Months after winning a third consecutive majority mandate under a promise to “protect Ontario” from economic war with the United States, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has outlined how he expects his inner circle to deliver the pledge.
Multiple sources confirmed to Global News that mandate letters were finally delivered to cabinet ministers this week, giving each member of Ford’s top team specific instructions.
The wait for mandate letters meant ministers did not have codified instructions during the first sitting of the new parliament, leaving some smaller departments struggling with a lack of legislative direction.
Ford’s cabinet was sworn in in mid-March and, several sources told Global News, had hoped to use the summer to create policy road maps based on the mandate letters, which did not arrive.
Sources previously said a combination of the snap February election, the federal ballot and staffing changes in the premier’s policy team had all delayed the letters.
A spokesperson for the premier’s office said the ongoing trade war with the United States is at the centre of the latest mandate letters.
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“As we navigate an economic crisis that threatens the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of workers, our mandate letters provide the roadmap for long-term implementation of our plan to protect Ontario,” they wrote in a statement.
“The people elected our government with a historic third majority, and we will be relentless in building critical infrastructure, keeping costs low, unlocking interprovincial free trade, supporting Ontario-made products, and cracking down on crime.”
The mandate letters are a traditional moment in Canadian politics. Written by the head of a government to cabinet members, they lay out the aims and goals of their department.
In the past, it was traditional for governments to use them as a public platform to signal intent.
When Ford took office, however, he opted not to make his mandate letters public. That resulted in a legal battle which went all the way to the Supreme Court, which last year sided with Ford and confirmed he could keep them secret.
The 2018 letters, obtained exclusively by Global News, outlined the premier’s vision for Ontario, how cabinet members were expected to conduct themselves, and specific policy measures ministries were expected to pursue.
They offered a number of bullet-point policy items — some of which were outlined in the party’s election platform, along with other policies never revealed to voters.
Andrew Sidnell, who once served as Ford’s deputy chief of staff and head of policy in the premier’s office, told Ontario’s Integrity Commissioner that not all the measures outlined in the mandate letter were acted on and that some could be dropped after internal negotiations.
“You go back and forth, and then some of those things eventually are either too ambitious or they get cut off the list for impracticality reasons. Or, they do move forward and the minister will come back with a plan to actually implement them,” Sidnell told the Integrity Commissioner.
In 2022, for example, then-housing minister Steve Clark was instructed to look for “swaps, expansions, contractions” in Ontario’s Greenbelt — a directive that eventually led to a scandal for the government.
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