EXCLUSIVE: Premier Ford responds to Ford Fest harassment, but the story has some holes
Premier Doug Ford called me Monday evening to discuss what happened at his annual Ford Fest barbecue. I witnessed three young men harassing female volunteers. They then directed homophobic slurs at me while I wore an Ontario PC Pride shirt after I objected to their behaviour. They mocked me for being autistic, touched my hair without consent, and took my water bottle from my bag.
I had filmed most of it and posted clips online, as well as writting about it as part of my regular documentation of Conservative political events. The Premier had seen the footage, and he sounded genuinely angry on the call.
“They're disgusting,” he said. “If I had known, they would have been kicked out immediately. And now we have their faces, and I can tell ya they aren't gonna be around any longer.”
He apologized several times and said the behaviour had no place at an event that has run for more than thirty years as a family gathering. He also promised it would not happen again at future PC events.
Ford was clear on one point: the young men were not official volunteers. He said they showed up early, grabbed free “Protect Ontario” t-shirts that were being handed out at the entrance, and then begun causing trouble. He compared their conduct to "rowdy" OPSEU protesters who had also been at the event, calling both groups disrespectful and out of line.
“You come to a family barbecue… you be respectful,” he said.
He added that he would have personally removed them if he had known in the moment.
Yet his account contained some noticeable gaps. Ford insisted the men were not party volunteers, but he also said the Ontario PC's had conducted an investigation on their own, identified them, and banned them from future events. If they were truly random outsiders who simply picked up t-shirts, it is not obvious how the party would have moved so quickly to name and sanction them.
One plausible explanation is that these young men may not have been complete outsiders at all, but rather connected to the event through family—the sons of volunteers or even of sitting MPPs. That would explain how internal identification happened faster than it otherwise might have.
Ford spent a significant portion of the call expressing disgust at the behaviour and apologizing for what happened to me and to the women who were harassed. He asserted that this kind of conduct has never occurred at Ford Fest before and that he would not tolerate it going on.
At one point, he said that if the young men were his own sons, he would be "mortified." The anger seemed real. At the same time, he worked to distance the Ford name, as well as the Ontario PC's, from the incident by stressing that the men were not official volunteers, and by comparing their conduct to that of OPSEU.
On the ground that day, the situation looked somewhat different from the picture the Premier painted. While he drew a parallel between the three young men and the OPSEU protesters, the union members I encountered were respectful—even to me visibly wearing a PC shirt. I did not witness OPSEU protesters swearing at or harassing attendees in the way Ford described. The three young men, by contrast, were the ones creating the problems I witnessed and filmed.
Political events are large and difficult to police perfectly. Not every person wearing a party t-shirt is an official volunteer, and tempers can run high when protesters and supporters share the same space. Still, when people present themselves as part of the event and then behave abusively, the response matters.
Premier Ford's call showed that he took the complaint seriously enough to follow up personally and promise consequences. His account, however, left some loose ends, particularly around how quickly the men were identified and the contrast between his description of the protesters and what was visible on the ground.
In the end, Premier Ford said he appreciated that I had brought the matter to his attention and that he looked forward to meeting in person one day. He called me a “good man” for raising it. The conversation was direct, sometimes heated, and occasionally revealing. It also left the impression that even at events meant to project strength and family values, the line between official representation and opportunistic behaviour can blur quickly, and that line is not always policed as cleanly as premiers would like the public to believe.
EDITORS NOTE: This article is based on a personal phone call the editor received directly from Premier Doug Ford regarding the incident at Ford Fest. A full transcript of most of the conversation is available to any journalist or political commentator who wishes to review it and report on the matter themselves. Requests for the transcript can be sent to thisiswilladams@vivaldi.net. Please note that the Provincial Times editors email (editor@provincialtimes.ca) is currently unavailable.
