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Scott Stinson: Ontario buys $28.9M private jet for Premier Doug Ford's travel

Doug Ford's office defended the private jet as important for his travel, but critics say it's out of touch

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Maybe Premier Doug Ford was just trying to emphasize the importance of interprovincial trade in these difficult economic times.

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The Ontario government has spent almost $30 million on a Quebec-made Bombardier Challenger 650 executive jet, to be used primarily for the premier’s travel. An official in Ford’s office told the Toronto Star, which first revealed the purchase on Friday morning, that the used, 10-year-old plane, could be used for other government purposes in emergencies, but that its main purpose is for Ford’s “extensive travel” within Canada and to the United States.

Scott Stinson: Ontario buys $28.9M private jet for Premier Doug Ford's travel Back to video

Provincial opposition leaders on Friday sounded like they couldn’t believe this bit of good fortune had dropped into their laps.

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Outraged statements from both the NDP and Liberals landed in Queen’s Park press gallery inboxes within a minute of each other shortly after the purchase was revealed, each managing to use the nickname “Gravy Plane,” which will be impossible for the Progressive Conservative premier to shake.

“Families are struggling to buy groceries,” NDP Leader Marit Stiles lamented.

“People can’t afford groceries and gas, and Doug Ford is buying himself a private jet,” said John Fraser, interim leader of the Liberals. “That is tired and out of touch.”

The Liberals quickly arranged for Fraser to take questions from reporters, where he declared himself “gobsmacked” by the decision to buy a $28.9-million private jet amid an affordability crisis.

The opposition leaders have a point about the optics of the whole thing.

There might be a perfectly viable business case for the Ontario government to own and operate a private jet for the premier’s travel. The current practice of chartering private jets for certain travel would obviously be costly, and Ontario is a huge place. Ford has also been making a number of trips to the United States in recent months, drumming up support for increased state government and business ties to the province amid President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war.

His office also pointed out that the Quebec and federal governments have recently made purchases of new Challenger jets, and in greater numbers, than Ontario’s single used plane.

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It’s also true that a number of large, private companies own jets for executive use, on the justification that the speed and convenience of such travel, saving several hours per use relative to commercial flights, gives the executives more time to focus on their important jobs.

Do we really expect the premier of Ontario to, as the NDP’s Stiles said on Friday, “fly economy like the rest of us?”

I’m not convinced that having Ford take a premium economy flight to somewhere in the States, boarding in Zone 7, is necessarily the best use of his time.

(Fraser said that former premier Dalton McGuinty routinely flew commercial when returning to his Ottawa riding, although there’s an argument to be made that kind of travel would be less about official government business and more his duties as an MPP.)

Sometimes governments have to make expensive purchases because that is the nature of the job, even if it might make the tax-paying public wince at the price tag. This is how the official residence at 24 Sussex has effectively been left uninhabitable after needed repairs have been put off for years — because no one wants to deal with the fallout from headlines that would express shock at how much the prime minister was spending on sprucing up his digs. Even Justin Trudeau, master of the poorly thought out photo op, sniffed out the dodgy optics on that one.

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All of which is to say that the upfront investment in a private jet might be justifiable over time, if the purchase turns out to be better than a series of expensive rentals. That is, after all, how a lot of people end up rationalizing their vacation properties.

But, Gravy Plane is one of those labels that is going to stick. And Ford also bragged in 2019, in a clip that was getting spread around a lot on Friday, that he eschewed using planes to travel on provincial business and preferred to “drive around and talk to the people about the things that matter.”

There is also no escaping the fact there is an affordability crisis, one the premier himself acknowledged in a press conference this week when he expressed concern about the high, and still rising, cost of groceries and gasoline.

Premier For the People, the guy who has made no small part of his public image being the kind of leader who is most concerned about regular, everyday folks, is hard to square with luxury jet trips. Even used luxury jet trips.

Ford has, in the past, shown a willingness to walk back certain policies once it becomes clear that the public backlash is strong and sustaining.

Don’t be surprised, in other words, if there is a certain Bombardier Challenger 650, slightly more used, back on the market sometime soon.

sstinson@postmedia.com

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