seats and the Liberals a mere eight, despite a virtual tie in the popular vote of roughly 23 per cent each. That's a reasonable critique, but it requires reform advocates to persuade their fellow Ontarians to embrace some form of proportional representation - which most voters rejected in a 2007 democratic referendum, fair and square - and that could be many years off.

Meantime, morally, politically, legally, Ford's mandate remains undiminished - for better or for worse, like it or not (and it's certainly not my preference, but I'm merely a pundit). In fact, this mandate is even stronger than his first one.

In the 2018 election, Ontarians knew what they didn't want - another Liberal government - and so Ford won by default. (The NDP was never truly in contention, because voters for various reasons didn't consider it a serious alternative.) In the aftermath, Ford undertook actions he'd never mentioned to voters (such as halving the size of Toronto city council), making up his mandate as he went along.

In 2022, Ford vowed to give Ontarians more of what they want (or think they want when talking to pollsters) and promptly put it in writing in a pre-election budget akin to a platform: More hospitals and highways, bridges and buildings. More jobs, higher wages, lower taxes - more or less everything for everyone.

He cast himself as a friend of labour and business both. He promised all things to all people.

That's a grand way to win an election. It's not so grand a way to govern, for to govern is to choose.

How will Ford reconcile competing choices, such as cutting taxes while boosting costly health-care services? How will he champion the hard work of nurses in a health-care crisis, while continuing to restrain their wages amid rapidly rising inflation?

In his victory speech Thursday night and again the morning after, Ford talked about building a new coalition for his Progressive Conservatives - a different party" of diversity and a big tent. Compare his words of thanks to his triumphal tone of four years ago.

Last time, he claimed that a mythical Ford Nation" had taken over the province and vowed to take on Ottawa. This time, he reached out with calls for unity and promises of collaboration with the federal government, while hailing his new-found friendship with the same labour leaders he denounced in the past.

Bear in mind that politicians from all three major parties love to court labour. But the love affair rarely lasts, because hearts are easily broken.

That may happen sooner rather than later. Even on Friday, Ford flashed some of his old talking points about how elected labour leaders don't truly reflect the sentiments of their union membership. (Question: how do they get elected, then?)

But the wage restraint law that has throttled recent increases is harder than ever to defend at a time of 6.8 per cent inflation and growing labour shortages, which is why Ford sounded less definitive Friday. It may not have been a vote-determining issue in a sleepy election, but it will keep him awake at night in the months to come.

The premier likes to overpromise, even if he doesn't always deliver on his undertakings - from symbolic slogans like buck a beer" to serious pledges like lowering hydro rates. On Friday, fresh from winning re-election, he was unrepentant:

We are going to make sure we keep every single promise."

File that away for four years from now, under the category of promising all things to all people.

Martin Regg Cohn is a Toronto-based columnist focusing on Ontario politics and international affairs for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @reggcohn