Doug Ford Wins Third Majority in Ontario Election Dominated by Trade
(Bloomberg) -- Doug Ford won a third straight election to lead Ontario, as voters in Canada's manufacturing heartland opted for a familiar face to steer an economy that's under threat from US President Donald Trump's trade policy.
Cuts to Section 8 Housing Assistance Loom Amid HUD Uncertainty
The Trump Administration Takes Aim at Transportation Research
Shelters Await Billions in Federal Money for Homelessness Providers
NYC's Congestion Pricing Pulls In $48.6 Million in First Month
New York's Congestion Pricing Plan Faces Another Legal Showdown
Ford's Progressive Conservative Party was leading or elected in 75 of the 124 seats in the provincial legislature as of 9:15 p.m. Toronto time. The New Democratic Party was second, leading or elected in 23 seats.
Ford, 60, forced the election more than a year early, saying his government needed a new mandate to spend the billions of dollars necessary to help the economy adjust if a trade war breaks out and causes large-scale job losses.
Ford has proposed trying to build a closer alliance with the US for the development of critical minerals and other sectors. That approach, which he nicknamed 'Fortress Am-Can,' would help the US in its geopolitical and economic competition with China, the Ontario premier argued.
But Ford has also been a proponent of retaliation if the US goes ahead with tariffs. Ontario — the center of the country's financial and automotive industries, as well as Canada's most populous province — would be one of the most affected regions in a trade conflict, according to the Conference Board of Canada.
In the event of a trade war, Ford has floated the idea of curbing energy supplies to the US, taking all the US-made booze off the shelves of liquor stores, canceling the province's contract with Elon Musk's Starlink and excluding US companies from public-sector projects.
Trump said Thursday his administration plans to go ahead with tariffs on US imports from Canada and Mexico on March 4, which he outlined in an executive order on Feb. 1 but then delayed. Those tariffs were set at 25% on most products and 10% on energy.
The president has also threatened 25% tariffs on automobiles by early April, a move that would disrupt the Ontario plants owned by General Motors Co., Stellantis NV and others, along with parts suppliers. And the administration has also said it will place 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum on March 12.
Ontario voters perceived the premier, who has led the province since 2018, as a steady hand in a time of deep economic uncertainty.
'People crave the stability of what they know over the prospect of an unknown in a situation where there is that threat,' Julie Simmons, an associate professor of political science at the University of Guelph, said before the election.
Ford's main opponents, Bonnie Crombie of the Liberal Party and Marit Stiles of the NDP, were running for the first time as leaders of their parties. All three ran in greater Toronto.
Stiles and Crombie sought to paint Ford as untrustworthy, pointing to a police probe into allegations related to the government's decision to open up environmentally protected land to housing developers — a move that made those parcels worth billions. A report by Bonnie Lysyk, then the province's auditor-general, said certain developers received 'preferential treatment' because they enjoyed special access to the housing minister's chief of staff.
Ford, who reversed that decision and apologized in September 2023, told reporters he was 'confident' nothing criminal took place, and a spokesperson for his campaign said he had not been contacted by the police.
Opposition leaders also highlighted Ford's refusal to give a price tag for his idea to build a 31-mile tunnel under a major highway running through Toronto. By comparison, the 2.4-mile Hudson River Rail Tunnel is estimated to cost $16.1 billion and began construction in 2023 after more than a decade of false starts.
Crombie and Stiles also campaigned on improving health care and education in the province.
--With assistance from Stephanie Hughes.
Trump's SALT Tax Promise Hinges on an Obscure Loophole
Warner Bros. Movie Heads Are Burning Cash, and Their Boss Is Losing Patience
Walmart Wants to Be Something for Everyone in a Divided America
China Learned to Embrace What the US Forgot: The Virtues of Creative Destruction
OXO Fought Back Against the Black Spatula Panic. People Defected Anyway
©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
15 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Tesla Is Launching Robotaxis in Austin. Safety Advocates Are Concerned
Elon Musk's ugly public spat with former bestie Donald Trump is sure to cause more headaches for the Silicon Valley mogul down the line. Not only has he sacrificed any influence he might have with the White House by blasting the president for his association with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, but some in the administration have floated the idea of reviving regulatory investigations into Musk's corporate empire. The timing of such a threat could hardly be worse. That's because Tesla, Musk's electric vehicle manufacturer, is about to face a make-or-break test of self-driving technology that the CEO believes is key to its future value — yet has been the subject of a years-long probe by the Justice Department into potential securities and wire fraud. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is meanwhile conducting multiple investigations into the possible risks posed by the same tech. More from Rolling Stone The Biggest Boondoggles in Trump's Big Beautiful Bill 'Dejected' Trump Says Relationship With Musk Is Over; Calls Him a 'Big-Time Drug Addict': Report Vance Says 'Trump Didn't Do Anything Wrong With Jeffrey Epstein' Last fall, at a carefully staged event on the Warner Bros. Discovery studio lot in Burbank, California, Musk unveiled what he called a 'Cybercab,' a sleek, two-seat vehicle with no steering wheel. This was the long-awaited prototype of Tesla's robotaxi, or a fully autonomous, driverless passenger vehicle. Back in 2019, Musk had predicted that existing Tesla models would become capable of driving themselves without human oversight once their 'Full Self-Driving' (FSD) driver-assistance software had been adequately updated. Now he was demoing a different, built-to-purpose model, seeming to signal that Teslas already on the road would not be upgraded to robotaxi capability. Then, in a January earnings call, Musk offered one of his typically optimistic predictions about a timetable for a paid robotaxi service, similar Amazon's Zoox, or Waymo, a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet. 'Teslas will be in the wild, with no one in them, in June, in Austin,' Musk said, referring to the Texas city that has been a base of operations for his businesses in recent years. Investors were skeptical. After all, Musk has a history of overpromising, and the Cybercab unveiled barely three months earlier was essentially a glorified movie prop. By late May, however, Musk was declaring significant progress on a robotaxi launch. 'For the past several days, Tesla has been testing self-driving Model Y cars (no one in driver's seat) on Austin public streets with no incidents,' he posted on X on May 28. 'A month ahead of schedule. Next month, first self-delivery from factory to customer.' It would appear, in this case, that Tesla had defaulted to the original idea of modifying its commercially available models to make them autonomous rather than holding off until it had a fleet of Cybercabs. Aside from stray comments like these, little is known about what Tesla's initial robotaxi program will look like. The company is reportedly targeting a launch date of June 12, with just 10-20 vehicles to start. A Morgan Stanley analyst — not Tesla itself — has claimed that rides will be available by invite only, not to the general public, and that the cars will be remotely supervised by operators prepared to take manual control if needed. That the automaker is keeping most details under wraps has left plenty of room for questions, doubts, and concerns — particularly as Waymo and other competitors tend to collect data and conduct local testing for far longer periods before welcoming passengers aboard. Dan O'Dowd, a software entrepreneur and founder of the tech safety group the Dawn Project, which has routinely showcased the shortcomings of Tesla's FSD tech, predicts that the robotaxi rollout will amount to lackluster stunt. 'Musk's upcoming robotaxi launch will still be nothing more than a bigger version of the 1950s Disneyland ride that Tesla demonstrated at [the Cybercab] event last year, if it even takes place at all,' he says. 'Despite Elon Musk claiming that Tesla was less than a year away from solving autonomy for nearly a decade and decrying the real robotaxi companies for geo-fencing and remote supervision, Tesla plans for its so-called robotaxis to only be able to drive around certain parts of Austin, avoiding intersections that are difficult,' while being remotely supervised,' O'Dowd notes. (Musk admitted in a recent interview that the robotaxis would be 'geo-fenced,' or restricted from certain parts of the city.) 'Tesla has also shown itself incapable of developing a working Cybercab, instead leaning on its Model Y in another backtrack on Elon's many false promises about solving autonomy,' O'Dowd adds. 'The golden Model 3 mules that Tesla is using to develop the Cybercab's software clearly demonstrate that Tesla has put the cart before the horse with the Cybercab.' On June 2, an X user posted a video of a Model 3 in a Tesla lot in San Diego that had seemingly been modified to resemble the Cybercab design, with its side mirrors removed and the rear windshield painted gold along with the body panels. The clip was taken by many Tesla observers as evidence that it was also using Model 3s to run autonomous driving experiments ahead of the robotaxi pilot program. Brett Schreiber, a partner at the San Diego law firm Singleton Schreiber who is currently pursuing multiple injury and wrongful death suits against Tesla over accidents involving its driver-assistance features, agrees that the company is backing down from the Cybercab concept Musk presented last year. 'It is a retreat on the idea that they are going to build out a new vehicle that is capable of autonomy,' he says, though 'a repeat of the continued lies and misrepresentations' from the CEO — namely, that existing Teslas can be turned into robotaxis. 'There is nothing about the vehicle today, whether you slap some lipstick on the pig of a Model Y, or any other vehicle in their production fleet, that [makes it] capable of level four or level five autonomy without driver intervention. They simply haven't gotten there, and just because they keep saying so doesn't make it true.' Levels four and five of driving automation refer to systems in which 'a human driver is not needed,' per NHTSA guidelines. Tesla's FSD is currently classified as level two, meaning that a human driver 'is fully responsible' for operating the vehicle even while assistance features are engaged. Schreiber believes that Tesla brought the robotaxi project to Texas for 'a more lax environment with respect to enforcement,' saying that 'in many states, California being one of them, they would not be allowed to do this in the way that they are doing it. They fled California for a lot of reasons, the least of which was the fact that they felt more constrained by their ability to roll out and continue to use the public roadways as their own personal test track, and use the members of the public as the guinea pigs in the grand experiment.' Indeed, the Texas Department of Transportation does not require any special permits for operating autonomous vehicles — only that these meet the same safety and insurance requirements as other vehicles. In California, by contrast, the Department of Motor Vehicles 'issues permits to manufacturers that test and deploy autonomous vehicles on California public roads.' Tesla, which does not have a press department, did not reply to a request for comment on details of the robotaxi launch or why Austin was chosen as the site. As for regulatory enforcement by NHTSA, it would largely come after the fact, since autonomous vehicle permitting is a state matter, not a federal one. 'Under U.S. law, NHTSA does not pre-approve new technologies or vehicle systems — rather, manufacturers certify that each vehicle meets NHTSA's rigorous safety standards, and the agency investigates incidents involving potential safety defects,' a sposkesperson for the agency tells Rolling Stone. 'Following an assessment of those reports and other relevant information, NHTSA will take any necessary actions to protect road safety.' NHTSA, as it happens, was one of a handful of regulators scrutinizing Musk's businesses to face cuts imposed by his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with at least four percent of staff dismissed. In Schreiber's estimation, the agency's Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) 'has been completely gutted,' hampering its ability to go after Tesla. Even so, the ODI did send a letter to Tesla's director of field quality in May, requesting extensive information about the proposed automated driving system for its robotaxis in order 'to understand Tesla's technologies and operational use cases further, including to assess the ability of Tesla's system to react appropriately to reduced roadway visibility conditions.' NHTSA's probe into Tesla's FSD involves several accidents in which the system faced conditions such as fog or sun glare, including a 2023 collision in Arizona in which a Model Y struck and killed a pedestrian while driving into direct sunlight. That investigation 'remains open,' the agency spokesperson says. Meanwhile, if Tesla doesn't answer NHTSA's questions about how its robotaxis work and what steps it is taking to ensure their safe operation by a deadline of June 19, or secure a filing extension, it could be subject to civil penalties. By that time, of course, people may already be hailing driverless Teslas in Texas, with passengers, other motorists, and bystanders all at the mercy of a supposed breakthrough in vehicle autonomy. That's what has safety advocates like O'Dowd so alarmed. 'The people of Austin did not sign up to be crash-test dummies for Musk's reckless deployment of Tesla's defective and dangerous Full Self-Driving software,' he says. If the thought has ever bothered Musk, he hasn't said so. Upon stepping down from DOGE, he wrote on X that he would return to a '24/7' focus on his companies, Tesla in particular, as 'we have critical technologies rolling out.' Best of Rolling Stone Every Super Bowl Halftime Show, Ranked From Worst to Best The United States of Weed Gaming Levels Up
Yahoo
15 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump Is Deploying the Marines Against U.S. Citizens
President Trump is sending 500 Marines to Los Angeles, allegedly to help police—who have not asked for it—with protests that have occurred in downtown Los Angeles. This is an extreme escalation from the Trump administration, an aggressive demonstration of force by the against its own citizens. The troops are set to arrive on Monday evening, and without rules of engagement—which puts the lives of countless demonstrators at risk. 'The rules of engagement here, we are told, are still being finalized,' said CNN's Natasha Bertrand. 'And defense department lawyers are also looking at the kinds of rules of engagement these Marines will have as they encounter protesters, possibly on the streets of Los Angeles.' Hundreds of Marines in a city on edge from the impact of ICE's indiscriminate deportation raids is a recipe for a devastating tragedy. The deployment, moreover, almost certainly is illegal. No leader in Los Angeles or California has said that it's necessary—the situation is not out of control, and it certainly does not need hundreds of Marines and National Guard soldiers to maintain order. Instead, this is a blanket display of force, meant to intimidate protesters and municipalities that dare to stand up to an administration that is sweeping thousands of people off the street.
Yahoo
15 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump, Newsom collide over LA unrest
The fight between President Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom over unrest in Los Angeles reached new heights on Monday, with Trump saying he'd support the arrest of one of the top Democrats in the country and a possible presidential contender in 2028. Escalating protests in the City of Angels over raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have pitted the two leaders together in a clash that has obvious political opportunities for Trump and risks for Newsom. For Trump, California provides a reliable foil as he aggressively pushes a crackdown on immigration. The images of burning cars and masked men waving Mexican flags form the perfect backdrop for the 'law and order' message the Trump White House says it will impose on the nation. And the images are weapons to use in Trump's argument that Democrats are too soft and unable to keep cities safe from violent unrest. There are opportunities for Newsom, too, as the battle provides a chance for the high-profile Democrat to stand up to Trump in a way that could bolster his standing the liberal grassroots. 'The President of the United States just called for the arrest of a sitting Governor. This is a day I hoped I would never see in America,' Newsom posted Monday on the social platform X shortly after Trump's comments about arresting him. 'I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican this is a line we cannot cross as a nation — this is an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.' Yet there are clear risks for Newsom as well if voters see him as too soft on those committing criminal acts in Los Angeles. Team Trump on Monday pushed its argument that the California leader and other Democrats cannot be trusted to keep the peace after Newsom said his state would sue the administration over its decision to send the National Guard to LA without the approval of local officials. 'Gavin Newsom's feckless leadership is directly responsible for the lawless riots and violent attacks on law enforcement in Los Angeles. Instead of filing baseless lawsuits meant to score political points with his left-wing base, Newsom sho/uld focus on protecting Americans by restoring law and order to his state,' White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said. If there is a risk for Trump, it is likely a familiar one to past presidents in both parties: overreaching. Trump is beginning the week by becoming the first U.S. president to send the National Guard to a state without the approval of local officials since President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, who at the time was seeking to protect civil rights protesters in the segregated South. At the end of the week, Trump plans to hold a full military parade. Both decisions feed into the Democratic narrative that he is a dangerous president with authoritarian impulses, an argument Newsom leaned into Monday. 'This is a real battle for both of them,' said one Democratic strategist before turning to the potential risks for the president. 'Trump thinks this is politically helpful for him and he's marginally right, but he has a tendency to overreach,' the strategist said. On the other hand, Newsom, the strategist said, 'is trying to balance this kind of reshaping of his public narrative as not your average San Francisco liberal. He's trying to position himself as a national liberal. Shaking off some of that image is showing a stiff upper lip in a situation like this.' Trump and Newsom have been political rivals for years, with the dynamic vacillating between fierce criticism and occasional displays of collegiality. Even on Monday, Trump called Newsom a 'nice guy' who he liked before adding that the Californian was 'grossly incompetent.' Newsom has praised Trump during times of crisis, including early in the coronavirus pandemic and during natural disasters that have impacted his state. The two men had a friendly exchange on the tarmac in January when Trump visited California to tour wildfire damage, and Trump hosted Newsom at the White House in February. But their dynamic has more frequently been marked by animosity. Trump and his allies have for years painted California as a symbol of everything wrong with liberal governance, pointing to high taxes, government regulation and issues with homelessness and immigration. Trump frequently berates the governor as 'Newscum' and has threatened to withhold federal funding from the state. Newsom has used his perch as governor of the most populous state in the nation to aggressively criticize Trump and his policies. Democrats and Republicans alike viewed Newsom's emergence as a top Trump critic during the Biden administration as setting himself up for a White House bid of his own. The current situation in LA is a perfect storm for Newsom, said Julian Zelizer, a professor of public affairs and history at Princeton University. 'He has a genuine policy crisis on his hands, a rapid escalation of tensions within Los Angeles and with the president. He is dealing with serious issues of overextension of presidential power,' Zelizer said. 'At the same time as a possible candidate for president, everything is handled through a political prism: If the president turns this against him, makes him look like a candidate who cannot protect law and order, it could be extremely damaging to his own political career.' Trump on Monday would not rule out deploying Marines to California, which would further escalate the situation, though he signaled things seemed to be cooling down. 'We'll see what happens. I think we have it very well under control. I think it would have been a very bad situation,' Trump said at a White House event. 'And we hope to have the support of Gavin, because Gavin is the big beneficiary as we straighten out his problems.' Garry South, a prominent Democratic strategist based in California, said the idea of sending troops to the Golden State is dangerous. 'Newsom is doing the right thing both substantively and politically — by pushing back on Trump's unprecedented militarization of domestic policy,' he said. 'It's a fraught moment for our democracy, for a president to turn troops loose on the American people. 'Like everything Trump does, it's all for political benefit, to make himself look like a tough guy to his MAGA base by taking on California, but it's just another warning sign that we could end up being Chile under Pinochet if he is unchecked,' South added. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
