Premier Ford is Canada’s cartoonish Mayor Quimby

One of my pet theories is that almost any significant development in public affairs or major figure in public life has an analogue in at least one episode of The Simpsons. Indeed, one of the many downsides of the disappearance of our past monoculture is the loss of these recognizable points of reference when it comes to political discussions. It may even be that its absence contributes to contemporary political naivete. For it is often easier to see things plainly under the guise of comedic representation. All of this is a preface to announcing a recent epiphany: Ontario’s long-serving premier, Doug Ford, is the real-life version of the fictional town of Springfield’s long-serving mayor, Joseph Quimby. For those who don’t recall or have tragically missed out on the classic Simpsons era, Mayor Quimby—nicknamed “Diamond Joe”—was a Kennedyesque politician whose specific policy achievements were always somewhat vague, and whose evidence of personal corruption was hilariously blatant. His politics are guided by momentary expediency, and he rarely misses an opportunity to issue his catchphrase (“Vote Quimby”), regardless of the appropriateness of the circumstances. He is given to counterintuitive expressions of praise and is free with insults. Like Quimby, Ford maintains a folksy, populist style while adhering to no certain political program or ideology whatsoever. Both men are something less than master rhetoricians. And like Quimby, he has benefited from his gormless political opponents (Quimby always somehow managed to stay in office, because the alternatives would either fail to materialize entirely, or end up being an actual psychopath like Sideshow Bob). Also like Quimby, Ford has had some controversies involving, uh, political patronage. Both figures clearly enjoy the position they hold without ever quite giving one the sense that they embrace the political obligations that come with it. Ford positioned himself as a critic of both Justin Trudeau in the early days of his prime ministership of Canada and Olivia Chow in the early days of her mayoralty of Toronto, but he has ended up having amiable relationships with both figures, and one would be hard-pressed to identify an issue of importance on which he clearly diverged from their political programs. Ford himself manages to appear comparatively reasonable in that he does not actively endorse the worst policies or political tendencies out there, and yet they keep happening on his watch. It is true, for example, that Ford has not actively promoted national self-hatred or globalizing the intifada or what have you in the curriculum of Ontario public schools; nor, however, has he done much to combat them. Recently, the provincial government extended its authority over the Toronto District School Board (the same one my kids attend). And while the trustees have hardly covered themselves in glory, there is no particular reason for optimism about the new regime. Similarly, he has referred to the pro-Palestinian protests that have roiled so many of Canada’s cities over the past two years as “hate rallies” but has otherwise done little to push for a restoration of public order. (Obligatory Quimby line: “Oh, dear God. Can’t this town go one day without a riot?”) One of his most Quimby-ish qualities is that he always seems as surprised as anybody by what seems to go on in the province he nominally oversees. As for what does occupy his focus, Ford’s travails involving both public transit and highway traffic are well known (Quimby version: “After visiting the area for, uh, the past two months, I have determined it is not feasible to construct a super-train between Springfield and Aruba.”) And while nominally a leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, the list of things he has failed to conserve is long and growing. The Ontario Science Centre was a particularly amusing case because they simply decided to shut it down rather than repair its main building. In a comically on-the-nose case, a 155-acre parkland area on Toronto’s waterfront, literally called “Ontario Place,” has not been operational since 2012 and presently resembles a landfill. The total cost of redevelopment is presently estimated at in excess of $2.24 billion, and its chief project is a (doubtless much-needed) spa and wellness centre, the bid for which was awarded to a company that manages a single location in—wait for it—Romania. (Quimby analogue, from his re-election commercial: “It’s not the mayor’s fault that the stadium collapsed.”) These and other instances of mismanagement have given rise to a new conservative group, called Project Ontario, advocating better governance in the province, and which Ford himself dismissed as radical “yahoos” (or as Quimby would put it: “Demand!? Who are you to demand anything? I run this town! You’re just a bunch of low-income nobodies!”). What was striking about this outburst was not just a conservative leader rejecting a moderate conservative platform, but the expression of pique at seeing people actually take a political position at all. It’s not that Ford shies away from political contests altogether. It’s rather that his preferred engagements have a highly performative, almost Vaudeville quality applied to comically trivial issues—not unlike, well, a Simpsons episode. His current bête noire, for example, is not the alarming spike in crime and addiction across the province, but rather speed cameras (the Quimby touch is that his own cabinet ministers keep getting nabbed by them). Ford’s latest move has been to take on the world’s largest economy in a trade war, to little obvious benefit but surprising support among voters, who are either personally insulated from any economic externalities or overly credulous about Ontario’s real leverage in this scenario. This battle has now resulted in his excommunication of Crown Royal bottles from the shelves of LCBO for perceived national disloyalty, despite the fact that this is surely the one brand of spirits that the average buyer would actually recognize as Canadian. In true Quimby fashion, he tries to spill the entire bottle live on camera, only to have the liquid emerge in an unsatisfying trickle. He followed this act a few days later with advice to a business audience concerned with rising property crime that sometimes one has to beat shoplifters personally, involving an elaborate account of his own confrontation that included the immortal line: ”Buddy, I’m going to kick your ass all over the parking lot, show me what’s in your bag.” Once again, life imitates a cartoon sitcom. The backdrop to all of these episodes is that the province of Ontario—not Canada as a whole, just the province—is on track to accumulate a debt of half a trillion dollars by 2027. Speaking of politics on The Simpsons, in one of the show’s classic Halloween episodes, the presidential candidates for the U.S. general election are revealed to be the villainous aliens, Kang and Kodos, and due to the restrictions of the American two-party system, voters are forced to choose one of them as president. Looking now at the state of Canada’s most economically important province, one has to wonder: How much worse could a malevolent, green, people-eating extraterrestrial do at Queen’s Park?