In this, our political age of the dangerous and the stupid, we voters here in Ontario are attempting to thread the needle and settle for merely the stupid.

How else to explain Premier Doug Ford’s continued high level of approval and support, according to an Abacus poll from last week?

Well, I guess there are a few ways.

One,

it’s summer and who’s really paying much attention? Queen’s Park is dark, the usual mode since Ford took power in 2018. Lots of time to go around playing Premier for the cameras without having to contend with any direct opposition pushback. An opposition that’s in varying degrees of disarray, on one hand, and wearing a cloak of invisibility on the other, despite conducting its own barnstorming tour of the province and still coming up with Marit Who? We’re also less than six months gone since the last provincial election, so why would anyone be bothered to get their head around the notion of Who would you vote for if an election were held today? What are you talking about, pollster? Didn’t I just get finished casting a ballot, like, whenever, recently?

Two,

all things Trump related.

Tariffs, trade wars, the Epstein files, the Epstein files, the Epstein files, cheating at golf, tariffs, trade deals, Scotland, the Epstein files, the Epstein files, the Epstein files.

Who’s got the headspace for anymore politics than all that?

I mean a real time famine and genocide is barely receiving a shrug of acknowledgment in most quarters.

So yeah,

Doug Ford’s getting a pass on much serious consideration about his job performance right now and there’s little traction to be made trying to hold his government’s feet to the fire.

But still, guys.

We can take a moment to look around, survey the joint, take in the state of things and express some displeasure at how things are going, can’t we? Even when asked a hypothetical question about a pretend election. Why would a larger percentage of voters support Doug Ford now than did in February? What has the man done to earn any sort of uptick in approval?

He’s done an awful lot of patriotic chest-thumping in the face of ongoing threats coming up from the Trump White House. If he were calling the shots, he tells us, boy oh boy, there’d be hell to pay for the Americans, counter-tariffs, maybe even a little withholding of electricity from our closest neighbours to the south. Not that he’s criticizing his new bestie, mind you, Prime Minister Mark Carney. The two of them are getting on like gangbusters, don’t you know. Even having sleepovers at the premier’s Muskoka cottage last week during the first ministers meeting. Up until after midnight, chewing the fat and sorting out the world’s problems.

“If Doug Ford were Prime Minister—”

Ooops.

Did he just say that out loud?

Never mind that the current Prime Minister is proving to be something of wet blanket to an increasing number of non-Liberal/Conservative-minded Canadians who got behind him with elbows up ready to pitch in and defend the country from any and all unfriendly excursions coming from stateside. Quietly giving into every impulsive and belligerent demand made by the president, the PM has gone from feisty to compliant without so much as a headshake or eye roll in the quest for some sort of trade deal that, in all likelihood, will prove to be no more binding or lasting than the next stray thought that passes through Donald Trump’s noggin.

So, I guess, Doug Ford gets to play bad cop in the scenario. Barking (with no biting), bluffing, tough talking, serving up the bluster with a healthy serving of rah! rah! Resplendent in the glow of keeping himself to the reasonable side of Danielle Smith and Scott Moe. Which helps him direct most of our attention away from his actual running of the province. You know, the job he’s been elected three times to do.

Look around.

It ain’t pretty.

Pretty much none of it.

I wonder how many of those 50% of voters polled who said that if an election were held today, they’d vote for Doug Ford would speak as favourably if they were asked the question: Are you better off today than you were when Doug Ford was first elected premier? Is the province in better shape now, in 2025, than it was in 2018?

By any measure, it would be impossible to answer yes to either of those questions.

The state of healthcare. Hallway medicine remains in effect, arguably even more so. Not enough family doctors. Still. ERs closed or with reduced hours. Surgery and other procedural wait times farmed out to private clinics and practices, privatization some might call it, further stressing public delivery by poaching staff with higher pay and better working conditions and digging deeper into the government purse of health spending.

The education system under attack, top to bottom, starting with an impossibly slow $10/day daycare rollout. The hijacking of public school boards through a combination of persistent underfunding, provincial mismanagement of state-of-good-repairs allocation and ideological tinkering in yet another step to undermine local democracy. A college and university system, too, wobbly through a continued fiscal squeeze of provincial underfunding and legislated tuition freeze.

A near collapse of housing starts right smack dab in the middle of an actual housing and shelter crisis with the corresponding crisis of the unhoused living rough on the streets and other public spaces. Record foodbank use. Home ownership becoming a pipe dream for many especially the younger cohort. Zoning laws and bylaws more attuned to the party’s developer base than to the needs of increasing housing stock.

Cutting renewable energy projects, first things, first, while the province slowly broils and battles wildfires, a battle made more difficult because of actual funding cuts to wildfire emergency funding and the Ministry of Natural Resources. The constitutionally dubious Bill 5 that fast tracks resource extraction projects and trammels environmental oversight and Indigenous rights and input in a slavering push for the ‘critical mineral’ the premier just cannot stop saying over and over again. Charter rights infringing malicious push to tear up bike lanes for no other reason than because.

And the corruption.

The rank fucking corruption.

The still inconclusive Greenbelt scandal (just when oh when will the Mounties get their man?). Opaque ministerial zoning orders. The de-parking of a huge swath of Wasaga Beach in order to encourage development.

On and on and on it goes with the Ford government with no upside. Can you name an upside? Right, right. We no longer have to pay for our automobile license plate registration. A billion dollar ding to the provincial treasury to save drivers $120 a year.

Yes,

shit is terrible everywhere.

But surely we can multitask our outrage and not reward any politician a free pass just because he’s not the worst bad. And make no mistake. If you’ve been living in Ontario for any part of the last seven years, Doug Ford is absolutely the main reason that the shit is terrible here too.