Opinion | Doug Ford can be a bully or a bestie, depending on what’s in it for him. Will Olivia Chow figure that out?

Doug Ford was supposed to be the great disrupter.

So why is he sometimes the grand conciliator?

Not so much municipally or provincially, perhaps. But when Ontario’s polarizing and populist premier steps on the national stage, he suddenly plays peacemaker.

Whence the personality transplant?

In Winnipeg this week, Ford once again changed personas ― schmoozing with his provincial counterparts at their annual parley while smoothing things over with his federal interlocutors from a distance. Despite occasionally conflicting agendas among all three levels of government, he kept it cordial, if not convivial.

By turns buddy and ally, Ford likes to lean in with his fellow premiers even if they are far from fellow travellers. Quebec’s François Legault is a former separatist and forever nationalist who gets along famously with Ford, which helps explain why they teamed up to pitch Bombardier’s prospects for a federal procurement contract.

The football-loving Ford bonded deeply with the rugby-playing John Horgan when he served as B.C.’s NDP premier, and he gets along well with his successor David Eby today. Proof, perhaps, for those fearing a confrontation between the Ontario premier and Toronto’s new mayor, Olivia Chow, that he can get along with New Democrats.

When the Star’s Kristin Rushowy asked about Chow’s latest threat to take their Ontario Place dispute to the courts, Ford’s response was uncharacteristically restrained. While describing her move as “disappointing,” he quickly pivoted to boasting how he now gets along with another NDP mayor, Hamilton’s Andrea Horwath.

Say what you will about Ontario’s hyperpartisan premier. There’s no shortage of voters who love to hate him and hate to love him (even if more voted for him than his rivals in the last two elections).

When all is said and done, he loves to be loved. And likes getting along.

What does his constructive conduct at the national level tell us about his penchant for destructive behaviour closer to home? It seems that when Ford holds all the cards provincially and municipally, he can be a bully brimming with pugnacity; when he needs something from someone else (or wants to stock up on future favours), he is something of a soft-spoken supplicant with his fellow first ministers.

When the premiers ganged up against Ottawa last year in Vancouver ― led by his two best bros, Horgan and Legault ― Ford went along to get along. But he made a point of running interference for the federal government, tamping down the pressure and ramping down the rhetoric.

When Horgan and Legault both lit into the federal intergovernmental affairs minister, Dominic Leblanc, Ford helped dial down tensions. In the aftermath, he flew to Legault’s New Brunswick cottage to meet privately and help forge a compromise federal funding package.

The premier’s rapprochement with the federal Liberals is one of the bigger U-turns in recent Canadian politics. He’s not just fond of Leblanc but consistently chummy with Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland after countless hours of private talks, and publicly collegial with Justin Trudeau after they took turns pummelling each other publicly from 2018-19.

The list of agreements on shared funding and plant openings is long. The quid pro quo seems to be a willingness by the prime minister to indulge Ford’s more controversial initiatives of late ― from experimenting with privately-run health-care clinics to expanding highways.

Perhaps that’s why, when federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson raised concerns about the Ring of Fire this week, Ford’s reaction was to suggest he’d simply go over his head: “We’ll have to have our folks talk to the prime minister’s office.”

Ford has fostered close relationships with the other premiers because they are natural allies. Yet he has always distanced himself from the reflexive grievances that mark the so-called Council of the Federation, which hosted this week’s summit in Winnipeg.

It’s worth noting that the same premiers who demanded more and more from Ottawa on health care last year have themselves delivered less and less this year. The accountability metrics and transparency measures that are a prerequisite to increased federal funding have been notably absent from most provinces after all this time.

Despite his instinct for going on the attack locally, the premier changed tack last year: Ford’s winning re-election campaign recast him as the leader who could “get it done” for Ontario, while labelling his opponents as naysayers.

The public clearly has an appetite for amity over animus, preferring political leaders who get along rather than going after one another. It is precisely that impulse that motivated Ford to turn the page with the prime minister ― along with his belated realization that they both benefited from an overlapping Ontario voter coalition, provincially and federally.

In Toronto, by contrast, there is no such obvious overlap between supporters of Ford and Chow. Nor is there much symmetry in a financial relationship where the premier holds all the cards ― and cash.

In fact, Ford has long had friendly ties to Chow, just as he’s befriended B.C.’s Horgan and federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. But the personal is not the fiscal, nor the political.

The point is that other politicians across the country have figured Ford out. Can Chow?

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