International relations seldom figure into local politics in Canada. And Thursday’s provincial election in Ontario, where many voters are worried about issues closer to home, like access to health care and the soaring cost of housing, should have been no exception.
But President Trump has upended the electoral dynamic.
His threats against Canada — including to impose crushing tariffs on Canadian exports and to annex the country — have been cast as a defining election issue in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, as voters head to the polls on Thursday.
“This election is about who we are and what we stand for,” Premier Doug Ford, Ontario’s conservative leader, said in a campaign ad. “So let me be clear: Canada will never be the 51st state. Canada is not for sale.”
The province of 16 million, which represents about 40 percent of Canada’s population, is home to some of the country’s key industries, including automotive, manufacturing and technology. Tariffs would deal the province a deeply painful blow, including significant job losses.
Since Mr. Ford called the election a month ago, he has taken a handful of days from the campaign trail to travel to Washington and make the case why tariffs would be ill advised.
Several polls show Mr. Ford holding a double-digit lead over his closest rivals, with voters regarding him as the best candidate to take on Mr. Trump.
Who is running?
Mr. Ford is the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario and was first elected in 2018. That year, Mr. Ford, 60, won a majority government after 15 years of Liberal Party rule on a platform that focused on lowering taxes and developing key industries, like mining in the northern part of the province.
The son of a businessman who was also a provincial politician, Mr. Ford rose through party politics by marketing himself as an anti-establishment candidate, and during his first premiership campaign he drew comparisons to Mr. Trump.
Before becoming Ontario’s leader, Mr. Ford served as a city councilor in Toronto, where his brother, Rob Ford, was the mayor who attracted international notoriety after he confessed to using crack cocaine. He died in 2016.
Polls show that Mr. Ford’s political opponents — Bonnie Crombie of the Liberal Party, and Marit Stiles of the progressive New Democratic Party — have been unable to gain ground.
Ms. Crombie, a former mayor of Mississauga, a city west of Toronto, has focused on health care. She has called for adding 3,100 physicians in Ontario over the next four years to ensure all Ontarians have a family doctor, increasing nursing salaries and financing hospital expansions.
Ms. Stiles, who spent four years as a Toronto school board trustee, has emphasized improving education, promising to spend millions to address the province’s backlog of school repairs and to eliminate interest on college student loans.
What is the Trump factor?
The race has largely coalesced around the question of which candidate will be best able to protect the economy in the face of tariffs.
Mr. Trump said he plans to apply 25 percent tariffs on Canadian exports unless Canada strengthens its border security. Mr. Trump and Canada agreed to a 30-day reprieve after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau agreed to adopt various steps to fortify the border. The reprieve was set to expire on Tuesday, but on Wednesday Mr. Trump suggested he would extend his deadline by another month.
Mr. Ford has projected strength, regularly appearing at news conferences wearing a baseball cap that says “Canada Is Not For Sale” and threatening to retaliate against the United States by cutting off the energy it purchases from Ontario.
While the Conservatives already hold a majority of seats in the provincial legislature, Mr. Ford called an early election — more than a year before its scheduled date in June 2026 — because he said the party needed “a strong mandate” from voters to fight Mr. Trump’s tariffs.
But his opponents have questioned Mr. Ford’s timing, noting that if tariffs were imposed they would support additional spending to help Ontarians cope with economic pains caused by the levies, rendering an early election unnecessary.
They have also pointed out that the federal government would be the main negotiating party with Mr. Trump’s administration, not Ontario, though Mr. Ford could take some retaliatory measures on his own.
The tariffs could cost Ontario as many as 500,000 jobs, Mr. Ford said, particularly in the province’s auto industry, where production is so intertwined with the United States that car parts cross the border multiple times a day during assembly.
What are the issues?
While the discussion of tariffs has dominated the campaign, candidates have also elevated domestic issues, including health care spending, transit and education.
The candidates have all promised to improve health care access in a province where 2.5 million people do not have a family doctor because of a severe shortfall of physicians, according to the Ontario College of Family Physicians, a nonprofit.
On housing, the candidates have emphasized the need to increase building and make construction less costly for developers.
While he is a teetotaler, Mr. Ford has had an obsession with liquor dating back to his first campaign, when he promised to reduce alcohol costs. This time, Mr. Ford has promised to remove minimum costs for alcohol, making the case that it would motivate liquor sellers to lower prices to compete.
Some critics have also questioned Mr. Ford’s close relationship with developers.
A plan to open up a protected area of green space, forests and wetlands around Toronto, known as the greenbelt, to development has come under scrutiny and is under investigation by provincial police.
When will we know the results?
Polls open at 9 a.m. and close at 9 p.m. Results, which will be posted on the Elections Ontario website, are likely to come in not long after the polls close.
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