One of the key lessons of the Trump era is how easily institutions previously taken for granted can buckle when norms and conventions are tossed aside. Political niceties and the presumption of some common decency, it turns out, are often simply no match for the right’s strong-arm tactics and willingness to rig the system to its own advantage. If recent events in Ontario are any indication, Canada’s decades’ old constitutional settlement and the freedoms it ostensibly guarantees may be a lot more vulnerable to rightwing onslaught than many of us have assumed.

Doug Ford slashes number of Toronto voting districts mid-campaign Read more

This summer, in the midst of a Toronto municipal election, Ontario’s rightwing premier, Doug Ford, brazenly introduced legislation to halve the number of councillors in the country’s largest city – effectively gerrymandering its wards to reduce the number of progressive voices at city hall. Soon obstructed by a court ruling that found his plan violated the constitution (specifically the right to freedom of expression of both candidates and voters), Ford went a step further and threatened to invoke the notwithstanding clause to override the court’s decision and, ultimately, the charter of rights and freedoms itself.

The notwithstanding clause, or Section 33, is a mechanism in Canada’s constitution that allows governments federal or provincial to provisionally override certain charter rights. Hitherto, norms and conventions have limited its use outside of Quebec. For this reason, the flagrancy of Ford’s threat caught many off-guard.

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Maybe it shouldn’t have. Canada’s conservative movement – which, like its Republican counterpart in the United States, is solidly in the minority in many key national debates – has long nurtured a hostility to the charter and the ways it’s sometimes been interpreted by the courts – for example, in upholding marriage equality for same-sex couples or protecting labor unions.

But thanks to its utter shamelessness, the premier’s threat to invoke the notwithstanding clause is both a useful test case and an ominous sign of what could lie ahead now that the precedent has been set. Ford, after all, made no mention of downsizing Toronto city council during a provincial election campaign which concluded mere weeks before Toronto’s municipal campaign. When confronted with the inevitable questions about why it was necessary, urgent or even desirable, his answer was simply and crudely that he had won an election and was therefore free to do as he pleased and would happily invoke Section 33 again at his pleasure.

The sweeping implications of this claim shouldn’t be understated: by insisting that the results of June’s election rendered moot any checks on his authority, Ford was declaring himself a de facto king. In doing so, the leader of a political party that came to power with a minority of popular support – premiers, unlike US governors, aren’t directly elected and thanks to a broken voting system Ford’s Progressive Conservatives won a big majority of seats in the Ontario legislature despite securing only 40% of the popular vote – has laid the groundwork for Canada’s rightwing minority to exercise near-limitless executive power with minimal constraint.

Quebec’s new right-leaning premier has already stated his intention to invoke the notwithstanding clause

I wish this were hyperbole, but reactions from the broad conservative movement suggest otherwise.

François Legault, Quebec’s new right-leaning premier, has already stated his intention to invoke the notwithstanding clause in order to implement a ban on the wearing of religious symbols like the hijab by public servants. Ford’s newest pal Jason Kenney, a former federal cabinet minister who currently leads Alberta’s official opposition, the hardline United Conservative party, once demanded its use as a bulwark against the “enforcement” of “gay rights” and has a longstanding record of opposition to reproductive justice. And the conservative base cheered Ford’s conduct.

Perhaps the darkest hint of all comes in the form of a recent op-ed penned in the Financial Post by Philip Cross, a fellow at Canada’s leading rightwing thinktank, the Fraser Institute. Cross praised Ford’s gerrymandering effort and its accompanying constitutional threat as “a welcome reassertion of power by our political class”, and was practically giddy at the prospect of neutralizing court challenges by environmentalists, rolling back trade union and refugee rights, and overriding future municipal governments that dare to pass laws contravening conservative pet causes or business interests.

Make no mistake: just as Republicans south of the border have worked to impose voting restrictions, legislate against workers, legalize discrimination, restrict access to abortion, gerrymander electoral districts, and despotically strong-arm elected city governments, Ford has opened a Pandora’s Box for Canada’s conservative movement to pursue the same course with even greater speed and ferocity.

In the end, Ford didn’t invoke the notwithstanding clause, but only because a higher court granted a stay on the original ruling that found his actions unconstitutional. The court let Ford proceed with his plan to gerrymander the Toronto city council, the democratic rights of Toronto’s citizens be damned. Some progressives have complacently viewed the courts and the charter as a fortification against such onslaughts, but the high court’s effective endorsement of Ford’s attack on Toronto city council and the jubilation Ford’s actions have inspired among conservative militants across the country should be taken as both an urgent corrective and a renewed rallying cry in defence of basic rights and democratic equality.

The cost of ignoring these stakes could be no less than perpetual rule by a vengeful, illegitimate minority legislating without constraint at the whim of politicians like Doug Ford. Canada’s progressive left must be prepared to dig in and fight back using every tool at its disposal.