Editorials - April 24, 2026
Learning to fly
“Every flight begins with a fall,” wrote George R.R. Martin. This is an adage Ontario Premier Doug Ford is learning the hard way.
For a man who strives to brand himself “a man of the people”, he just doesn’t get the “people”. From giving us a lot of things no one wants (buck-a-beer, unfettered alcohol in public places, privatized online gambling, etc) to taking away a lot of things many of us need (farmland, Ontario Science Centre, Greenbelt land, Ontario Place, rent control, green energy projects, etc), Premier Ford seems to do a lot of things he wants, while trying to convince us that we want them too.
One thing he couldn’t convince us that we want? A private jet. The Ontario government’s tone-deaf decision to buy a private jet, albeit a used one, couldn’t come at a worse time. Average Ontarians are having a tough time making ends meet with rent, mortgage payments and groceries taking more and more out their paycheques, with no relief in sight as fuel costs skyrocket. In fact, purchasing a private jet while jet fuel becomes scarce seems like a doubly short-sighted venture.
Doug Ford has had eight years to connect with Ontarians, yet he still doesn’t understand what the vast majority of his constituents need from him. If he hasn’t figured it out by now, he likely never will. – DS
All the wrong reasons
If there is a single image that captures the growing disconnect at Queen’s Park, it is this: a $28.9 million luxury jet, purchased with public money, then sheepishly put up for sale days later after Ontarians, quite reasonably, asked what on earth the government was thinking. The answer, increasingly, appears to be that it was not thinking at all.
Governments do not accidentally buy jets. Someone made the pitch. Someone signed off. And Doug Ford either nodded along or failed to ask the most basic questions in a massive failure of judgment.
Because this is not an isolated blunder. It fits neatly into a developing pattern that is becoming harder to ignore. The sudden upheaval around the Ontario Science Centre, the costly and controversial plans for Ontario Place with its luxury spa ambitions, the fixation on waterfront airport expansion. Taken together, they look less like vision and more like a government captivated by flashy projects while everyday concerns pile up.
Ontarians know what it means to stretch a dollar. What they do not accept is a government that seems to operate by a different set of rules, where restraint is preached to the public and abandoned behind closed doors. The most generous reading is that this was a spectacular lapse in judgment. The less generous reading is that it reflects a deeper habit of making expensive decisions first and worrying about public reaction later. Neither inspires confidence.
Ontario does not need a premier shopping for aircraft. It needs one grounded in the reality people are living every day. The plane is being sold. It should never have been purchased in the first place. As for the government that bought it, voters will one day have their say. – SBS
Free Fallin’
For sale: luxury jet, never used (except for when it was used before - it was said to be a used jet when purchased, after all).
With apologies to the original (unknown) author of that famous six-word short story (“For sale: baby shoes, never worn” is often erroneously attributed to Ernest Hemingway), the provincial government is selling something, and not the usual combination of lies and gaslighting it sells Ontarians on a regular basis, it actually has something to sell this time. A multi-million-dollar plane is now on the block. Whether Premier Doug Ford makes his (our) money back on this sale remains to be seen, but feels unlikely, given the public nature of this 48-hour flip-flop.
Now, Ford and his team have to find a buyer. This might be tough in this economy. Many Ontarians are living hand to mouth as grocery and fuel costs rise and, further complicating the ownership of a plane, jet fuel is becoming increasingly scarce. The above reads not only as a list of things that may make selling a jet more difficult, but also as a battery of reasons it shouldn’t have been purchased in the first place.
Provincial NDP Leader Marit Stiles has called for Ford to personally pay back the residents of Ontario for any and all costs associated with selling the jet and any financial losses incurred as a result of the sale. Ford entertaining that idea seems unlikely, but only time will tell.
Looking ahead, it’s impossible to know where this saga will take us, but for most, even many on the financially-conservative right, this can’t help but feel like tidying a mess that should have never been made. Stiles coined the term “gravy plane” for Ford’s ill-fated flight folly, which is a pitch that the man who campaigned on stopping the gravy train just has to take, and yet Ford has told us that his mistake was not, in fact, buying the jet in the first place, but rather not making the case to Ontarians first. Maybe another jet is in his future or, as he says, he has heard voters “loud and clear”, but, until we know, off to Facebook Marketplace. – SL