Conservative Torches Doug Ford After Election Loss

OTTAWA — Doug Ford sabotaged Canada's Conservative campaign, says a Toronto-area lawmaker who is accusing Ontario's premier of being a hype man for Mark Carney's Liberals.

“He couldn’t stay out of our business, always getting his criticisms and all his opinions out, distracting our campaign, trying to make it about him, trying to position himself as some kind of political genius that we need to be taking cues from,” Conservative MP Jamil Jivani told CBC News as votes were counted in Canada’s snap election.

Ford, who is one of the most powerful conservatives in Canada, won a third consecutive landslide in February after focusing his campaign on U.S. President Donald Trump and tariffs. He told POLITICO that he’d advised Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to do the same. Instead, Poilievre focused on affordability concerns in a campaign that expanded his party’s base, though he ultimately lost his own electoral district in a conservative part of Ottawa.

Final election results are still being tallied, with the Liberals currently just shy of a majority government in the House.

Canada’s Conservatives are reassessing missteps and contemplating how they should move forward — with or without Poilievre at the helm.

“I see Doug Ford as a problem for Ontario and for Canada. I think he's not doing a great job in running this province, and now he's trying to exercise his influence over other levels of government. And it's not like this guy is doing anything particularly well,” said Jivani, whose best friend from Yale law school was JD Vance, now vice president of the United States.

In his concession speech, Poilievre vowed to keep fighting alongside his Conservative caucus, although he made the comments before officially losing his seat in the House.

When asked, Jivani did not rule himself out as a possible successor. “I don’t know what tomorrow holds,” he said. Several staffers within Poilievre’s office are planning their exit strategies.

Ford said Tuesday morning that he’s focused on unity, when asked about Jivani’s comments. “We have to bring this country together like we never have before,” he said.

Ford and Jivani have been feuding for years. Jivani was once an adviser to Ford, working under his ministry of education. In 2022, he resigned over Ford’s policies around the Covid-19 pandemic, saying they had a negative impact on marginalized youth and their parents. When Jivani was first elected to Parliament in a 2024 special election, he railed against Ford’s Progressive Conservative Party. On election night, he called the premier an “opportunist.”

Conservative infighting was a distraction during the 37-day campaign. Weeks ago, Ford needled Poilievre for being down in the polls, and in a recent interview with POLITICO, he criticized Poilievre for failing to refocus his campaign on tariffs.

Poilievre and Ford were never friendly, and their friction overshadowed the campaign, especially in vote-rich Ontario.

Voters questioned how Poilievre could lead Canada’s response to Trump’s tariffs when he couldn’t get along with the leader of Ontario — one of the U.S.'s biggest trading partners.

“I think seven years ago, I met him once in Ottawa. A breakfast right after one of my events. But we never really talked there,” Ford said of his relationship with Poilievre.

Ford said Poilievre was forced to ask him for advice last month. The Ontario premier had just finished running a successful campaign on a message that he’d defend Canadian jobs and workers from Trump’s economic threats to Canada.

Throughout the five-week election campaign, Ford’s campaign manager Kory Teneycke accused Poilievre of “campaign malpractice” for blowing a 25-point lead ahead of the election.

“This campaign is going to be studied for decades as the biggest fucking disaster in terms of having lost a massive lead in ways that were so obvious, with so much information,” he said on the “Curse of Politics” podcast.

Ford did not endorse anyone for prime minister, although he had breakfast with Mark Carney in Toronto shortly after he became Liberal leader. And he publicly praised Internal Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland, who helped negotiate the United States-Canada-Mexico Agreement during Trump’s first term. Freeland posted a selfie with the premier at his swearing-in ceremony just after he won his third majority mandate.

“He’s glad-handing with Chrystia Freeland, having coffees and lattes with Mark Carney, and I’m sitting here saying we need to be fighting for change in something new and something different — not being a hype man to the Liberal Party,” Jivani said.