Doug Ford’s 'gravy plane' and secrecy fight test his political durability

Since being re-elected in 2025, Ontario Premier Doug Ford may not have been quite as blunt, but his third term in office has seen him blow through some precious political capital.

Abacus Data’s latest poll suggests the expenditure is starting to cost Ford, whose level of support in the monthly tracking survey has been steadily slipping since an all-time high of 53 per cent last August — despite a blitz of feel-good government advertising.

The poll found Ford’s Progressive Conservatives at 37 per cent with the leaderless Liberals, who elect a new chief Nov. 21, at 36 per cent, a statistical tie. Marit Stiles’ New Democrats remain in third place with 17 per cent while Mike Schreiner’s Greens were at five per cent.

Abacus president David Coletto said two recent contentious moves by the premier appear to have hurt the Tories.

First, Ford’s decision to amend the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act to retroactively exclude the release of his records and those of ministers, parliamentary assistants and aides.

Second, his $28.9 million purchase of a 2016 Bombardier Challenger 650 executive jet to be used for official travels.

On April 17, two days after the Star revealed the existence of a jet critics immediately dubbed the “gravy plane,” Ford announced it would be sold due to the outcry. He said the aircraft was returned to Bombardier for the equivalent of a full refund on April 22.

There was no such flip-flop on the freedom of information (FOI) legislation, which became law on April 24, meaning the workings of the Ontario government will be less transparent.

While Coletto acknowledged Ford’s past resilience — and Ontarians’ penchant for absolving him come election time — the premier has caused himself some potentially lasting damage.

“People have forgiven Doug Ford for things he’s done, that he’s admitted he shouldn’t have done, and has backtracked,” the pollster said, referring to previous policy retreats like cancelling development on the Greenbelt or not invoking the Constitution’s “notwithstanding clause” to ram through a labour contract for education workers.

“But those, I don’t think, went as much against the brand as this one. These two things happening around the same time reinforces the idea that the premier and his government have something to hide,” he said.

“They have to hide away from the public by getting on a jet and they have to hide who they’re talking to and what they’ve said through these exclusions around the freedom of information.”

Abacus surveyed 1,000 Ontarians from April 17 to April 21 using online panels based on the PureSpectrum platform. While opt-in polls cannot be assigned a margin of error, for comparison purposes, a random sample of this size would have one of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Privately, senior Tories, speaking confidentially to discuss internal deliberations, admit both the jet and the FOI changes were personally driven by Ford, who wanted more convenient transportation and less scrutiny on his cellphone records. They concede the controversies have deflected attention from major government announcements like infrastructure improvements and temporarily removing the 13 per cent HST from new homes.

Publicly, Ford himself has displayed his frustration, complaining he needs a plane and angrily lashing out in the legislature against Liberal MPP Stephanie Smyth (Toronto—St. Paul’s) with a personal attack so nasty even some Tory MPPs were visibly cringing. (Three days later, he phoned and apologized to Smyth, a former journalist he has known for years.)

All of which has given the impression of a hubristic premier squandering political capital.

Interim Liberal leader John Fraser noted “Doug Ford is helping us a great deal” in the public-opinion polls with his recent miscues.

“The jet is a symbol of a government that is out of touch,” said Fraser. 

NDP Leader Marit Stiles, who wants auditor general Shelley Spence to probe the jet purchase and quick sale, said she hears about the plane flap across the province.

“What it really shows us is a government whose priorities are not in line with the people and a premier who … chooses not to understand … what regular people are dealing with every day,” said Stiles.

Still, Ford and his team, who don’t have to face voters until a provincial election in 2029 or 2030, believe they can weather the storm and move past what they hope are “inside baseball” obsessions of opposition parties and journalists in the Queen’s Park press gallery.

That’s one reason why the public should expect the premier to be talking more about the potential expansion of Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport to allow commuter jets in the weeks and months ahead.

Ford insisted last week that he and Prime Minister Mark Carney “came to the consensus” the waterfront airport is important to a region that is the economic engine of the country.

“He’s a smart business person, he understands it’s a crown jewel,” the premier said of Carney.

“And, folks, we’ve taken more polls on this than you can shake a stick at,” he told the Globe and Mail’s Laura Stone onstage at an April 22 conference. “Seventy per cent of the people want the convenience to fly out of Billy Bishop.”

That was a reference to a 58-page internal government poll — conducted by Campaign Research and obtained by the Star — that found support for an expanded island airport ranged from 55 per cent to 71 per cent depending how the survey questions were framed.

Carney has called Ford’s scheme “a very interesting vision” with “big possibilities there” while even Mayor Olivia Chow, a one-time island airport foe, has limited her criticism to the province’s expropriation of city land not the overall Billy Bishop expansion, which appears to be popular.

So the premier probably hasn’t spent political capital on the lakeside aerodrome.

But if the Abacus polling trends continue, Ford might not have as much to spend as he thinks he has.