Snow plows rumbled and salt trucks spewed de-icing pellets onto Toronto’s streets, barely visible under two feet of snow. A stocky man brandished a comically small red shovel as he helped dig out a car trapped at an intersection.
The helping hand was provided by Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province and its largest economy, who came to the rescue of drivers trapped in the January 2022 snowstorm, even giving a few of them rides home.
Some residents criticized the gesture as having the patina of a public relations stunt, but the “little red shovel” moment captured Mr. Ford’s essence: the Everyman who, despite lacking some of the polish of other politicians, still gets the job done.
Mr. Ford has lately been leading the charge against a different kind of storm that has rolled into Canada: President Trump’s threats to the country’s economy and his desire to make it the 51st state.
Mr. Ford, 60, has thrust himself into the public spotlight, aggressively defending Canada’s sovereignty, economy and honor, earning him the moniker “Captain Canada” among some Canadians at a moment when the country feels betrayed by the United States and has responded with fury.
“It’s like a family member stabbing you right in the heart,” Mr. Ford told reporters after Mr. Trump began threatening tariffs on Canada. The premier has taken to wearing a “Canada Is Not For Sale” baseball cap and a “Never 51” hockey jersey, both alluding to Mr. Trump’s repeated statehood declarations.
He has pulled American alcohol off liquor store shelves — Ontario is one of the largest buyers of U.S. spirits — and canceled the government’s contract with Starlink, an internet company owned by Elon Musk, Mr. Trump’s billionaire ally.
Mr. Ford, whose office said he was unavailable for an interview, also briefly imposed a 25 percent surcharge on the electricity that Ontario supplies to Michigan, Minnesota and New York.
Those tactics have caught Mr. Trump’s attention.
“There’s a very strong man in Canada,” Mr. Trump told reporters last week, referring to Mr. Ford, who retreated on the surcharge after speaking with Trump administration officials who offered to meet their Canadian counterparts to discuss the tariff standoff.
Mr. Ford, the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, ended up joining a small delegation of Canadian government officials who traveled to Washington last week to discuss the trade battle at the White House.
Still, Mr. Trump is expected to hit Canada with another round of tariffs on April 2. Canada has already retaliated against earlier tariffs with levies on $20.5 billion worth of U.S. goods.
Tariffs could push Canada’s economy into a recession, and already a handful of Canadian metal and manufacturing companies have announced dozens of layoffs in response to the trade war.
“If we go into a recession, it’s self-made by one person,” Mr. Ford said during an interview for American television, where he has become a regular presence on Fox News and MSNBC, among other networks. “It’s called President Trump’s recession.”
Ontario has spent millions in advertising dollars on commercials broadcast to an American audience highlighting the ties between the two countries and warning of the pain that tariffs on Canada would cause to their pocketbooks.
Canada has long seen itself as being in the United States’ shadow, but Mr. Trump’s aggressive campaign, including constant grievances that Canada takes financial advantage of the United States, has ignited a newfound sense of pride and a recognition of its role on the world stage.
“I am feeling incredibly patriotic, incredibly driven to protect what I know we have,” said Arlene Dickinson, a Canadian investor, television personality and member of a federal trade advisory group.
She credits Mr. Ford for loudly projecting that sentiment.
“He hasn’t wavered,” Ms. Dickinson said. “He hasn’t put individual interests ahead of the whole country’s interests.”
The trade war has come at a moment of upheaval in Canadian politics. Justin Trudeau, Canada’s recently departed prime minister, has been succeeded by Mark Carney, a former central banker, who is soon expected to call a national election that will pit his party, the Liberals, against the Conservatives.
With Canada’s top political leadership position in transition, Mr. Ford has been seen as a stand-in representative for the country. He capitalized on his popularity by calling a provincial election more than a year early and handily won a majority.
Dennis Pilon, a politics professor at York University in Toronto, said rushing the Ontario election helped Mr. Ford keep the momentum and eyes on him.
“He did that precisely to prevent the narrative from shifting anywhere else,” Mr. Pilon said.
Before becoming Ontario’s premier in 2018, Mr. Ford was elected in 2010 to the Toronto City Council, bolstered by voters known as “Ford Nation” who had also supported Mr. Ford’s brother, Rob Ford. He was a former Toronto mayor who died from cancer in 2016 and whose turbulent political career ended after he confessed to smoking crack cocaine.
Mr. Ford’s high-profile role in Canada’s standoff with the United States has blurred some of the controversies dogging him back home, including a plan to convert waterfront parkland in Toronto into a spa.
The authorities are also investigating opaque real estate deals brokered by his government to make tracts of environmentally protected land available to developers.
And he has faced backlash over his plan to address Toronto’s notorious traffic problems by tearing out popular bike lanes.
But Mr. Ford remains sought out for his thoughts on Canada’s main challenge abroad, telling reporters this week that Mr. Trump’s annexation threats were a compliment.
“We’ll never be a 51st state,” he said. “Canada is not for sale. But isn’t it nice that someone thinks we have the greatest country in the world?”
