Ontario Premier Doug Ford says that “no one has a handcuff on anyone” as he deals with the loss of a cabinet minister to Pierre Poilievre’s run for federal government.
On Jan. 25, then-Minister of Red Tape Reduction Parm Gill announced he would resign his cabinet post and his provincial riding seat ahead of a run to return to the federal government.
Gill previously served one term in Ottawa.
“My message is to anyone, no matter when I ran my private company or run the government: no one has a handcuff on anyone, no matter if its the Liberals, NDP, PCs,” Ford said at an event in York Region on Wednesday.
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“I appreciate our team and to be very frank I have the best team ever assembled in Ontario and I’m very grateful to have them, to serve with them.”
Gill is the fifth minister to leave Ford’s cabinet in the past year. He follows Steve Clark and Kaleed Rasheed who resigned over the Greenbelt scandal, while Monte McNaughton and Merrilee Fullerton also stepped down in 2023.
One polling expert said the move makes sense for Gill, with the potential for a Conservative “sweep” across parts of Ontario.
“When you look at the polls and where Pierre Poilievre is now and the sweep across Ontario the conservatives could pick up I think it is natural that he might gravitate right back to the federal riding,” John Wright, executive director of Maru Public Opinion, told Global News.
— with files from Global News’ Colin D’Mello
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