Matt Gurney: Captain Canada loses his plane in his latest pathetic wimp-out moment

But sure, this guy will stare down the Americans in a trade war.

By: Matt Gurney

Not once have I ever thought that Doug Ford has much in common at all with U.S. President Donald Trump. Sure, the Ontario premier is a blustery, (in-theory) right-leaning politician who even has a passing physical resemblance to the U.S. president. But anyone actually making the comparison has always been, in my mind, confessing how superficial their understanding of either man is. Because, gosh, they’re more different than similar.

With, unfortunately, a possible major exception — and one the good people of Ontario saw demonstrated anew this weekend. Much like the U.S. president, the premier of Ontario always chickens out.

Do you remember that meme from a couple of months ago? TACO? It was an acronym for Trump Always Chickens Out, coined by critics of the president who mocked his habit of taking big stands and then wimping out before he actually had to pay any consequence for them. It became something of a meme, or even just an internet shorthand, for how Trump will open up with a lot of Sturm und Drang but will find some way to claim the other guy backed down so that he doesn’t have to do what he said he would do, usually because the markets were responding badly. We’ve seen a lot of that over just the last couple of weeks with the war in Iran, but for those who live in Ontario or spend much time paying attention to politics, you’ve been seeing it a lot longer.

Because TACO really ought to be DACO. Doug always chickens out.

The latest issue? A private jet purchased by the Ontario government for the premier’s official use. The jet, a Canadian Bombardier aircraft, was used. It’s about a decade old and it cost the taxpayers about $30 million. This was immediately and obviously controversial among the usual suspects, but I actually went to bat for the premier on this one. Despite my overall opinion on Ford — and I suspect readers have more or less figured out what that is if you’ve made it this far into the column! — I thought he was in the right this time. Ontario is gigantic. The landmass, I mean. We are larger than many European countries and have huge swaths of the province with minimal viable road and rail infrastructure. We have a large population and a gigantic economy and can easily afford the cost of purchasing and then operating an aircraft that will make the entire province, as well as other areas where the premier of Ontario needs to do business, more accessible.

No one should be shocked that Doug Chickened Out, announcing this weekend plans to sell the plane amid mounting public pressure. I’ve been covering this guy for years and it is a long established habit. I have half a mind to actually take an hour this week and just put together a list of all the examples. Maybe I can outsource it to you, you paid-up Line readers, who can leave your favourite example in the comments below. But he’s notorious for flipflops like this. He announces something, he triggers some blowback, he doubles down, he insists it’s actually the greatest idea ever and anyone who disagrees is just some kind of socialist wacko, and then he announces a full, complete, and total retreat. The interesting thing, as I’ve written before isn’t even that he has bad ideas. It isn’t that he eventually backs off from those ideas. It’s the in-between, where Ford, who apparently is utterly lacking even basic levels of self-awareness, seems incapable of realizing that he’s doing that thing he always does, yet again, and that it’s going to end the exact same way it always does for him.

What really galls me about this latest one is that I think the idea of buying the jet was fine. I don’t like Ford. I never have. But I respect the office. And I saw real value in making it easier for Ford, or any of his successors as premier, to do the job efficiently and safely and securely by getting from the capital in Toronto to wherever he needs to go as quickly as possible. That is not something I consider a frill. I know many of my cheap-ass fellow Canadians will clutch their store-brand discount orange juice and lament the extravagance, but I hate that. This is how we wound up with hundreds of billions in infrastructure deficits and a prime ministerial residence that is about to fall down. We are bad. Bad, bad, bad.

So I took Ford’s side this time. And two day later, he chickened out.

“Despite the best of intentions,” Ford said in a statement, “I have heard and agree that now is not the right time for the expense of a government plane. The province is working with Bombardier and other partners to sell the plane as quickly as possible. I will continue the work of building relationships with business and political leaders both across Canada and in the United States, to fight tariffs, attract investments, and create jobs for Ontario workers.”

Let’s all just pause a moment to take in the majesty of that statement. Ontario is now going to “sell the plane as quickly as possible.” We really need to underline that point. It’s not that he was thinking about buying a jet, and now realizes that would be a bad idea. It’s that he bought a jet, and now wishes he hadn’t, so he wants to sell it as fast as he can to make the problem go away. Gee, I wonder if any would-be buyer will pick up on the “very motivated seller” vibe and bargain accordingly.

So yeah, not Doug’s finest moment, but also, not one that’s wildly outside his norm. I’d love to be able to explain this to you, or tell you it’ll stop. But it won’t and I can’t, beyond noting while all of us may contain multitudes, the premier of Ontario seems to contain two solitudes: there’s the Doug Ford that loves talking tough, and then there’s the Doug Ford that literally cannot withstand even mild dollops of criticism. These two solitudes within the premier, it hardly need to be said, do not play nicely with each other.

Seriously. Ford loves talking tough for the cameras. But then he sells the damned plane after two days, and I honestly think it’s because the Ontario opposition leader, Marit Stiles, dinged the plane with a good nickname. Doug and his late brother Rob used to talk about “the gravy train” of wasteful spending back during their Toronto City Hall days. Stiles, leader of the Ontario NDP and a woman I’d forgotten existed, dubbed the plane “the gravy plane.”

I liked it! It was funny! And it was, apparently, more than the premier could withstand.

Planes are not impulse buys. There would have been significant research and planning before the purchase was announced. Ontario would have needed to do a ton of due diligence. There would have needed to be a base for the plane selected. Air crew trained. Ground crew and parts sourced. Security arrangements made. This was probably thousands of manhours of work over months, at least, and then $30 million in spending, all to be undone in 48 hours by a decent quip delivered by a doomed opposition leader via a tweet.

It would be easy to just brush this off as a more-mortifying-than-usual Ford flipflop. And it certainly fits that description. But it’s worth making one broader point. Ford has spent the last year and a bit portraying himself as Captain Canada. He’s tough on Trump. He goes on U.S. shows. He threatens to cut off electricity supplies. He runs ads. He will stand up for this country, and he won’t let anyone stop him.

I know for a fact that American officials have been baffled by this. They don’t quite know what to make of Ford, or how much attention they should pay him. They don’t really quite have an American analogue for him — he’s basically like a state governor, sort of? But, of a state that, if scaled up to the U.S., would have 140 million people? What the hell do we do with this guy, you can see the Americans thinking.

Nothing beyond a blunt reply and some mockery. That’s it. You do nothing else with this guy. You don’t have to. His spine is made of marshmallows. His willpower evaporates like cotton candy sent through a car wash. The tough talk is an act that vapourizes on first contact with a decent comeback line.

This is something that the voters of Ontario know, even if, for reasons I’ll never be able to explain, they don’t quite care. But it’s something our American neighbours are going to figure out. After all, when a foreign country wanted to gift Trump a plane, he accepted the gift with pleasure. Ford can’t even buy a plane for his own official use because he panicked when he was mocked for it.

The voters of Ontario seem eager to forget these things. I doubt the Americans Ford wants to put on a tough-guy act for will be as forgiving. So sure, Doug, keep play acting as Captain Canada. Just don’t be shocked when you get eaten alive by guys better able to stand by what they say in public. And try not to take the whole province with you when you collapse that time.

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