When Matt Spoke started working on Project Ontario, he thought Premier Doug Ford and his team would welcome new policy ideas and might even move to implement them.
Instead, the premier called the group of disaffected conservative voters “yahoos,” saying they “sound like a bunch of radical rights.”
Spoke said he’s had harsher feedback from people working for the premier, as he and his group get more vocal with their criticism of the seven-year Ford government.
“We received very hostile, negative feedback from folks within the government and party … we’ve heard worse from people around the premier,” Spoke said in an interview on Focus Ontario.
“The original idea was just let’s publish what we think the government should be doing on important files like housing or like health care or like education, the state of the economy.”
In particular, Project Ontario has grown concerned the current Progressive Conservative government has lost sight of its ideological roots. They say Ford is spending too much and opting for “retail gimmicks” instead of tackling serious policies.
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“By any standard, if you compare this government to the last two, we’re spending more per capita, we’re spending more as a percentage of GDP than our predecessors were, and we came into office criticizing our predecessors for their spending habits. I think it’s a little disingenuous,” said Spoke, who voted for Ford in 2018 and 2022.
“One of the things that stands out when I look at the government today is this is a government that likes performance politics. They like photo ops, they like press conferences, they like writing big cheques and handing them to people and that’s sort of become the foundation of their economic policy; instead of looking at broad-based reforms like tax reduction or deregulation they prefer to stand in front of Chapman’s ice cream shop and hand a giant cheque to somebody standing in front of a workers because it plays well.”
Ford drew attention over the summer when he emptied a bottle of Crown Royal whisky at a news conference to protest a bottling plant closure. He also ate an ice cream bar in a separate stunt while answering questions from reporters about homelessness, speed cameras and First Nations consultations.
Despite the murmurs of discontent from Project Ontario, Ford’s government remains far ahead of either the Ontario Liberals or NDP, according to successive polls. Summer polling put the Progressive Conservatives around the 50 per cent mark for popularity, higher even than the 43 per cent that delivered Ford a third successive majority in February.
Spoke said the group’s work began publishing opinion pieces on policy, prompting him to realize there were other Progressive Conservative voters who felt the same. They moved from publishing ideas to organizing meet-ups to discuss how to get the party back on the track they think it has fallen from.
Project Ontario insists they don’t want to see Ford replaced as premier, but Spoke also accepts that the change the group wants to see may only happen when the party installs new leadership.
“We are not in this to topple the premier or challenge his leadership,” he said.
“We are in this to see better outcomes in the province; if that happens to be under this leader, that’s great. I think we would take it as a win if any of the things we’re talking about started getting serious attention by cabinet or by the premier’s office. My sense, though, is after eight years, you can only expect so much.”
You can watch the full interview on Focus Ontario or embedded at the top of this article.
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