Jordan: This is one of those bizarre little government screw-ups that probably happen on some level to every single government anywhere on the political spectrum. Is it embarrassing? Sure, but it’s also not a big problem. You screwed something up, you fix it, you apologize, and you move on. It’s the kind of screw up that only sticks around because it says something about the bigger picture. And it says something when you refuse to acknowledge that. And when you won’t answer questions.
News Clip: As you guys, the media want to stick in this little downtown Toronto bubble and start worrying about little things and this respect the, in my opinion, First Nations, right today when we’re supposed to be talking about a historic announcement…
Jordan: So welcome to year two of Doug Ford’s Ontario, where alongside big issues like teacher strikes, autism funding and pandemic preparation, we also have license plates that you can’t read. And look the plates will be fixed. It’ll be fine, but this could have been a one day story and instead it’s a three week story because the first time the issue was raised, we got this:
News Clip: We have worked with our key stakeholders and our plates are readable.
Jordan: And that right there is how a small story becomes a big one. And that’s why it’s worth taking a look at how it happened. And a look at the bigger picture in Ontario right now and discussing a government that’s trying to balance a lot of spinning plates. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Cynthia Mulligan is the Queen’s Park reporter at City News and a frequent guest during at least this administration. Hi Cynthia.
Cynthia: Hi Jordan.
Jordan: Why don’t you tell me, as we sit here today, what is the Ontario government dealing with? Like what issues are kind of swirling around them?
Cynthia: Well, license plates are a huge one. I mean, the license plates have just turned into a boondoggle fiasco nightmare for this government and it, it should have been such a benign thing. You know, the old license plates were peeling, the contract was up and they wanted to sort of put their mark on the province.
Jordan: So for people outside of Ontario who, uh, like to enjoy a laugh at Toronto’s and Ontario’s expense, tell me about the license plates. Like start from the beginning. Why does Ontario have new license plates and what are they?
Cynthia: Well, early on in his tenure, Doug Ford decided he was going to rebrand Ontario in his vision. License plates were one of the main things. And he redid the slogan that sounded like a, you know, a Doug Ford campaign slogan. And he did them in colors, you know, that are known to be more conservative, blue colors. And, and they were instantly dubbed vanity plates by the NDP, and partisan plates. And they were released early February and it instantly turned into a gong show because a Sergeant from Kingston, a police officer, took a photo of a license plate and said, Oh my God, didn’t anybody research these plates? Put it out on Twitter. It went viral because you couldn’t read them when the light is shone on them in the dark, and it became a joke. But it also became a “how not to handle a crisis” lesson for government.
Jordan: Yeah explain what happened in the days following it. Because again, governments screw up, right? Things happen.
Cynthia: Governments screw up. And this could have been dealt with and done in a day, maybe two days on the news cycle. Except the way they handled it, it then became a much bigger story. So Lisa Thompson, who was the former education minister, and you know, I hate to say it, she, she’s, she’s really struggled in front of the media, particularly in scrums. I mean, she was the one who infamously said, Let’s raise class sizes because it will make kids more resilient. And you know, would fall apart in scrums under the intensity. And listen, scrums are not easy at Queen’s Park. They’re really not. So my hats off to anybody who can manage an intense scrum. She has not mastered that skill. So she stands up in the legislature. Somebody brings it up. The NDP brings it up, first day back, and it’s, don’t forget, it’s the first day back after the Christmas break. And instead of coming back, and I think everybody was expecting, you know, five weeks off, six weeks off, they’re coming back. It’s going to be nice and calm and easy.
Jordan: Well we talked to you in late 2019 about the new calm and friendly, uh, PC government.
Cynthia: Yes. They were trying to rebrand themselves. They have a new chief of staff after Dean French left under that scandal, the patronage scandal, and they were really trying to rebrand themselves. And you would see Doug Ford, and even when he got questions at the time, uh, before Christmas, he was very calm and he handled them very well and he didn’t bristle and he didn’t get angry. And I think that they were just expecting, you know, sort of, we’re going to start up this new session and we’re going to carry on with that tone. And Kaboom. License plates blow up in their faces. Lisa Thompson gets up, the minister in charge, gets up and denies there’s a problem when there so clearly is a problem. And basically says, we’ve done a ton of research, no problem. And then it gets worse because then she does a scrum with the media, says that they had to replace the old liberal license plates. I mean, the previous license plates were created some 40 years ago under conservative Premier Bill Davis. So it just, it just got worse and worse and worse, and they wouldn’t acknowledge there was a problem. That then became a much bigger story than it had to. Finally, the next day or so, they’re like, yeah, okay, well, we’re gonna, we’re gonna look into this. And they were very begrudging about it, but it created a bigger problem than what what they should have had. And what really is the problem with these license plates? I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it’s, yes, it’s a mess up. It’s a big flub. Whether it’s 3M’s fault or the government’s fault, we’ll never know, because now there’s a nondisclosure agreement. But what it does is add to the pile of mistakes and backtracks that this government has had to do. And it’s, it’s becoming ingrained in the public consciousness. Cause every time they look at a license plate, they’re going to think, Oh yeah, those are the license plates the government messed up, on top of the autism file, on top of the gas pump stickers that wouldn’t stick, on top of– like I could go on and on and on.
Jordan: What’s happening at Queen’s Park right now? Uh, just in terms of scandal or issue after issue and, and what’s it like down there? Because it seems like it’s a bit chaotic from the outside.
Cynthia: So I had somebody from inside the government high up in the government come to my office recently, and they said, how do you think we’re doing? And I said, I think you’re trying really hard to reset the channel and be different than your first 18 months in office, and I think your past mistakes keep coming to bite you. And she looked at me and went, uh huh. That’s what’s going on.
Jordan: How is Doug Ford navigating all this? This week he gave his first press conference in a while. Did he address it?
Cynthia: Well, he was doing an announcement about a road to the Ring of Fire that, uh he championed as a historic agreement and it’s going to bring prosperity to First Nations in Northern Ontario. I mean, it’s really a very preliminary announcement and it’s basically an announcement that we’re going to try and do this. It put him in front of people. It also put them in a positive place in terms of Indigenous affairs, which, you know, we’ve been grappling with as a, as a nation the last few weeks. So he wanted this positive announcement. The problem was the whole thing was a disaster from the get go. I mean, it’s at the Metro Toronto Convention Center in the bowels, I mean, you’re like several floors down at a trade convention. It’s packed and where they’ve set up this announcement, they don’t have enough room. And the audio is terrible, and the cameras are on a riser looking down at the premier and two chiefs, and there’s a ton of people from the public who want to watch and they can’t because they can’t see, the media can’t see, and the audio is terrible and nobody can hear a darn thing. It was a terrible optic to begin with. I think in watching him, cause he came, when he arrived, he was, he seemed in a really good mood and he was smiling. I think from his vantage point, he could see how things were going wrong. I mean, one chief was standing at the microphone talking. You couldn’t hear a word he was saying. And that had to have been frustrating for him. So I think when the questions started, and the first couple weren’t even about his announcement, about something entirely different, which is not unusual when we haven’t seen him for five weeks. So he has a lot on his plate and he wanted to change the channel with this historic announcement, as he called it. And he wasn’t getting questions about it, and he got mad and that sort of carefully reinvented premier who was more conciliatory and the great uniter? We didn’t see much of him yesterday. In fact, we didn’t see anything of him at all. In fact, I kept thinking to myself, He’s back!
Jordan: What happens? You know the Fords as well as many people who have covered them. What happens when they find themselves in that antagonistic relationship with the media? Because watching the video, I wasn’t there, it it sure seems like that was what was in play.
Cynthia: He was lashing out. He was lashing out. He was getting defensive, he was angry, and he was blaming the media. And we saw that happen during his days with his brother as mayor at City Hall.
Jordan: I don’t want to pile on this government in terms of their policy direction because people can agree or disagree on what they’re doing. But the reason I wanted to talk to you about this is because it’s fascinating. Trying to watch a government rehab their image in real time and like the internal battle that creates and what kind of stuff are you hearing at Queen’s Park about the trials and tribulations, I guess, of trying to, to keep that positive face on when, when all this stuff is going on?
Cynthia: Well, I’ve heard that there’s a lot of frustration with Minister Lisa Thompson for how she initially handled it. I’ve had some people say that’s not how she was told to treat this, and they’re angry and we’ll see how angry if there’s a cabinet shuffle coming soon and how she fares. I see the Premier’s frustration. In the grand scheme of things, these license plates aren’t hurting anybody, unlike say, the autism file. No lives are being directly impacted by these new license plates. A lot has been made that, you know, if there’s a drunk driver, you won’t be able to see. Absolutely, granted, but I do think a huge deal has been made out of these license plates.
Jordan: Yeah, it’s just emblematic, right? It’s not exactly on the face of it about the license plates.
Cynthia: Right. And that’s, I think that’s what’s bothering them the most. They don’t want these sticking to them and it’s just yet another black mark. And they’re trying so hard to be better, to be more efficient, to get past the first year of mistakes.
Jordan: Who is the opposition to them at this point? I know the NDP have been pretty public in their criticism. The Liberals still don’t have a leader.
Cynthia: No, but they will this Saturday. They have their leadership convention. Steven Del Duca, who was a former minister under Kathleen Wynne, ran transportation for several years. He is considered the far front runner and could potentially even win on the first ballot. So that will be interesting for the Liberals to actually have a real leader. Not that that their interim hasn’t done, John Fraser hasn’t done a good job, but he’s been very clear that he doesn’t want it. So I think they need that stability and somebody who will take them in a new direction. They also just want to by-elections. Uh, so now they’re up to eight members.
Jordan: There you go.
Cynthia: There you go.
Jordan: You have to build back from somewhere.
Cynthia: From six to eight, hey, that’s a big jump. So who’s the opposition? I mean, you know, many are saying that the NDP are floundering and they haven’t done a good job being the official opposition to Doug Ford. He himself was called the media his official opposition.
Jordan: Well, I mean, as somebody who, again, watches from afar, it does seem to be far more about this government and premier Ford than it does anybody who is standing up and really criticizing him.
Cynthia: Yes. Even when we haven’t seen him in five weeks, it’s it, he’s a, he’s a large presence. He’s a big personality and that’s what some people say makes him a great premier. If you watch him in a group of people, he’s very personable. He’s very warm, and he loves to talk to people. He does have that skill.
Jordan: We never got to watch Rob Ford run a full reelection campaign, but we will with Doug. What do you expect to see?
Cynthia: You know, it’s, it’s two years out. A lot can change in two years. We already see how Doug Ford is going to try and present himself in the next election. That he saved the economy. He’s, he’s already talking about how many jobs he’s brought to Ontario, how things are better than they’ve ever been before. Yesterday, or this week, he said how he took this province from being bankrupt, to one of the most prosperous in North America. So that is going to be his narrative. And he’s going to pick on the liberals because I imagine there’ll be his main competition and he’ll bring up a lot of dirt on Steven Del Duca when he was with the Liberals under the former premiers.
Jordan: In the next few days and weeks, what issues are still on the table? I know the license plates are now, uh, in the process of being fixed.
Cynthia: Autism. It’s almost another year. Like it’s, it’s everybody on the autism file, parents are furious yet again, because they were promised that the new autism program would be in play this April and now we’re being told no, it’s going to be sometime in 2021. And parents are furious. They’re just furious, so that’s not going away. That’s a simmering wound, I would say.
Jordan: This has been your periodic update from Doug Ford’s Ontario. Thank you, Cynthia.
Cynthia: Pleasure.
Jordan: Cynthia Mulligan, Queen’s Park reporter for City News’, foremost Ford expert. That was The Big Story. If you’d like more, you can head to thebigstorypodcast.ca. If I somehow haven’t bothered you about it yet, you can find more about the Fords by listening to The Gravy Train, our other podcast. You can find that at frequencypodcastnetwork.com, you will find plenty of other podcasts there. You can talk to us on Twitter at @thebigstoryFPN and you can listen to us and subscribe and rate in any podcast application you choose. Apple, Google, Stitcher, Spotify, pick one. Go there. Enjoy. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. Thanks for listening. We’ll talk tomorrow.
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