Ontario Conservative candidate Doug Ford looks to President Donald Trump’s successes for inspiration.
Speaking Saturday at The Manning Networking Conference in Ottawa, Ford pointed to Trump’s tax cuts as something Ontario needs to do.
”We have a guy south of the border who’s just lowered the corporate tax rate to 20 percent. He’s made new incentives for companies. The [Premier] Kathleen Wynne Liberals are taxing the companies to death. Campbell’s Soup…is closing their doors. The hydro rates are the highest in North America.”
Ford promised a complete turn-around.
“We’re going to blaze a new trail. We’re going to make this the most prosperous province, not only in Canada, but in North America.”
Ford is the the brother of the late Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and the heir to the populist, conservative “Ford Nation.” He is shaking up a Ontario Progressive Conservative race that was dominated by middle-of-the-road politicians. Ford said the party is not providing candidates with a lot of time to sell new membership prior to the leadership vote in March. Ford told The Daily Caller Saturday, “The party cut me off.”
Ford said he has sold “more than 11,000, a lot more” new memberships after just one event.
”I wish I had more time but I’m not worried about the party…I think it’s good for the party to sign up more members. If we could sign-up for four or five weeks, the game would be over right now. I can sign-up ten times, a hundred times more new members than my opponents,” Ford told The Daily Caller.
Ford promised after wining the leadership, he will scrap the province’s carbon tax. “The carbon tax is a terrible tax; I don’t know why they even put the word ‘carbon’ in front of it. It’s just a tax. A tax is a tax,” he told an enthusiastic audience at the Manning Conference, Canada’s answer to the Conservative Political Action Conference held every year in Washington, D.C.
He also assured his conservative supporters that “no one can buy me” and promised to give the current left-of-center Ontario premier “the fight of her life,” Ford said.
”We’re fighters. We’re absolute fighters. We’re going to fight for the people of Ontario. [Wynne] has been in the ring with the others: she’s never been in the ring with me.”
