Paul Tuns:
Ontario Premier Doug Ford called an early election for Feb. 27 under the pretense of needing provincial stability in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs threats against Canada. A provincial election was not scheduled until June 2026.
Announcing the early campaign, Ford tweeted, “To protect Ontario, I’m asking the people for a strong mandate – a strong, stable, four-year mandate that will outlive and outlast the Trump administration.”
Ford’s Progressive Conservatives are seeking their third consecutive majority.
Doug Ford won the 2018 Progressive Conservative leadership by earning the support of Tanya Granic Allen voters and soon after beat Kathleen Wynne in the provincial election. However, Ford betrayed those voters and others concerned about the sexualization of children when, after indicating he would scrap his predecessor’s radical LGBTQ indoctrination in elementary schools, he maintained lessons on gender theory and identity in Ontario schools. Campaign Life Coalition said at the time that the parental opt-out was insufficient because the LGBQT lessons permeated all classes.
After Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced her plans in 2024 banning the provision of sex-change surgeries and hormone therapies to minor children, requiring parental consent prior to students’ adopted new names or pronouns, and preventing women from competing against biological males in sports, Ford said he had no plans to legislate similar protections in Ontario.
Parents as First Educators said “Ford is wrong on this issue” and that if he would not enact protection for children from bodily mutilation, “then he should immediately resign and make way for a new PC leader and Premier who will stand up for the children and the parents of Ontario.”
Campaign Life Coalition president Jeff Gunnarson told The Interim that Doug Ford has been “a huge disappointment” leaving largely intact “much of Kathleen Wynne’s radical agenda including LGBQT indoctrination in schools and her anti-free speech bubble zone criminalizing pro-life speech near abortion facilities.”
Gunnarson said that abortion and euthanasia deaths have climbed under Ford administration and that the Progressive Conservative government has passed up numerous opportunities to enact common-sense laws that would make it more difficult to kill preborn babies or vulnerable patients, such conscience rights for health care workers, parental notification laws, or improving palliative care for the terminally ill.
The Liberal, New Democratic, and Green parties are all officially pro-abortion and pro-LGBQT. The NDP have introduced three private members’ bills in recent years pushing the province to move further left socially, with bills on free contraception, anti-free speech bubble zones to protect drag queen story time, and outlawing the use of abortion-victim photography in pamphlets sent to homes.
Gunnarson said that while there are green-lit PC candidates identified by CLC as pro-life, there are no such candidates in the left-wing opposition parties. He urged Ontario voters to vote for the local pro-life candidate and not the party.
The New Blue Party is running more than 50 candidates and their platform, approved by the party membership at a June 2024 conference, has pro-life and pro-family policies.
Among the principles of the New Blue Party is respect for sanctity of human life and the importance of family. A core principle of the party is, “A belief that the health and wellbeing of society is improved by strong families in which parents are the primary educators and caregivers of their children and by recognizing the inherent value and dignity of human life from conception to natural death.”
Among the pro-life policies passed at their 2024 convention, the New Blue Party has a commitment to support “the protection and dignity of all human life from conception to natural death” and to “work to stop the expansion of Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID) for seniors, those with mental or physical disabilities, or veterans and will instead promote palliative care to enable dying with dignity and care.”
New Blue has an extensive set of policies to reform education including supporting “parental school choice in the form of alternative schooling tax credits and/or a student voucher system” and “ending ‘woke’ activism with the removal of critical race theory and gender identity theory from Ontario schools.” It also commits to a Parent’s Bill of Rights “to formalize and empower the role of parents in educational decision-making, enhancing transparency, trust, and collaboration within the education system.” It would also support “policies that provide ‘free speech immunity’ to parents, educators, trustees, students, and other stakeholders providing their opinions on the education system.”
New Blue tweeted “Despite holding a majority government for 6.5 years, the Ontario PCs have repeatedly refused to take a conservative stance on education.”
New Blue had registered candidates in about half of Ontario’s 124 ridings when The Interim went to press.
The Stop the New Sex-Ed Party and Family Rights Party are registered with Elections Ontario but did not have candidates listed at press time.
