Ford’s Crombie put-down a smear or just politics?
Premier’s use of nickname for rival raises some eyebrows
Doug Ford has dubbed Bonnie Crombie the “queen of the carbon tax.”
Does that make him king of the put-downs?
At Queen’s Park and during news conferences, the snub is repeated — about 45 times in the legislature this year alone — by a dozen ministers and MPPs, and the premier himself numerous times when he’s in front of the microphone making government announcements.
It’s catchy, alliterative and conveys a simple message to his supporters and a wider audience of voters — Crombie supports higher taxes, and she’s out of touch with Ontarians on a hot-button issue that has divided the country, experts say.
But when the Liberal leader has already ruled out introducing a carbon levy in Ontario, some wonder why Ford continues to use that line of attack, especially as it includes a gendered term.
“I think he thinks it’s derogatory because he’s trying to position himself in front of the anticarbon-tax parade,” said Peggy Nash, a former New Democrat MP who is now at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU).
“I think he thinks that associating her with the carbon tax is the pejorative part of it” and not the term “queen,” added Nash, who has authored a book on women running for office.
“Whether you call somebody a queen or king, that implies they’re a leader. Now the irony is, didn’t Bonnie Crombie say she wasn’t going to be applying the carbon tax? It is a bit of an ironic tag for someone who clearly is not the queen.”
Myer Siemiatycki, a retired TMU professor and long-time observer of politics, said “that kind of language is problematic and objectionable on a number of grounds … (It’s) a demeaning and mocking characterization of a position that a female politician has taken.”
For Ford, the term is fair game — he said his Liberal rival did not speak out against Ottawa’s carbon levy and “as a federal Liberal, Bonnie Crombie was one of the earliest supporters of a carbon tax. She supported a carbon tax before there was a carbon tax, making her the queen of the carbon tax.”
Crombie was elected as a Liberal member of Parliament in 2008 and defeated in the 2011 election — four years before the Trudeau government, which introduced the federal carbon levy, came to power.
In a statement to the Star, Ford’s director of communications, Caitlin Clark, said, “back then, Bonnie championed a carbon tax that would have imposed even higher costs on Ontario
families, and she’s never stood up against the federal carbon tax and remained silent about this week’s 23 per cent increase,” referring to the jump in price of carbon to $80 a tonne from $65 on April 1.
In addition, Clark added, “just days ago, she said she’s considering re-implementing the capand-trade carbon tax and scrapping the gas tax cut that provides relief at the pumps and puts hundreds of dollars back into peoples’ pockets.”
For her part, Crombie said that if “I earned that crown,” then the moniker would fit — but it doesn’t.
“I’ve been in politics a long time. I have a thick skin and I can take political punches,” she said in an interview. “I’m willing to stand up for myself and other women. But that comment really crosses the line, simply because they are perpetuating an untrue statement.”
The “only reason we have a carbon tax in Ontario is because of Doug Ford, and that he ripped up the made-in-Ontario climate plan that we did have through the previous (Liberal) government — that’s the only reason we have a carbon tax today is because they cancelled cap and trade,” Crombie said. “So it’s a false statement.”
Crombie has created a climate action panel, headed by Beaches-East York MPP Mary Margaret McMahon, to help craft the party’s 2026 election platform. A return to a cap-andtrade system could be a part of it, she added, but all options are on the table.
Part of the appeal of repeating “queen of the carbon tax” is for the Ontario PC party to define Crombie as a leader, said Peter Graefe, a political science professor at McMaster University.
Even though the Liberals were reduced to so few seats in the past two elections that they didn’t even quality for official party status, Ford clearly sees her as more of a rival than NDP Leader Marit Stiles, said Graefe.
“As soon as Bonnie Crombie was elected, the Conservatives wanted to not give her any space to really establish herself and paint her, early on, as someone who cannot be trusted by the suburban electorate … and I think very early on, they came up with this idea that they would try and pin her as a person who would support carbon taxes,” said Graefe.
“Calling her the ‘queen of the carbon taxes’ … it’s something that’s easy to repeat, pretty short form and on the face of it is not too derogatory, but certainly has the impact of putting the label on her, but also portraying her as a bit of a cartoony character.”
Simon Kiss, a digital media and journalism professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, said “queen of the carbon tax” may play well now with some voters, but when inflation is tamed, concerns about the levy may go away.
“In which case, is it going to be that effective to label somebody ‘queen of the carbon tax’?”
Ford and the Progressive Conservative party “very clearly see her as the alternative — they don’t give a damn about Marit Stiles and the NDP. They’ve made a strategic calculation … that voters will be choosing between (Bonnie Crombie) and the PCs,” Kiss said, and so are “better off painting her negatively.”
Former Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne said she thinks Ford is “obsessed with (Crombie) and can’t help going after her.” But “as the run-up to the election goes on, if she gains traction, Ford is going to get mad and his baser instincts will take over. In that context, we may look back on this and see it as a harbinger of things that were to come.”
Graefe said part of the appeal of using “queen” feeds on an idea that Crombie is not “a woman of the people,” is imperious and doesn’t deal well with those who oppose her.
But given her humble roots — and Ford’s upbringing in a wealthy family — Siemiatycki said “it’s playing a populist card that applies, if anything, more to him than to Bonnie Crombie.” He says the premier is likely trying to change the channel on controversies his government is currently facing.
The name-calling, however, “demeans our political discourse” and is adversarial, even toxic, and “queen of the carbon tax” is sexist language, Siemiatycki added.
As to whether using the term is fair, Kiss said, “What’s fair in politics? There are no rules about this — voters are the ultimate judges.”