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Scott Stinson: Ontario MPPs blast Doug Ford over aborted plans for $28.9M private jet

Two days of bad headlines, helped by the fact that ‘Gravy Plane’ made for excellent copy, was enough to cause Ford to explain that, upon further consideration, the plane plan was grounded

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The Ontario government had barely begun the process of getting Doug Ford’s new private jet ready for official use before the premier abandoned it like it was on fire.

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And from a public relations standpoint, it had indeed burst into flames.

Scott Stinson: Ontario MPPs blast Doug Ford over aborted plans for $28.9M private jet Back to video

Two days of bad headlines, helped in no small part by the fact that “Gravy Plane” made for excellent copy, was enough to cause Ford to explain in a Sunday statement that, upon further consideration, the plane plan was grounded.

One only had to watch the first few minutes of question period at Queen’s Park on Monday morning to understand why such a decision was inevitable.

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NDP Leader Marit Stiles complained that, at a time when the province is cutting funding for disadvantaged post-secondary students, “the premier was obsessing over what colour leather would go in his private jet.”

Stiles also demanded to know how much was being spent on upgrading the plane, allowing her to take a throwback shot at Ford’s aborted 2019 proposal to purchase an SUV for official use and have it tricked out with a mini fridge, recliner and television.

(Ironically, Ford’s defence in that earlier controversy had been that he preferred driving around the province to meet regular folks instead of using the government’s turboprop planes, a sound bite that came back to haunt him when the $28.9-million purchase of the used Bombardier Challenger jet was revealed on Friday.)

John Fraser, the interim leader of the Liberals, managed to squeeze a shot about Ford “pimping up his private jet” into a question on a matter that couldn’t be more unrelated, the unauthorized and accidental release of prisoners from correctional facilities.

Truly, the gravy plane zingers would have been shoehorned into every public statement from opposition MPPs for weeks, had the government not reversed course.

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Ford, evidently not wanting to take a public scolding in the legislature like a dog that sits in the corner in shame after it has taken food from the kitchen counter, let his ministers do the public show of contrition.

First up was Steve Clark, government house leader, who said that the government “heard from the public, we heard from the people,” over the weekend. No government makes every decision correctly, Clark noted, “no government is perfect,” and he saluted the “leadership” shown by Ford in deciding to bail from the plane like he was wearing a parachute.

“We made the right decision (on Sunday),” Clark said.

Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy tried turning a question about jet-related expenses into a lesson on the value of the small business tax cuts included in the provincial budget, only to have Stiles exclaim that there was nothing in that budget about the purchase of a private jet.

“If there has ever been a government more out of touch, I don’t know when,” she fumed.

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This was always how Monday was going to go for the government, once Ford decided that two days of outrage over the jet was more than enough. The only question that remains is why they ever thought they could make this plan fly to begin with.

As noted in this corner on Friday when the story first broke, there might — emphasis on “might” — be a justifiable financial explanation for owning an executive jet for official provincial business. Ontario is a big place, and if the premier’s frequent trips to its far reaches, and beyond, are costly on a per-trip basis, it’s not out of the question that owning a plan would be cheaper for the province over time, especially if having one in the provincial fleet would make the process of planning and organizing the premier’s travel significantly more efficient.

But Ford’s office didn’t make that case, or even really attempt to do so, offering as an explanation only that the premier travels a lot. It also made a point of including in its brief statement that some of that travel involves trade-related missions to the United States to counter the impact of Donald Trump’s tariffs, as though Ontarians might be willing to forgive the largesse of a luxury jet if we knew that Ford was using it to fight the good fight against the U.S. president and his 51st state nonsense. If only someone had thought to paint “Elbows Up” on the fuselage.

If nothing else, the whole episode is proof that even a government that has been in power for almost eight years, and has won three elections comfortably, can still make neophyte mistakes.

Did no one in Ford’s circle realize that buying a jet, at a time when the general public is recoiling at the cost of groceries and gasoline, was going to be impossible to square with his personal brand? He might as well have bought himself a top hat, monocle, and jewel-encrusted walking stick.

Farewell, then, to the gravy plane. The nickname was too good to live.

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