Ford Nation comes to town (4 photos)

Ford Nation has come and gone in a flash, as Ontario PC Party leadership candidate Doug Ford made a hastily arranged stop in Sault Ste. Marie Saturday morning as part of a day-long tour of northern Ontario.

Ford spoke to a group of roughly a couple dozen supporters at the Water Tower Inn before his scheduled stops in Timmins and Thunder Bay later on in the day.

“We get five dollar donations, our names aren’t Caroline Mulroney, who can hold a fundraiser and raise 700 grand,” said Ford. “It came down to pennies and cents, and we had pick the strategic locations and I said no matter what, we got to get up to the Sault, we got to get up to Thunder Bay, we have to make sure we get up to Timmins.”

Using buzzwords like ‘grassroots’, ‘cronies’ and ‘the establishment’, Ford worked the room for just over an hour, honing in primarily on Ontario’s economy.

Ford said that business will be brought to the province through tax incentives, not carbon tax credits.

“Do you know that 469 million of your hard earned tax dollars are going to California and Quebec for these credits? That 469 million dollars, as soon as I get into office, is done,” said Ford. “It’s staying right here. It’s going to healthcare, it’s going to education, it’s going to infrastructure.”

Perhaps even more irksome to Ford than ‘cronyism’ or ‘political elites’ is his own party’s way of handling the polls.

Online voting for the province’s PC leadership race began on Friday, but for many voters, the documentation that’s actually required to vote has yet to arrive in the mail.

“There’s tens of thousands of people that have put their 10 dollars out to be part of the party, and [the] vast majority of all of them are new members, and that’s the sour taste we’re going to leave in their mouth?” Ford said.

“So we need to clean out the party as well. We got a lot of housecleaning to do.”

Ford called the mail delay “a big game being played” within his own party, and encouraged supporters at the rally to leave their information with him, as he is in the process of compiling a list of people who haven’t received their special voting code via snail mail.

He also said that he had a conversation with interim Ontario PC leader Vic Fedeli about the mail delays, but was told by Fedeli that his “hands are tied.”  

“They’re either trying to suppress people’s votes, or they’re totally incompetent,” Ford told SooToday after the rally.

Voters were originally supposed to be registered by this past Friday, but that deadline has now been pushed ahead to 11:59 p.m. on Monday.

Online voting will continue up until Thursday, with the results of the election announced on Saturday, March 10.  

- With files from The Canadian Press