Beer Store:
By breaking the contract with The Beer Store a bit over a year early, Ford lost the province over $600 million. And on top of that there will be between $800 million to $1.3 billion in lost revenue for the province by 2031. What drove him to do this? One clue may lie in his love of grocery store billionaires. “God bless the Weston family,” he said during a debate on CTV in 2017, while his opponent criticized the Loblaws owners. Ford made a nice deal for them. But what about the rest of us?
Therme Spa at Ontario Place:
Ford made a deal with Austrian spa company Therme to redevelop Ontario Place. The province has committed to spending $650 million for a 2,000-car underground parking garage and infrastructure upgrades. And they’re giving tax breaks in the hundreds of millions. So what did Ford get out of Therme in the dealmaking process? Supposedly, Therme will build the spa part of the facility itself. That’s what Ford got for a billion dollars.
If the project doesn’t go bust, Therme will pay an uncertain amount of rent each year to the province, based either on a land value or performance calculation. OpenCouncil.ca estimates the province will not recoup its costs even after 95 years of rent payments when using a Net Present Value analysis. (For more on this deal, see the follow-up article based on an interaction with the project proponents.)
EV Car Batteries:
Ontario agreed in 2023 to give subsidies of up to $9.4 billion to two electric vehicle (EV) battery manufacturers by the end of 2032, Stellantis-LG and Volkswagen. That’s so they keep their manufacturing plants open in Ontario. The federal government is giving even bigger subsidies. The companies previously had deals for smaller subsidies but eventually got more out of Ford and Trudeau. And neither level of government gets any ownership stake in the companies or loan repayments. Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Office estimates it will take 20 years for the governments to break even on these subsidies by recovering taxes from the companies.
Electricity & Fossil Gas:
In 2018, Ford’s PC’s cancelled renewable energy projects that were in the works, at a cost of $231 million in penalties. So who did the PCs make deals with instead? They locked Ontario into fossil gas (a.k.a. “natural” gas) contracts until 2040. If in the future fossil gas gets banned for electricity generation for being too polluting, Ontario will still be on the hook to pay the gas companies for doing nothing. Pipeline and gas giant Enbridge has been working closely with the government, chatting with senior officials on a regular basis. In 2024, they got the government to override its own energy regulator, the Ontario Energy Board, so that Enbridge doesn’t have to pay the cost of new gas hookups to buildings. Who did Ford make pay? Homeowners.
EDITOR’S NOTE, MAR. 10, 2025: This article has been updated to add information about the rent payments Therme will pay to Ontario for use of the Ontario Place lands. Therme’s comms and lobbying firm, StrategyCorp, asked us to add information about the outdoor areas and sent us a number of misleading statements. You can read our article about the deal for those lands and our explanation for why we are not making a correction.
This article appeared in the 2025 Feb issue.
