Marco Vigliotti is the editor-in-chief of iPolitics and QP Briefing. He reports on politics in Ottawa and Toronto, and has covered Parliament Hill for the better part of the past decade. He also worked for the Ottawa Citizen/Sun and The Hill Times.

Marco Vigliotti

Editor-in-Chief

As Ontario Progressive Conservative faithful huddle in Niagara Falls for this weekend's policy convention, insiders expect Premier Doug Ford will double-down on the party's 2022 campaign mantra —"get it done" — to signal his laser focus on core priorities such as building new homes and restoring affordability after a challenging few months marred by scandal.

Carly Bergamini, a former senior Ford government staffer who now serves as a director of EnterpriseHealth, said the convention provides an opportunity for the party to turn the page on the Greenbelt and other controversies and refocus on core campaign planks like building up infrastructure and improving Ontarians' access to important services.

"It has been a challenging summer and fall. But with legislature resuming in the next couple of weeks and the upcoming policy conference this weekend, I think it's a really great opportunity for members and MPPs and ministers and everyone involved in the party to come together as a group and start looking at what's next," she said in an interview.

"I think the PCs have been very clear about what they're focused on, right. Like it's pretty much what you see, here's what you get with this government. They're talking about building Ontario and whether that's building key infrastructure, whether that's going to be building homes, working for workers, better services for people, so we've seen a lot of announcements over the last little while."

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Bergamini also pointed to recent government announcements in the health space such as expanding primary care teams and allowing pharmacists to prescribe more medications as falling into the category of improving access and "keeping costs down."

She said she thinks the Ford government needs to recreate the successful PC campaign from 2022 by illustrating a "clear plan" and sticking with it and not getting thrown off course by distractions.

"They really ran on getting it done. And ultimately, what we're going to be seeing I think, over the next couple of months and leading up to 2026 is that voters are going to be judging the government on what they got done. So they have to really be laser focused moving forward."

Conservative strategist and McMillan Vantage vice-president Jeff Rutledge agrees, saying the reason the "get it done" messaging is getting re-used is because the issues the party ran on in the 2022 vote "haven’t changed, and Ontarians want the government to remain focused on the all-important pocketbook issues that are hitting them hardest."

"There is still quite a bit of runway before the next election, and I believe the premier is focused on delivering on his commitments and accomplishing some big things — case in point the new deal with the City of Toronto," he said via email, referencing the deal that saw the province agree to take over two Toronto highways to avoid a fight over the redevelopment of Ontario Place.

"The convention provides an excellent opportunity to re-energize the most dedicated members of the party. I'm confident that attendees will return feeling energized and motivated for the spring session."

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The PC convention, scheduled to run from Friday to Saturday, will feature the usual discussions around party policy and election readiness, and finish with a diner reception headlined by Ford.

It comes at a challenging time for the PCs still dogged by the Greenbelt controversy and facing new questions over a sole-sourced contract with Staples to locate ServiceOntario outlets in their stores.

That's why Premier Ford should approach the convention "as a listening exercise more than anything," said Kayla Iafelice, a former Ford staffer who now serves as a vice-president with Wellington Advocacy.

"We’re half-way through the mandate, coming off a series of mainstream media frenzies — no more distractions, it’s time to focus on what the plan is for the next few months," she said via email.

"The unofficial campaign period will kick off not too long from now so the premier needs to keep his ear to the ground to understand what voters want to see from him. The party will want to see signs the premier is going to be laying out policies that are more focused on direct impact to people versus system-wide changes."

Liberal strategist Will Wuehr agrees that the convention is the launching pad to the next election.

He said the PC government is at an "interesting crossroads right now," as they're at the halfway point of their second mandate, they know who the main opposition party leaders will be for the next vote and are "trying to right the ship after a number of scandals that have sort of sent them off into crisis management mode."

"I think this convention is sort of setting the status for their next campaign, so they can figure out what the direction they need to take when they approach the two opposition leaders, what policies they want to focus on, what accomplishments they want to have before they start being in a full campaign mode," said Wuehr, a consultant with Crestview Strategy

Giving the recent road bumps, he said the looming question for the PCs is how much longer is "Ford going to want to lead the party." This is what he believes "a lot of folks will be thinking about this weekend."

"I think you are going to see people starting to mount the beginning pieces of leadership campaigns in the event Doug Ford chooses not to run. But he might choose to continue running, who knows," Wuehr said.

Cole Hogan, a Conservative strategist and principal at Earnscliffe Strategies, says there's no doubt that Ford will run again in 2026.

"I think Doug Ford will 100 per cent run in the 2026 election and the Ontario PCs will continue to contrast themselves against the Liberals and the NDP," he said via email, pointing out to how Ford and the PCs have already started attacking new Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie, who took over that job in December.

"The Ontario PCs won't make the mistake the federal Liberals did with Poilievre in waiting to define their political opponent. The Ontario PCs will keep hammering away at Bonnie Crombie for being out of touch and supporting a carbon tax. This is something the Ontario PCs are likely to highlight at the policy convention. They'll focus on getting the job done for Ontario, and what's at stake for the province if their opponents were to form government."

Despite months weathering opposition accusations that Ford and his team were benefitting well-off friends in the private sectors, the PCs are still in the driver's seat heading into the midway mark of their second majority term, according to recent polling.

An Abacus Data poll from last month had the Tories leading the Liberals — now led by Crombie, a former Mississauga mayor — 38 to 27 per cent, with the Official Opposition NDP back in third with 23 per cent. Those numbers were identical to an Abacus poll from December, where the Tories were up on the Liberals by 39 to 27 per cent.

However, NDP strategist Erin Morrison says it's a bit too early to read into the polls, and she thinks the PCs are in vulnerable spot after spending the fall scrambling to reverse controversial decisions to open the Greenbelt for development and expand urban boundaries in municipalities across the province.

"I think this far out from a provincial election are just not a great indicator of where people are at. It's too soon for people to park their vote.. except for folks who really are diehard, the people who consider themselves to be lifelong conservatives, for example," she said.

"[A lot of] people who are willing to change their vote have lots of time to look at their options and consider it and it is not top of mind for them right now. [So]... nobody is thinking, 'Oh, well, that's the ballgame' at this stage. We still have two and a half years before an election."

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Morrison, now a principal of her firm Morrison Comms Inc., said the immediate things political watchers notice typically take some time before they "trickle" into conversations among ordinary voters. But after months of grappling with scandals around land deals (including the use of controversial ministerial zoning orders or MZOs), plans to allow private clinics to perform more surgeries and now ServiceOntario, voters are starting to see the premier as someone who helps his friends at the expense of ordinary residents, she said.

"I think what is starting to gel is a growing sense that Ford is taking extraordinary measures to make some people rich at a time when the rest of the province is hurting. When you look at MZOs, the Greenbelt, health privatization, the sole-source Staples deal for ServiceOntario, these all have a common theme. The theme is somebody rich is going to get a lot richer and I think that is a frustration for people," Morrison explained.

"But it's gonna take time for that to gel and really start start to become firmed up in people's minds that that's the problem."

Morrison also flagged a string of departures among the PCs as a major challenge for Ford. The premier has lost five cabinet ministers over the past year, whether owing to the Greenbelt scandal or personal reasons.

Parm Gill, the former red-tape reduction minister, is the latest departure, announcing last week he was resigning to run for the federal Conservatives in the next election.

 recently reported that more ministers could be leaving.

This comes amid media reports of tensions between the Ford PCs and Pierre Poilievre-led federal Conservatives, which have occasionally become public. After the Ford PCs lost the Kanata-Carleton byelection last summer, multiple media outlets reported that a senior federal Conservative source told them that the loss was partly attributable to them refusing to send volunteers to help the provincial party.

This was reportedly due to the PCs refusing to help out the federal party in the Oxford, Ont. byelection in June 2023.

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Morrison pointed to other media reports saying Poilievre wasn't keen to bring in more PC MPPs to his team because they would bring the Ford government's "stench of corruption" with them.

"The stench of corruption is being discussed at the federal level amongst party insiders. It is far more likely to cause the divisions and the major concerns to bubble up to the surface this weekend," she said.

"And it puts some rank and file folks in an awkward position when Doug Ford and Pierre Poilievre are fighting... And they're not fighting over personality differences. They're fighting over what Poilievre's insiders called a stench of corruption. It makes the issue inescapable for Doug Ford and his government."

But Bergamini downplayed the impact of any departures, saying the PCs need to focus on 2026, not the federal arena.

"If I was the PC party, I would not be worrying about what the federal government or the federal CPC is doing. I would be unilaterally focused on what they need to do to earn the trust of voters coming into 2026."

"With legislature resuming in the next couple of weeks and the upcoming policy conference this weekend, I think it's a really great opportunity for... everyone involved in the party to come together as a group and start looking at what's next," says Carly Bergamini.

PC convention provides opportunity for Ford camp to refocus on campaign priorities after 'challenging' few months: insiders

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