Strong leadership or political theatre? Ontario Premier

Doug Ford’s attack Tuesday

on international booze corporation Diageo can be seen either way.

The premier was in a fury over the company’s plan to eliminate a Crown Royal whisky bottling plant in Amherstburg, Ont. at the cost of about 200 local jobs, most of them unionized.

Ford certainly created a media moment when he poured out a bottle of Crown Royal at a press conference and threatened the company by saying, “You hurt my people, I’m gonna hurt you.” The company was “as dumb as a bag of hammers” for making the decision, Ford added

It was an elbows-up response that offered a sharp contrast to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s policy of making concessions to the U.S. government in exchange for nothing.

The problem is Diageo’s move seems to be about

corporate efficiency, not tariffs

, although the Amherstburg jobs will be going to the U.S.

Diageo is an international company headquartered in London, England and it will still produce and warehouse Crown Royal in Canada. Whisky for the Canadian market will be bottled in Canada; whisky for the American market will be bottled in the U.S.

Ford’s rant this week is reminiscent of a similar one in August when he

went after the CEO of Stelco’s American parent company

, Lourenco Goncalves, for supporting U.S. steel tariffs. “I got a problem with that guy,” Ford said. “He doesn’t give two hoots about his workers at Stelco.”

Ford said he expected to get a phone call from Goncalves, and if so, Ford would “blast him” for favouring the company’s U.S. interests over its Canadian ones. We don’t know if he ever did get that phone call.

Ford’s sending a bad message about his province when he attacks business people for acting like business people. As a guy who comes from the business world himself, Ford knows — even if, as premier, he won’t say it — that the main obligation of companies like Diageo and Stelco’s owner, Cleveland-Cliffs, is to their shareholders, not their workers.

Cleveland-Cliffs has been losing money. It’s no surprise that its CEO loves U.S. President Donald Trump’s big steel tariffs. Stelco only represents $2.9 billion of Cleveland-Cliffs $19.2 billion in sales. High U.S. tariffs will benefit the company more than hurt it.

Meantime, Diageo has seen a decline in profits recently. Finding spending efficiencies is the CEO’s job and the smart thing to do. The Ford government boasts about doing the same.

Ford’s futile attacks on the leaders of big international corporations are unlikely to benefit Ontario, and his reaction reveals the weakness of his government’s economic approach.

Too often, the Ford government treats jobs as something to be bought with public money, not something created by companies with good ideas and their own money. Ford asked Diageo “

Is there any incentive I can give you to stay here, to save these jobs?

” Thankfully, the company said no. When Ford didn’t get what he wanted from Stelco, he

mused about the province buying the steel company

, which sold to Cleveland-Cliffs for $3.4 billion last year. Let’s not mention the Ford government’s multi-billion-dollar “investment” in electric car battery plants that looks increasingly ill-fated.

Ford is almost certainly sincere in his concern for workers losing their jobs, but his pandering to unions is purely political. Unions are an important part of Ford’s voting coalition and their support is key to keeping the other two parties in the political cellar. The workers at Diageo plant and Stelco are unionized.

This week, the premier even went so far as to say, “Thank you to my brothers and sisters at Unifor over at Crown Royal, I got your backs. We’re gonna be there to help you.” Unifor is the largest private sector union in the country.

These union members are not the premier’s brothers and sisters. They are people looking out for their own interests, as are their corporate bosses. Ford’s job is to focus on the entire economy, not work himself into a fit because of a couple of hundred jobs at a bottling plant.

In his enthusiasm for unions, Ford is losing sight of the big picture: Corporation create jobs; unions and governments don’t.

Ford’s government can’t look forward if it spends too much time and public money trying to “protect” jobs. The economy is always dynamic. Jobs come and jobs go as economic conditions change. Ford can’t prevent job losses.

Behind the rhetoric, Ford seems to get that. He recently announced

$70 million in support for retraining workers

affected by U.S. tariffs, which could include Stelco employees. That’s an acknowledgement that workers and the government need to adapt.

While Ford’s fuming might not benefit the economy, his tough talk is a political hit. A recent

Abacus Data poll

shows that Ford’s government has 53 per cent support, up 10 points since the March election.

Unfortunately, leadership involves more than leading in the polls. It requires a plan for the province’s future, not clinging to the past.

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TOP STORY

The Quebec government has rejected a package of race-based federal funding, declaring that they don’t accept the notion of “systemic racism” underlying it.

Starting in 2021, the government of then prime minister Justin Trudeau earmarked $6.64 million for a new federal program for Impact of Race and Culture Assessments. These were reports designed to secure lighter sentences for Black criminals in order to counteract “systemic racism in the criminal justice system,” as a federal backgrounder put it.

But Quebec’s justice department has consistently sent back its share of the funding, and told The Canadian Press in an email this week that “Quebec doesn’t subscribe to the approach on which the funding program is based, namely systemic racism.”

Since at least 2020, the Government of Canada has repeatedly endorsed the idea that the country’s institutions are all fundamentally racist.

Although discriminatory codes haven’t been a feature of Canadian law for decades, “systemic racism” is premised on the idea that any inequality of outcome is itself evidence of racism.

If the racial mix of any group does not match the racial mix of the wider population, this is inferred as the consequence of embedded discrimination.

As Canada’s official “anti-racism lexicon” puts it, systemic racism exists in the form of practices that “appear neutral on the surface but, nevertheless, have an exclusionary impact on racialized persons.”

The concept of systemic racism has been using to justify everything from race-based hiring quotas to federal grants that are available only for “equity-deserving” races.

But the notion has been particularly embraced by the Department of Justice, where any racial overrepresentation among offenders has been framed as the direct result of racist courts and racist law enforcement.

“Systemic racism in the criminal justice system has resulted in the overincarceration of Indigenous peoples, Black Canadians and members of marginalized communities,” the Department of Justice declared in 2021, before vowing to “root out systemic racism.”

Quebec, however, has proved the most consistent holdout to the notion that their governing structures are self-evidently racist.

In 2020, at the height of Black Lives Matter protests roiling both U.S. and Canadian cities, Quebec Premier François Legault was one of the only Canadian political leaders to avoid issuing a statement declaring himself to be the head of a government shot through with “systemic racism.”

“I don’t understand why people are trying to stick on one word. I think what is important is to say and all agree that there is some racism in Quebec, and we don’t want that anymore,” he said at the time.

Compare that with Legault’s Ontario counterpart, Doug Ford. In 2020, Ford told the Ontario Legislative Assembly “of course there’s systemic racism in Ontario … there’s systemic racism across this country.”

Legault would reject the systemic racism label again in 2021, following the release of a coroner’s investigation into the failure of Quebec’s child protection services to prevent the death of a seven-year-old girl, Géhane Kamel, at the hands of her stepmother.

Since Kamel was Indigenous, the report included a call for the Quebec government to declare itself guilty of systemic racism.

But Legault refused, even brandishing a Le Petit Robert dictionary at a press conference to read out the definition of “systemic.”

“Le Petit Robert defines ‘systemic’ as: ‘relative to a system in its entirety,’” Legault said in French. “For me, a system is something that comes from above…. Is there something from on high that is communicated everywhere in the health system that says: ‘Be discriminatory in your treatment of Indigenous people’? It’s evident for me, the answer is no.”

At the federal level, the Bloc Québécois has similarly been among the most vocal opponents of an ongoing federal push to normalize the idea that the workings of Canadian governments are clandestinely racist.

In leaders’ debates for the 2021 federal election, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said the term systemic racism had been employed as a club against Quebec. “It became this white society against this other white society. The words became toxic,” he said.

Impact of Race and Culture Assessments (IRCAs) were part of a broad package of federal programs launched in 2021 with the aim of “rooting out systemic racism” across the Canadian federal government.

Among other “anti-racism” plans pursued at the same time as IRCAs was a Trudeau government proposal to end mandatory sentencing for a host of gun crimes on the premise that offenders convicted of the crimes were disproportionately Black and Indigenous. This included “robbery with a firearm,” “discharging firearm with intent” and “weapons trafficking.”

IRCAs are modelled on Gladue reports, a longtime feature of the Canadian court system in which judges must sentence Indigenous offenders only after reading a commissioned report detailing the “systemic or background factors” that may have influenced the crime.
This can include everything from a past ADHD diagnosis, to whether parents or extended relatives had attended an Indian Residential School.

IRCAs simply aimed to extend Gladue sentencing rules to other non-white criminals. As a policy document explained, “IRCAs inform sentencing judges of the disadvantages and systemic racism faced by Black and other racialized Canadians and may recommend alternatives to incarceration and/or culturally appropriate accountability measures within a sentence of incarceration.”

Although Quebec has refused funding for IRCAs, it was just last month that an IRCA reportedly first featured in a Quebec sentencing decision.

Convicted drug trafficker Frank Paris had been facing a 35-month sentence, but Quebec Court Judge Magali Lepage reduced this to 24 months on the basis of an IRCA that, among other things, stated that Paris “ended up getting involved in selling drugs” because he struggled with high school French.

At the time, Quebec’s minister against racism, Christopher Skeete, said he had “concern and worry” over the decision.

“If we live in a society where people are judged by their skin colour, I’m not sure that’s a way forward for us to fight racism,” he told CBC.

 

IN OTHER NEWS

U.S. politicians keep issuing letters blaming Canada for the fact that its forests are catching fire. A group of seven Michigan lawmakers as well as one federal Congressman, all Republicans,

have recently issued statements

demanding that Canada deal with the wildfire smoke now plaguing many border states. “Instead of enjoying family vacations at Michigan’s beautiful lakes and campgrounds … Michiganders are forced to breathe hazardous air as a result of Canada’s failure to prevent and control wildfires,” read one.

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Who Canada honours is a direct reflection on our country and our values, and nothing conveys that more profoundly than our nation’s highest civilian honour: the Order of Canada.

Its recipients are supposed to represent our very best by recognizing those who, through their life and conduct, embody the aspiration contained in the Order’s motto: “They desire a better country”.

But what happens when a recipient of this distinction, entrusted to represent the very best of Canadian values, instead undermines them? This is the question before us today, and why we believe Mohamad Fakih’s appointment to the Order of Canada must be revoked.

On Aug. 25, Fakih took to social media to declare: “On behalf of literally every Canadian of conscience: if you are a Canadian and a supporter of Israel, you do not have basic human values, let alone Canadian values.”

These words are not a matter of political disagreement. They are a sweeping condemnation of millions of Canadians who support a democratic country, or who share religious, cultural, or political ties with Israel. They are words that deny belonging, strip dignity, and attack the very notion that Canada is a home for all.

The Order of Canada was never meant to serve as a platform for dividing Canadians into “greater” and “lesser” citizens. It was created to honour those whose contributions elevate us all. When a member of the Order suggests that a vast portion of Canadians lack “basic human values,” the integrity of the distinction itself is put at risk.

This is not a partisan squabble, nor a reflexive response to one moment of online outrage. It is a principled appeal to preserve the standing of the Order of Canada as a symbol of unity, dignity, and moral courage. We are three former parliamentarians hailing from different parts of this country, who served at different levels of government, representing different political perspectives and who represent some of the cultural diversity of Canada. Despite our different political traditions and life experiences, we are united in our conviction that Fakih’s words cannot be squared with the values that the Order demands of its members.

On behalf of literally every Canadian of conscience: if you are a Canadian and a supporter of Israel, you do not have basic human values, let alone Canadian values. Your tweets and messages are saved and known to all of us. They live. Some might not comment around you, because… https://t.co/yUREZaAaTp

— Mohamad Fakih, C.M. (@mohamadfakih8) August 25, 2025

The precedents are clear. The Order has been revoked in past instances where appointees engaged in dishonourable conduct, fraud, or hate. This is not to erase the accomplishments of Fakih, but to recognize that the honour of membership is not permanent if one’s actions undermine the very reason it was granted.

Canada today is grappling with rising antisemitism, deepening polarization, and the corrosive effects of global unrest. At such a time, the symbols that bind us matter more than ever. To allow rhetoric that denies Canadian belonging to go unchecked, never mind for such division to be voiced by someone holding our nation’s highest honour, would send a devastating signal.

It would say that Canada tolerates exclusion under the guise of conscience, and it would imply that honours can be held without accountability. This erodes public trust in the very institution that’s supposed to celebrate our unity through shared Canadian values for democracy and the rule of law that bind us together; and it undermines the credibility and integrity of the Order.

To be clear, revoking Fakih’s membership would not be an act of censorship. He is free, like all Canadians, to express his views. But freedom of expression does not immunize one from accountability, nor does it confer immunity from the consequences of dishonourable conduct. Membership in the Order of Canada is not a right — it is a privilege. And with privilege comes responsibility.

If the Order of Canada is to remain more than a lapel pin, if it is to stand as a beacon of the values that Canadians aspire to, then it must be rigorously defended with courage. That means upholding its standards not just in times of comfort, but in moments of controversy.

This is why we call upon the Advisory Council for the Order of Canada to conduct a formal review of Fakih’s statements, to assess whether his conduct has brought disrepute to the honour, and to recommend revocation should it find that he has betrayed the ideals of unity and dignity that the Order enshrines.

We want to be clear: this is not about silencing disagreement. It is about ensuring that our highest national distinction continues to represent the best of who we are: a country that values inclusion, respects differences, and affirms that every Canadian belongs.

As parliamentarians, we swore Oaths of allegiance to Canada, to uphold our Constitution, and defend our values. While we may no longer serve in public office, that commitment to defending our country and its ideals remains everlasting and that is why we feel compelled to defend the integrity of the Order of Canada.

For if the Order is to remain a symbol of our highest ideals, it must be entrusted only to those whose words and deeds honour our Canadian values of equality, respect, and dignity toward everyone.

Lisa MacLeod is a former Ontario cabinet minister, Selina Robinson is a former British Columbia cabinet minister, and Kevin Vuong is a former member of Parliament.

Last Sunday, 46-year-old

Abdul Aleem Farooqi

was shot to death in his Vaughan home just after midnight. The shooter was part of a band of armed, masked intruders seeking to rob the house.

Farooqi was protecting his family when he died, and his children are now left without a father, and his wife without a husband.

On the same day in

Welland

, 25-year-old Daniel Senecal is alleged to have broken into another home and sexually abused a toddler while the parents slept. He was known to the police.

Senecal was

released early

in March after serving time for a similar offence, and he may very well get out early again considering the

leniency

of our bail laws.

Both were unspeakably horrific crimes that will scar innocent children and parents for their entire lives. The worst part is that the families are unlikely to get true justice given the atmosphere of permissiveness that pervades the legal system.

Criminals need to become afraid in Canada, but right now, they are brazen. They have become emboldened by a broken bail system and gutless politicians who prefer to champion

failed

criminal justice reform, rather than punishing wrongdoers.

These so-called leaders actively endanger Canadians by equivocating and refusing to treat this crisis for what it is.

If the authorities cannot step up to help foster a culture of law and order, the least they can do is get out of the way and empower good Canadians to do it themselves when their safety is at risk.

In order to function, a free society demands public safety. That does not exist when tragedies like the death of

JahVai Roy

become normalized. The eight-year-old died in August after stray bullets fired in North York entered his bedroom and hit him while he slept.

As of 2024,

Statistics Canada

data show that violent Criminal Code violations had increased by nearly 50 per cent since 2015. It is true that Canada is still statistically safer than the United States, but nobody should be taking this as an excuse or indicator that the status quo is acceptable.

The most notable action taken by the Liberal government in the name of fighting crime has been to pick on legal gun owners. Police say that

90 per cent of handguns

seized in Ontario following violent crimes were traced to the U.S., not the local firearms shop.

Far from rising crime only being solely a phenomenon of the Greater Toronto Area, cities like

Winnipeg

top the Canadian list for violent crime. Even smaller cities like

Lethbridge

and

Kelowna

, which are top

destinations

for

young

families, are national leaders in property crime.

One of the most infuriating and preventable aspects in the decline of public safety has been the gentle attitude towards lawbreakers, including those who sexually abuse children.

Child sex offenders should never get out of prison, let alone be granted early release or parole. It is perversely fortunate for them that Canada

abolished

capital punishment in 1976.

A poll conducted by Research Co. in 2024 found that

a majority

of Canadians support the death penalty for murder. More surveys on the question of capital punishment for other heinous crimes should be commissioned.

Canadians should rightfully feel like they are on their own, and they deserve the right to defend themselves and their families without fear of prosecution. At least one politician will be championing this in the fall session of Parliament.

Pierre Poilievre

has proposed a “Stand on Guard” law, which would amend the law so that it is presumed that the use of force in defending one’s home was reasonable.

“As long as people are going to engage in criminal activity, the people who live in their homes and are suffering that kind of violence need to have the opportunity to defend themselves and to use whatever force necessary to do so,”

said

lawyer Robert Karrass, commenting on the proposal. “It’s absolutely appropriate for the law to be changed.”

This would be a good start, but is only one piece of the solution.

Unfortunately, Canadians should not bet on a transformative effort from the government as the Liberals have signalled they will not vote for the “Stand on Guard” law.

Following Poilievre’s announcement, Attorney General Sean Fraser

posted

on X that “This isn’t the Wild West, this is Canada.”

Fraser was deservedly panned for such a callous, flippant response, but it shows that the Liberals remain more concerned with lecturing about tone, rather than curbing crime.

At least in the Wild West, few batted an eye when law-abiding citizens formed up posses and dealt with bandits and other threats permanently.

In Canada, a country that is seemingly more

barbaric

every year, there is no reason for the public to have full confidence in the authorities to keep them safe.

Children are shot and assaulted in their beds, innocent civilians are stabbed on busy streets, illegal guns

flow across the border

, and repeat offenders walk free with ease with toddlers being subjected to the consequences.

Encountering a good, law-abiding citizen who is empowered to protect themselves and others should terrify criminals. Every would-be burglar, carjacker, and abuser should know that he is taking his life into his own hands the moment he violates a family’s home.

Far from being vigilante justice, this is a civilized presumption that the law will always protect innocent first and foremost.

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“We are not banning vehicles that use gasoline, we are responding to the market. We are responding to Canadians.”

Those were the words of Wade Grant, the parliamentary secretary to the environment minister, Julie Dabrusin, speaking to a Conservative motion on the government’s electric vehicle mandate in the House of Commons in June.

In reality, if the

Liberals were responding to the market

, they would scrap the mandate that will require 20 per cent of all cars sold in Canada next year to be electric vehicles.

The reason is that EV sales have

fallen for five months in a row

and accounted for just 7.9 per cent of new vehicles sold in Canada in June.

The forecast for this year is that EV sales will hit 9.7 per cent of sales, or 180,000 units.

Car makers that don’t hit the government’s arbitrary 20 per cent target — which is all of them except Tesla — will have to buy credits from, you guessed it, Tesla to comply with the regulation.

Elon Musk’s company, which does not manufacture in Canada, recorded regulatory credit sales of nearly US$3 billion in 2024/25, according to its financial statements.

Brian Kingston, president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturer’s Association (CVMA), estimates that buying credits to hit the 20 per cent target would cost car companies $3 billion in 2026, on top of the hundreds of millions of dollars they are paying in U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs. (Canadian automakers are subject to a 25 per cent American tariff but can subtract U.S. content from the applied rate, meaning most manufacturers pay an effective tariff of 10 to 12.5 per cent. In ballpark figures, on sales of $4 billion in exports, that is a further $400 million.)

The only other option to buying credits is to cut the production of gas-powered cars by up to 900,000 units.

Either outcome is likely to

result in more unemployment

, to add to the 56,600 full-time manufacturing job losses that were recorded in Ontario in the second quarter of this year.

It is a classic case of central planning gone haywire that many people thought they had seen the back of when Justin Trudeau left office.

The government came up with an arbitrary target and has since used subsidies and taxpayer-funded incentives to hit it.

As deputy Conservative leader Melissa Lantsman said in the debate in the House in June, “the Liberals think they can control someone’s life better than they can; that they make decisions better than Canadians can for themselves and we get significantly worse outcomes.”

The mandate was introduced by then environment minister Steven Guilbeault in 2022 as a way to reduce auto emissions. The plan was to require 20 per cent of all car sales to be electric (or plug-in hybrid) by 2026, rising to 60 per cent in 2030 and 100 per cent by 2035.

In 2024, EV sales hit 13.8 per cent of total cars sold, according to Statistics Canada, buoyed by a federal incentive program that provided up to $5,000 for EV buyers, and even richer provincial schemes, such as Quebec’s Roulez vert program that offered up to $7,000.

However, the federal program was cancelled in January and the Quebec incentive has dropped to $4,000 this year and $2,000 next. (The province accounts for more than half of all EV sales in Canada.)

The result is that

sales have tumbled and the industry says

there is “no pathway” to hitting the 20 per cent target.

Grant told the House in June that during the last election campaign, the Liberals committed to reintroducing a purchase incentive of up to $5,000. However, the CVMA points out that it would cost $900 million to incentivize the 182,000 sales it is anticipated would be required to hit the 20 per cent target.

Mark Carney has been bequeathed a real mess by his predecessor but there are no signs that the government is considering a retreat, as it did on the carbon tax.

In the House in June, the parliamentary secretary ignored the market reality by suggesting that EV sales are continuing to grow in Canada and around the world. “That is not a political talking point, that is a market reality,” he said.

Except it isn’t. True, EV sales globally are still rising, but that is largely because the Chinese are determined to flood the world with low-cost vehicles.

The Liberals could likely hit their environmental targets in short order if they allowed $20,000 BYD electric vehicles into the Canadian market tariff-free. Instead, the government

imposed a 100 per cent surtax

on Chinese cars to protect the home market.

Grant said the government does not want to force Canadians to buy electric vehicles but it wants “to build the cars of tomorrow.” The Liberals are all in on EVs, having provided support to manufacturers estimated at around $31.5 billion by the Parliamentary Budget Office (the provinces have contributed a further $21.5 billion, the PBO said in June 2024).

The government has spent a further $1.1 billion through the Canada Infrastructure Bank on public charging stations. “We are working across the entire ZEV (zero-emission vehicle) value chain,” Grant said.

There’s no doubt that electric vehicles are here to stay, as anyone who has travelled to countries without a 100 per cent tariff on Chinese cars can testify. The International Energy Agency reports that one-fifth of all car sales globally are now EVs.

It would be lunacy for Canada to adopt Trump’s stance that “the electric vehicle hoax” is the result of a conspiracy of “radical left fascists, Marxists and communists” and to rule that automakers no longer need to measure or control emissions.

But if the Liberal government is really “responding to the market,” as Grant says it is, it has to adopt a more common-sense, flexible policy that recognizes the reality that high purchase prices have dampened demand. Preferably it comes up with a policy that does not line the pockets of the world’s richest man with cash for credits that have the intrinsic worth of a defunct deutschemark.

National Post

jivison@criffel.ca

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