It was a shambolic affair from start to finish, from the court challenge around the deadlines, the problems with the voting itself, and in the end, thousands of misallocated ballots and a result where Christine Elliott won more votes in more ridings, but Doug Ford managed to get more of the allocated points and won the leadership on a narrow victory. Elliott did not concede for the better part of a day later, and the feeling is that this all could very well be Kathleen Wynne’s “lifeline,” though one probably shouldn’t count Ford out the way that people counted Donald Trump out.

I’m in: to unite and defeat Kathleen Wynne. @fordnation #onpoli #pcpo #pcpoldr pic.twitter.com/wEZosFs0gm

— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) March 11, 2018

And lo, we will be inundated with Ford/Trump comparisons for the coming weeks, and analyses of whether these comparisons are fair or not.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/972883042921582592

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/972883824400064517

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/972884738586415104

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/972894725798707200

Chris Selley notes the big risk that the Ontario PC party takes with Ford, while Paul Wells notes how Ontario conservatism is a bigger tent and stranger coalition than most people may take for granted.

I’m hoping that out of this, we finally start having a real conversation about how leadership contests are run, because it’s ridiculous. Sure, the partisans will close ranks around this, and we’ll get the voices that insist that this is the best way to grow the party, but it just perpetuates the same cycle. You’re not actually growing the party – you’re creating a number used for shock and awe purposes, and giving an even bigger “democratic mandate” to a leader who will then abuse it to consolidate power. It happens time and again, and we need to have a real conversation about restoring accountability to our politics. Maybe Ford will be the last straw, but I find myself pessimistic that it will change much.

Honestly this is two in a row with no caucus support. In this case the caucus didn't even want a leadership election. If this ends in tears (and I'm not saying it will), surely to God it has to change.

— Chris Selley (@cselley) March 12, 2018

The issue is leadership races are the best way to engage new members. After Hudak left we had maybe 10,000 members. Should they have chosen the leader? Maybe, but that makes it hard to build up the party and bring in new volunteers.

— Kevin Wiener (@kevin_wiener) March 12, 2018

This is, frankly, stupid. If riding associations were robust and did their jobs, they wouldn’t need to use leaderships as a crutch to engage https://t.co/t1uq1Uj59v

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) March 12, 2018

Politics should be about the grassroots riding association and not the leader. But as with everything, we’re doing it backwards these days.

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) March 12, 2018

Good reads:

• Chrystia Freeland says that while the Trumpocalypse is trying to tie tariffs to NAFTA negotiations, they are operating on separate tracks and won’t pressure the talks.
• Freeland also says that when she met her Indian counterpart, she explained that Jaspal Atwal’s invitation to that reception was an honest mistake.
• The government reversed a decision not to fund the production of books in an accessible format for the blind hours after they were called out on it.
• The current theory is that the charge of breach of trust against VADM Mark Norman goes beyond leaks and into sensitive procurement politics.
• Here is a look at privacy breaches made by StatsCan with some incidents in how they collected census data, and how they lost forms in other cases.
• With Karina Gould having given birth, here is yet another story on MPs bringing infants into the Chamber.
• Brad Trost has lost his nomination challenge for the 2019 election.

Odds and ends:

iPolitics has a profile of Celina Caesar-Chavannes.

https://twitter.com/stephaniecarvin/status/972961463940845568