The Lost PC Octade
Eight years of lost opportunity under Doug Ford
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If you followed the last federal election campaign, you would have heard a great deal about the so-called “Lost Liberal Decade” from Mr. Poilievre (which, as a complete aside, I would take great issue with considering PM Trudeau’s work to alleviate child poverty, fight climate change, handle the COVID-19 pandemic, and legalize marijuana).
Whatever one thinks of the federal record, the data is clear that Ontarians have lived through their own lost octade under Premier Doug Ford. And the problem extends well beyond economics. It reaches into something deeper and harder to restore: the belief that this province is capable of progress and shared prosperity.
This is a story about declining growth, weakening employment, rising debt, lost confidence, declining civic participation, and a province whose people have, increasingly, stopped believing in it.
The Economics of Decline
Two of the strongest fundamental drivers of broad prosperity and wellbeing are economic output and employment. Both have deteriorated in Ontario since 2018.
The charts below show GDP change from 2018, when Doug Ford took office, to 2023, the most recent period for which provincial data is available from Statistics Canada.
Across Canada outside of Ontario, GDP grew by 8.4%.
In Ontario, GDP grew by 7.2% over the same period.
This difference becomes even more pronounced when adjusting for population. Per-capita GDP grew by 1% across Canada outside Ontario. In Ontario, it shrunk by 1.7%.
This is not a marginal delta. It is a reversal of long-standing provincial economic leadership. The much-discussed national decline in per-capita GDP appears, in large part, to be a story of slow growth across the country and active decline inside Ontario.
The pattern repeats with employment.
When Premier Ford took power in 2018, Ontario’s unemployment rate sat slightly below the national average. Today, Ontario’s unemployment rate is nearly 8%, compared to 6.6% across the rest of Canada. Ontario is pulling the national unemployment rate upward, not downward.
Taken together, the story is straightforward. Ontario is producing less economic activity and providing fewer jobs than the rest of the country.
One might assume that this decline reflects a conscious policy decision. Perhaps the Ford government chose to trade growth and jobs for fiscal discipline, prioritizing debt reduction.
That is not what happened.
Ontario entered Premier Ford’s tenure with the highest provincial debt load in Canada, and that has not changed. Despite being one of only two Conservative premiers to hold office continuously since 2018, Doug Ford has not reduced provincial debt in absolute or relative terms. Saskatchewan, under Premier Scott Moe, has kept provincial debt effectively flat. Ontario has not.
This is not smaller government. It is simply worse economic outcomes.
Statscan only provides provincial data dating back to 2023, but these trends have not changed in the past two years.
The Loss of Hope
Yes, economic growth and employment are the drivers of prosperity. What might be even worse is the appathy, disillusionment, and pessimism that have been instilled in Ontarians.
Three indicators illustrate this shift.
A consumer confidence index published by Nanos Research and Bloomberg shows that Ontarians are the least confident consumers in the country. Ontario has the lowest 12-month high, the lowest 12-month low, and the lowest 12-month average. Ontarians are more pessimistic about the economy than any other Canadians.
When Premier Ford took office in 2018, Ontario was a net destination province. Only British Columbia saw higher interprovincial in-migration.
That trend has reversed dramatically. Beginning in 2020, Ontario became a net emigrator, meaning more Canadians left Ontario for other provinces than arrived. And since then, Ontario has been the largest net exporter of people in Canada, by a wide margin.
People vote with their feet. Increasingly, they are choosing to build their futures elsewhere.
Finally, and to a believer in the positive force of politics, worst of all, Ontarians have become apathetic.
Ontario’s last two provincial elections recorded turnout of 44% and 45%. No other provincial election in Canada has fallen below 50% turnout since Premier Ford took office.
One can fairly argue that opposition parties in Ontario have failed at giving people something compelling to vote for; they’ve tried to simply be “not Doug Ford”. The result is a public that is uninspired and no longer believes participation matters.
If Ontario is to recover its optimism and economic vitality, the opposition (and, as a Liberal, I’m looking to the Ontario Liberal Party) must offer a tangible and ambitious vision for what Ontario could be. A vision rooted in a real economic strategy and that better is possible through politics, but that better requires participation.
As Jed Bartlet said, “decisions are made by those who show up.”