Doug Ford

Doug Ford (born November 20, 1964, Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian politician and businessman. He has served as the premier of Ontario and the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario since 2018. From 2010 to 2014, Ford was a Toronto city councillor while his younger brother, Rob Ford, was the city’s mayor.

Early life and family

Doug Ford, Jr., was born in 1964 in Etobicoke, a wealthy suburb on the west end of Toronto. He was the third of four children to Doug Ford, Sr., and Ruth Diane Campbell. The elder Ford was the cofounder of Deco Adhesive Products (now Deco Labels & Flexible Packaging), a business that printed self-adhesive labels—a new product at the time. He was strict with his children, but they maintained a good relationship with him, according to the 2014 book Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story, by the Canadian journalist Robyn Doolittle.

Ford and his siblings started working at Deco as young adults. Ford took on more business responsibilities over time, and his younger brother, Rob Ford, managed political campaigns for their father. Doug Ford, Sr., won a seat in the Ontario provincial legislature as a member of the Progressive Conservative Party in 1995, and by then his third child was effectively running Deco. Doug Ford, Jr., became company president in 2002 and spent much of his time expanding Deco’s operations into the United States, opening divisions in Chicago and New Jersey.

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Rob and Doug Ford enter politics

Rob Ford was elected to the Toronto City Council in 2000, and in 2010 he was elected mayor of Toronto. The same year, Doug Ford won his brother’s former council seat. Fellow council members described Ford as friendly but said he could also be ruthless and sometimes resorted to “mean” personal attacks, according to interviews with the CBC. Ford’s main priority was implementing cost-cutting measures, such as privatizing garbage collection and reducing funding for libraries (which led to a public clash with the Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood).

In 2013 a video of Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine became public, and the mayor admitted that he had used the drug, probably in a “drunken stupor.” As the city council sought to limit Rob Ford’s power as mayor, Doug Ford ardently defended him. Acquaintances have said, however, that the elder Ford resented his brother and that the two sometimes went months without speaking. “Their loyalty is ultimately to the family name,” Doolittle wrote, “not necessarily to each other.”

Despite this controversy, Rob Ford campaigned for reelection in 2014, but he withdrew from the race after receiving a cancer diagnosis. Doug Ford ran for the mayor’s seat but lost, while Rob Ford ran for the Etobicoke council seat again and won; he died from cancer in 2016. His widow, Renata Ford, sued Doug Ford and his elder brother, Randy Ford, accusing them of mismanaging the family business and mishandling her husband’s estate.

Premiership of Ontario and clash with Trump

In 2018 Doug Ford was elected premier of Ontario when his party, the Progressive Conservatives, won 76 out of 124 seats in the province. In that position, he eliminated Ontario’s carbon pricing program, though he later lost a battle with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose administration imposed a federal carbon tax on provinces that didn’t have their own. Ford was reelected with a larger majority in 2022. In his second term, his government sought to increase housing, build more public infrastructure, and hire more health care workers, though Canadian pundits disagreed about his level of success.

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In January 2025 Ford called for an early election, saying he needed to shore up support to challenge U.S. Pres. Donald Trump’s plans for 25 percent tariffs on all goods imported from Canada. Ford said this could lead to 500,000 job losses in Ontario, and he argued that Canada should retaliate by cutting off energy supplies to the United States. “You can’t let someone hit you over the head with a sledgehammer without hitting them back twice as hard, in my opinion,” he said. Ford also suggested, however, that the two countries should forge a stronger energy alliance—a “Fortress Am-Can,” as he called it.

During the election campaign, Ford combated Trump’s frequent comments about Canada becoming the “51st state” with the slogan “Canada is not for sale.” He also terminated a $70 million contract with Starlink, a satellite Internet company owned by Trump ally Elon Musk. Ford’s actions resonated with Ontario voters, and on February 27, 2025, they delivered another convincing victory to the Progressive Conservatives. It marked the first time in 65 years that an Ontario premier had won three consecutive legislative majorities.

In March 2025, Mark Carney succeeded Trudeau as Liberal Party leader and prime minister, and he led his party to a stunning snap election victory the following month. Trade talks with the U.S. would dominate Carney’s first year in office, and in October, Ford entered the discussion with a television ad that aired during the World Series (between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers). The one-minute video played a selection of anti-tariff quotes from a 1987 address by U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan, and Trump’s reaction was immediate. Trump suspended trade negotiations, and Carney was forced to apologize to Trump to bring the Americans back to the table. Ford agreed to pull the ad so that talks could resume, and he stated, “We’ve achieved our goal, having reached U.S. audiences at the highest levels.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled in Learning Resources v. Trump that Trump’s so-called “liberation day” tariff regime was illegal, but this did not stop Trump from continuing to use tariffs—or the threat of tariffs—as a key element of his economic policy. As Trump pledged to impose tariffs as high as 50 percent on a range of Canadian goods, U.S. and Canadian negotiators continued in their efforts to finalize a trade deal. Those talks broke down spectacularly in August 2026, with Ford reportedly advising Carney not to accept terms that included U.S. control over Canadian steel tariffs and the weakening of French language protections. The result was nothing short of a trade war, with the U.S. enacting massive tariffs on a range of Canadian goods and Canada responding in kind. Trump disparagingly called the prime minister “Governor Carney” and demanded that Canada’s leaders “fall in line.” Trump also singled out Ford in particular, and the pair exchanged insults via social media.