Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford, a wealthy businessman who has been likened to Donald Trump because of his attacks on the media, will be spending the day in suburban Ottawa, with a series of events in Nepean.
His day started with a breakfast photo-op at the campaign office of Lisa MacLeod, the candidate for Ottawa West–Nepean, and will end with a 6 p.m. rally at the Centurion Conference & Event Center.
Ford has still refused to be pinned down on whether he would attend Toronto’s annual Pride parade if elected premier, reports CTV News Canada.
Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne will be spending the weekend in her own backyard, campaigning in Toronto and visiting a French elementary school in the morning and Dundas West Fest in the afternoon.
Wynne attacked her rivals on Friday over their responses to the U.S. trade tariffs, according to TVO, arguing that neither Ford or NDP leader Andrea Horwath have the experience required to succeed in tough trade negotiations.
“It is simply inconceivable to imagine either Doug Ford or Andrea Horwath effectively fighting for Ontario and for free trade,” Wynne said in a media statement.
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, whose party is trailing in third place in every major poll, is still campaigning hard to save the relatively few Liberal seats so that the party isn’t wiped out on June 7.
Horwath started her weekend, making her way from Mississauga to Peterborough, Ontario, and will finish the day with a stop in Bowmanville.
Horwath campaigned in St. Catharines on Friday, making a pitch to Liberal voters that her party is the only one that can defeat the Tories. She promoted the New Democrats’ promise to limit wait times for child and youth mental-health services to 30 days.
Horwath is promising she will create a dedicated ministry of mental health and addictions, and hire 2,200 mental health workers across the province. She also said the NDP would spend $2.4 billion to “transform” Ontario’s mental health system.
The election this year has a lot of similarities with the last U.S. presidential election, which Donald Trump won. Trump campaigned on reversing Obama-era environmental laws, bringing jobs back and keeping foreign imports out of the country.
For the last 15 years, Ontario has been run by the Liberal party and changes in climate change legislation, gender-neutral health cards and drivers licenses, as well as an increase in the minimum wage, have been introduced. But there has been a change in the electorate for some reason.
Premier Kathleen Wynne has become very unpopular, perhaps because the Trump shadow has been hanging over the election from the very beginning. How familiar does this sound? In April, Doug Ford intimidated Wynne was “shady,” suggesting that she should be jailed.
One thing is for sure – If Doug Ford is elected premier, he would become Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s biggest opponent. “Ontario is like New York and California combined,” said Nelson Wiseman, a professor of Canadian politics at the University of Toronto. “Because the province is so powerful, whoever becomes premier is a major player in the federal scene.”
