Category: Chairman’s Desk

Let me be clear: on the underlying question, Doug Ford was right.

Every serious executive in this country, every CEO running a national operation, every big-city mayor, every premier who has to be in Thunder Bay in the morning and Windsor by dinner understands the same elementary truth. Time is the one resource you cannot manufacture. And that’s why a plane is not a perk. It is a tool. The prime minister has one. The federal cabinet uses it. Major bank CEOs have access to one. Heads of government across the Western world have one. The reason is not vanity. The reason is that a leader who spends 11 hours on a commercial flight with a layover at Pearson is not leading.

Ontario is the economic engine of Confederation. Its premier runs a government larger, by GDP, than all but a handful of countries. Ford’s own stated rationale: that the province is geographically vast, that single-prop aircraft are the grim alternative for northern travel, that a secure aircraft matters when you’re flying into hostile Trump-era trade meetings, is not unreasonable. It is, in fact, precisely the case that should have been made to taxpayers before the purchase, not after it.

That was the mistake. Not the plane. The ambush.

But here’s what’s important: when Ford realized the politics had turned past the point of recovery, he did exactly the right thing. He killed the decision. The plane went back to Bombardier. The full $28.9 million came back to the province. No loss to the taxpayer. He apologized for how the transaction was rolled out, he refused to apologize for the underlying logic, and he moved on. Total elapsed time from announcement to reversal: four days.

He ended the game.

I’ve just written a book on crisis management, and if there is a single lesson drawn from decades of watching leaders either survive their bad days or be destroyed by them, it is this one. When a story turns, you have one job: compress the news cycle. Get ahead of it. Deny it oxygen. The single worst thing a political leader can do when a decision has gone sideways is to defend the indefensible one news day at a time, bleeding credibility in daily increments until the only remaining question is why it took so long to do what was obvious from the start.

Think of the leaders who got this right. Think of the ones who didn’t.

Equifax waited a month to acknowledge its 2017 data breach. By the time executives spoke, the story had already hardened into “cover-up,” and they spent years in front of Congress paying for that hesitation. Ticketmaster, more recently, waited so long to disclose a massive hack that the hackers themselves broke the news. Buckingham Palace operated for decades under the “never complain, never explain” rule— right up until the former prince Andrew’s behaviour around his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein curdled into something the Crown decided there could no longer tolerate as it had become something from which they could not recover.

In every case, the leader or institution believed that holding the line was the safer play.

In every case, they were dead wrong.

The fact is that the modern news cycle does not reward stubbornness. It rewards clarity. A bad decision acknowledged quickly is a one-day story. A bad decision defended becomes a week. A bad decision defended badly becomes a referendum on your judgment itself.

Ford, to his credit, saw where the story was going and changed course before the narrative could calcify. Over the weekend, the calls flooded his cellphone. The “gravy plane” label was already airborne. The auditor general was about to be asked to investigate. By Sunday, he had agreed to sell. By Wednesday, he confirmed the money was back in the treasury. The oxygen was cut.

Make no mistake: There is a political cost to reversing course. Interim Liberal leader John Fraser is already calling him out of touch. Opposition leader Marit Stiles is pushing for an audit anyway. The penguin line will get quoted for weeks. None of it matters much. The damage from a four-day climbdown is an order of magnitude smaller than the damage from a four-month defence.

This is the thing most politicians never learn, and the thing Ford, despite the pundits eyerolling about his style, has learned better than most of his peers. He governs with the same instinct he campaigns. Read the voter. Respect the voter. When you are offside the voter, stop being offside the voter. Don’t explain. Don’t litigate. Move.

Here’s the thing: the premier was right about the substance of the plane. He was wrong about the plane’s politics and the communications around it. And when he figured out which of those things mattered more to the people who elected him, he acted on it in a weekend.

That is not weakness. That is discipline.

Other political leaders, watching from their capitals across the country, should take note. The premier who spent years being caricatured as impulsive just executed a textbook reversal — no money lost, no lingering contract, no dragged-out defence. The jet is back with Bombardier. The story is running out of runway.

And the rest of Ontario’s agenda, the one that actually matters to the people who elected him, gets to move forward.

Doug Ford read the voter – then moved on. That’s the story.

By the time this column appears in print, the Liberal party will have wrapped up its convention in Montreal.

It promises to have been quite the celebration, and with good reason. The party is riding high in the polls, drawing support from unexpected quarters, and, by all accounts, is on track to secure a majority government following this week’s byelections. It has all the makings of a victory parade.

Cue the rain.

With this momentum, the national media has begun poking holes in the Liberal “big tent,” questioning whether it can plausibly accommodate politicians with sharply divergent ideological histories.

These are valid concerns. But let’s not stray too far from the big picture.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has engineered a remarkable political turnaround for the Liberal party. The fact it is being reshaped into a broader, more ideologically elastic coalition should not come as a surprise. Nor should the willingness to welcome floor crossers.

Make no mistake: a majority is worth securing. Beyond the basic stability of not living vote to vote, control over parliamentary committees provides the government with the ability to set agendas, manage scrutiny, and advance legislation with far greater certainty.

But majorities, especially those assembled in unconventional ways, come with their own challenges. And mitigating these challenges depends on the hard, unglamorous work of caucus management.

It is not a headline-grabbing skill. But it is an essential one. Because the effort required to attract floor crossers and secure a governing majority can quickly turn pyrrhic if it produces a caucus that is unwieldy, internally inconsistent, or prone to fracture.

Prime Minister Mark Carney says any MP who joins his caucus must adhere to Liberal values, including support for abortion and LGBTQ rights.

What these floor crossings ultimately reveal is something simple: politicians are people just like us. And in recent months, we’ve seen several make the calculation that influence in government is preferable to obscurity in opposition. But that same instinct reveals something less flattering, a willingness, in some cases, to abandon former allegiances for a blend of conviction, opportunity and self-interest.

In a slim majority Parliament, that matters. Backbench MPs, particularly those with independent streaks or divergent ideological roots, can quickly become centres of leverage. At the same time, slim majorities can, in some ways, be easier to manage than large ones. Big majorities breed complacency. They also prove the adage that idle hands are the devil’s workshop. Smaller ones demand discipline. They require focus. They force governments to pay attention, both to their opponents and, critically, to themselves.

And it is precisely that discipline that will now be tested.

Because this is, at its core, a test of political leadership for Carney. It’s not economic stewardship or policy design, but rather the craft of holding together a coalition of competing interests, personalities and ambitions.

It is a skill every great prime minister has had to master. Jean Chrétien, for example, managed to keep both “orange or red Liberals” and “blue Liberals” around the same cabinet table, no small feat. Brian Mulroney, for his part, held together a coalition of Quebec nationalists and Western conservatives long enough to deliver transformational change. Eventually, those tensions proved unsustainable. But that is precisely the point. Managing the internal politics of a party riding high is every bit as important as managing the external political battlefield.

Which brings us back to the present moment.

The differences between figures like former Ontario NDP deputy leader Doly Begum (who might well be elected as a Liberal MP in Scarborough Southwest this week) and newly minted Liberal Marilyn Gladu are not trivial. They are real. And over time, they will need to be reconciled, managed, or, at the very least, contained.

History suggests that is easier said than done. And it is in moments of strength that these pressures begin to build.

Because when the polls are strong, when momentum is on your side, and when your opponents are preoccupied with their own internal divisions, the greatest risk is not from outside. It is from within.

History, after all, is littered with governments undone not by their opponents, but by themselves.

By now, it’s clear that no matter what kind of resolution U.S. President Donald Trump attempts to impose on his latest misadventure in Iran, this conflict and its global repercussions will be far from over.

More likely, it will resemble George W. Bush’s infamous “mission accomplished” moment aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003: a premature declaration of victory that gave way to years of prolonged conflict, with consequences that are still unfolding today.

Whatever branding Trump chooses, it won’t stick.

But the economic consequences will.

As any reasonable observer can see, the ripple effects of this conflict will continue to move through the global economy and, like countries the world over, will land squarely in Canadian households in the form of higher prices.

Canada may be less exposed to oil shocks than it was in the 1970s and 80s, but when prices rise at the pump, the impact is immediate and unavoidable for consumers. And those pressures rarely stay contained. They spill over.

As BMO chief economist Doug Porter explains, higher energy costs cascade through the economy, raising the cost of transporting goods, producing packaging and moving food from farm to table. For example, with the Gulf region playing a key role in the production and shipment of fertilizer inputs, the conflict will increase costs for farmers, compounding pressure throughout the food supply chain.

And this is hitting a market already under strain. Statistics Canada reported food inflation spiking to 7.3 per cent in January, driven by supply constraints and persistent pressure on staples like coffee and beef.

This may not amount to a full-blown recession or stagflation. But that misses the point.

These are price shocks that hit the essentials of our everyday lives, the goods Canadians cannot substitute away from. Groceries. Fuel. The basics.

And that is where political risk lives.

Voters notice these pressures immediately because they experience them daily. And as history repeatedly shows, sustained affordability pain quickly translates into political frustration and then into blame.

That creates both risks and opportunities for the Carney government.

It is an opportunity to demonstrate that they understand the moment and are prepared to act decisively on affordability in ways that the Trudeau government was too slow to do.

The spectre of an affordability crisis should be treated the same way a political opponent is: define it before it defines you.

The Trudeau government hesitated too long to signal urgency on affordability amid rising inflation and global price instability. Pierre Poilievre filled that vacuum, owned the issue, and nearly rode it all the way to 24 Sussex.

The current government cannot afford to repeat that mistake, particularly as we head into what could be a difficult spring and summer economically.

But they are not without options.

On fuel, the federal government could offer temporary relief through adjustments to the excise tax or targeted rebates, even if only for a defined period.

On food, it must work with provinces and industry to reduce interprovincial trade barriers and provide targeted support along the agricultural supply chain to ease cost pressures before they reach consumers.

None of these measures will be a silver bullet.

But in politics, as in economics, marginal gains matter.

Even modest relief signals the government is paying attention to what matters to most Canadians. It demonstrates that the government is engaged, responsive and focused on the daily pressures Canadians are actually feeling.

And just as importantly, it prevents the opposition from owning the issue unchallenged.

Because in the end, affordability is not an abstract economic concept. It is a daily lived experience. Governments that fail to act early and visibly with plans to deal with it rarely get a second chance.

When you read this, the Academy Awards will either be hours away or already behind us.

And the man who is arguably Hollywood’s biggest star, Timothée Chalamet, will either be celebrating a historic night, becoming one of the youngest actors ever to win Best Actor, or quietly reflecting on how, in the span of a few ill-chosen words, he may have fumbled the ball at the one-yard line.

For readers who may have missed the online furor, let me briefly explain.

Chalamet sparked a major backlash last week when he appeared to dismiss ballet and opera as relics; art forms sustained largely out of obligation rather than vitality.

“I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera, or, you know, things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive,’” he said during a CNN and Variety town hall event.

The pushback was both swift and widespread.

Arts commentators rushed in to agree or disagree with his premise. Social media erupted, with critics eager to knock a celebrity down a peg. Opera and ballet companies around the world seized the moment for some clever marketing, offering discounted tickets with promo codes like “TIMOTHEE.” Here at home, the Canadian Opera Company leaned into the moment with videos of young opera fans explaining why the art form continues to matter.

In short, the comment struck a nerve for many.

It certainly did for me.

I’m of the “an attack on one is an attack on all” camp when it comes to the arts. As Chancellor of OCAD University and a longtime supporter of Canada’s cultural institutions, including currently serving on the board of the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, I have spent decades around artists and arts organizations. And what every leader in the sector will tell you right now is simple: these are difficult times.

Public funding and private donations are under pressure. Artificial intelligence is beginning to disrupt entire creative industries, raising profound questions about authorship, ownership and the future of artistic labour. And audiences themselves are being pulled in a thousand different directions.

Yet despite these pressures, the sector continues to punch far above its weight economically. According to research by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Canada’s arts and culture industries contributed roughly $65 billion to the national economy in 2024, about two per cent of GDP. Even more striking, the sector has been growing at nearly twice the pace of the broader economy, outpacing industries such as oil and gas, retail and manufacturing.

But economics only tell part of the story. There are much deeper reasons we need the arts now more than ever.

We are living in an era of intensifying division, geopolitical, ideological and cultural. Conflict across the globe is hardening identities and flattening our ability to see one another as fully human.

The 19^th century novelist, Stendhal, once wrote that politics in a work of art is like a pistol shot in a concert, something simply impossible to ignore. Gore Vidal turned that metaphor on its head, observing that in modern times “the pistol shots are the concert, while the work of art becomes the discordant interruption.”

It is a comment that feels increasingly accurate. And the interruption remains precisely what we’re in need of today.

Art interrupts the narratives that turn neighbours into enemies. It complicates the simple stories that conflict depends upon. It reminds us that behind every label, political, national, ideological, there is a human being.

In a world increasingly organized around outrage, speed and tribal certainty, the arts do something radical: they slow us down. They invite empathy. They expand the imagination. They humanize.

Which is precisely why they are worth defending, in all their forms.

So, while Sunday night will produce its usual stories of triumph and heartbreak for actors like Chalamet, the world will keep turning, and we will continue to need that interruption.

At the same time, we will do well to remember the small controversy he stirred and the larger truth it reminds us of. The arts are not relics we preserve out of nostalgia. They are tools we rely on to remain human.

When I first came upon the now infamous photo of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, slumped in the back of a car, a line from Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” immediately came to mind: “Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be concealed.”

But that hasn’t stopped Andrew and the House of Windsor from trying.

Late last year, I argued that the Royals had failed to follow one of the most fundamental rules of crisis management: get to the endgame fast.

What does that mean? It means that at the first sign of serious trouble, you move immediately to the action that you know will ultimately have to be taken.

In Andrew’s case, once it became publicly known that he had maintained a long-standing relationship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, decisive steps should have been taken immediately: remove him as a working royal, strip him of his titles, sever all taxpayer-subsidized accommodation and benefits. Instead, we witnessed hesitation and half measures. And the final necessary step, removing him from the line of succession, has yet to happen.

When you fail to move decisively, the damage does not arrive in a single catastrophic blow. It is, in fact, worse. It comes in slow, corrosive drips over time that undermine the entire institution.

Last week, police arrested Mountbatten-Windsor on charges of misconduct in public office over allegations that he shared confidential government reports with Epstein while serving as a U.K. trade envoy in 2010.

Heaven only knows what is yet to come. This can no longer be branded as an isolated, “rotten apple” issue. It is an institutional crisis.

The gravest danger in any episode of elite misconduct, whether in government, business or a constitutional monarchy, is not simply the wrongdoing itself. It is the possibility that the wrongdoing reflected a permissive culture, enabled by silence or wilful blindness.

When that possibility arises, disciplining the individual is no longer sufficient. The scrutiny climbs the ladder. It cuts its way upward to the figure who embodies or leads the institution. And whenever questions of “who knew what, and when?” begin to surface, as they now have around the House of Windsor, you are in a perilous place.

There are flashing arrows pointing toward the only remaining stabilizing move: the King should step aside and allow Prince William to assume the throne.

This is what endgame looks like. It is what remains after years of incrementalism and reluctance. Because the failure to act early leaves only more dramatic action later. And make no mistake: dramatic action is now required.

For decades, the personal popularity of Queen Elizabeth II shielded the monarchy from deeper structural vulnerabilities. Her presence acted as a stabilizing force that transcended criticism.

That buffer is gone. Now, amid cost-of-living pressures across the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, public patience is much thinner.

But that’s not all. The Epstein affair is no routine scandal. It is emblematic of a broader public revulsion toward elite impunity and the perception that the powerful operate by different rules. Of the many horrific allegations that emerged from the Epstein investigations, remarkably only three individuals have faced criminal consequences: Epstein himself, now dead; his principal accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, serving a 20-year sentence; and now Andrew.

Notably, Andrew’s charges are not yet related to the alleged sexual assault of Virginia Giuffre, but on allegations of misconduct in public office. As Sam Sifton of The New York Times observes, it has the feel of prosecuting Al Capone for tax evasion.

All this matters because when accountability appears partial or indirect, public suspicion does not dissipate, it intensifies.

Which brings us back to the institution itself.

How sorry would it be for a man who has waited his entire adult life to serve his people as King to have to conclude that the only way to save the very monarchy he loves so much is with his own departure.

How monumental would be a decision at once so historic and yet so deeply personal for not only him but for the House of Windsor itself.

Some will insist that a monarch’s duty is to remain. But the higher expression of duty may well be sacrifice. To relinquish the throne not out of weakness, but out of stewardship and a genuine understanding of the course of history. To allow William and Catherine to inherit not a diminished institution fighting for credibility, but one renewed through decisive leadership.