The wind was biting when I stepped out of a local café to ask people on our streets about Doug Ford’s early election call. “It’s a disaster,” said Daniel who lives in the Vaughan and St.Clair area. Tears flowed down his eyes from the freezing wind. “Who does this guy think he is? He has a majority and he’s calling an election? What a waste!” Only Daniel gave me his name for this story. Everyone else spoke off the record.
A young barista at a small St. Clair café said this was his fist election and said he knew who he wouldn’t be voting for. “The guy who called this election?” I guessed. He nodded. He wouldn’t give me his name. It looked like St. Clair West was slanting anti-Ford, so I went to Oakwood Village for a bit of variety.
I spoke to John, let’s call him. He considers himself Conservative minded. He explained that Ford called an early election to avoid a federal election. And he was ok with that decision. He didn’t seem excited about it and he didn’t mention Ford’s own reason for calling this election: to have a clear mandate to face off with Trump. No one mentioned that one.
I went back to St. Clair, west of Oakwood. I asked a young couple about their thoughts. He said he was a Liberal and explained that Ford made an opportunistic move, but any party would have done the same. “It’s politics.” He added that everyone he knows is angry about the waste of $190 million on this election.
I couldn’t find anyone openly supporting Ford, on or off the record. And if you look at Ford’s own pick for candidate in our area, he seems to know that. While the NDP has incumbent MPP Jill Andrew, and the Liberals have CP24 personality Stephanie Smyth, the PCs have Riley Braunstein, an Ontario Ministry staffer responsible for rural stakeholders.
Ford and the PCs knew there’d be a lot of angry Daniels in this riding. So, they didn’t invest much in candidate search. They just walked down the hall to find Riley.
I know where I’ll land, but that’s off the record.
