As Doug Ford seeks to secure a second term, many look to how his party will fare in the Greater Toronto Area to predict the election results. Will Highway 413 deliver additional seats in Brampton? Will progress on subway expansion secure seats in Scarborough? While these questions will always be worth asking – 62 of the 124 seats up for grabs are within Toronto and the GTA — it is equally important to consider how the Progressive Conservatives will do in the rest of the province. It is even more important to consider how the party will perform in areas the PCs do not typically command votes.

The battle for Toronto and GTA votes will be fierce, as always. Although Steven Del Duca remains relatively unknown to Ontarians, his party is set to finish the election with more seats than the seven they held in 2018. Some polls place the Ontario Liberal Party as high as 32 per cent, a notable increase from the 19 per cent of the popular vote they earned four years ago. Consider that seats like Brampton West and Don Valley West were decided by less than 500 votes in the last election, and many races are sure to be tight across the region. No seat can be taken for granted.

As a result, several ridings outside the GTA battlegrounds deserve close scrutiny — like in southwestern and northern Ontario. Although many of these seats are traditional strongholds for their respective incumbents, Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives are set to make these ridings races to watch.

Take Windsor West and Windsor—Tecumseh, for example. In March, the premier was in Windsor to announce the “largest auto investment in the province’s history” — a $5 billion investment from automaker Stellantis and LG Energy Solution to build an electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant. The plant will give about 2,500 people jobs and is a major accomplishment in vertically integrating Ontario’s auto sector. The NDP — which controls both seats — makes a passing mention of increasing zero-emission vehicle sales in their recent platform, but no mention of attracting investment to ensure any of these vehicles are made in Ontario.

In the north, voters in Timmins and Timiskaming—Cochrane will take note of the Ford government’s decision to bring back passenger rail service between Timmins and Toronto, with a possible link to Cochrane. Once reinstated, northern passenger rail would connect over 170,000 people to southern parts of Ontario. Ford committed $75 million to return the service, which last ran in 2012. The NDP has one sentence of their platform dedicated to this critical link and the Liberals will have to defend their decision to cancel the existing service ten years ago. Once again, Ford is prepared to use his record to successfully wedge his opponents on their home turf — both of these northern ridings are also held by the NDP.

The Ford government can expect to gain favour across the entire province — but the north and southwest, in particular — thanks to its large-scale investments in expanding broadband infrastructure. The province increased its total commitment to nearly $4 billion for these projects in its 2021 budget, touting the investment as the largest in Canadian history. During a time when connectivity has been more important than ever, the significance of Ford’s accompanying commitment to connect every community to high-speed internet by 2025 cannot be understated. The PCs clearly recognize this — Ford and his ministers have made eight announcements related to their broadband investments since the start of April. A stark contrast from the NDP, which did not mention broadband in their platform at all, and from the Liberals who will have to contend with Ford and his candidates asking about comparable progress during their last tenure in government.

While voters’ decisions will be influenced by far more than any one policy, these examples demonstrate that Ford’s record gives him a strong starting point in these communities at the outset of the election. These ridings are too few to turn the overall tide of the election — that influence is still held by the 50 per cent of all seats resting in Toronto and the GTA — but one or two seats could mean the difference between a Ford majority or a minority, or even a victory or a loss, in an election with no guarantees.

Kyle Sholes is a former chief of staff to the Associate Minister of Transportation in Doug Ford's government. He is currently a Manager at StrategyCorp Inc.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all QP Briefing columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of QP Briefing.

Sholes: Look beyond the 905 when predicting election results

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