The emergence of Project Ontario marks a new phase in Canadian conservative politics. While Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives hold a comfortable majority, a group of policy advocates, commentators, and activists argue that his government has strayed too far from conservative principles. Through Project Ontario, they are pressing for a return to fiscal discipline, smaller government, and freer markets. The initiative is not a political party but a policy and advocacy movement aimed at shaping the direction of Ontario’s right. In many ways, it mirrors the role of Project 2025 in the United States: a blueprint designed to realign governance around more ideologically driven goals.

Project Ontario made its debut with a call for an autumn assembly of conservative thinkers, strategists, and policy experts. Its agenda emphasizes cutting red tape, lowering or reforming taxes, encouraging school choice, and tackling Ontario’s lagging productivity. Health care reform and housing affordability also feature heavily, framed through the lens of efficiency and deregulation. The group’s intellectual backbone comes from figures like Ginny Roth, Josh Dehaas, and Adam Zivo, with ties to institutions such as the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and the National Citizens Coalition. While the initiative presents itself as grassroots, it is clearly embedded within conservative policy networks.

Doug Ford has publicly dismissed Project Ontario, branding its supporters as “radical right” and “yahoos.” His sharp rejection underlines the political tension: while Ford governs from a pragmatic, populist center-right position, Project Ontario represents conservatives dissatisfied with compromise, seeking to tighten the ideological screws.

South of the border, Project 2025 represents the same instinct at a far larger scale. Organized by The Heritage Foundation, it is a sweeping plan to prepare a conservative administration for 2025. The nearly 900-page Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise lays out detailed proposals for reshaping the executive branch, replacing civil servants with political loyalists, rolling back climate regulation, and imposing more conservative positions on education, immigration, and social policy. Its ambition is not merely to influence but to structurally reengineer American governance.

Comparing the two reveals important similarities. Both initiatives arise from frustration within conservative ranks, demanding that governments lean harder into free markets, deregulation, and fiscal restraint. Both set out to pre-write the policy script, defining what conservative governance “should” look like. And both blur the line between advocacy and preparation, building networks of people and ideas ready to be deployed when political openings appear.

Yet the differences are just as telling. Project Ontario is provincial, modest, and reformist. It seeks to push an existing government rather than overturn governing structures. Project 2025 is national, well-funded, and radical in scope, proposing changes that critics argue threaten democratic safeguards. Ontario’s conservatives debate incrementalism versus ideology within the safe confines of provincial policy; the U.S. effort aims at wholesale transformation of federal power.

The rise of Project Ontario highlights the pressures facing conservative parties across democracies. Governing requires compromise, but ideological movements demand purity. Whether Project Ontario grows into a defining force or remains a niche critique will depend on how well it mobilizes supporters, attracts funding, and survives Ford’s dismissive pushback. What is clear is that this is only the opening chapter of a story likely to grow louder in Ontario’s political landscape.

Watchlist: What to Track Next
• Leadership: Will Project Ontario name formal leaders or remain a loose network of policy advocates?
• Funding: Who finances the initiative, and how transparent will it be about its backers?
• Government Response: Will Ford continue to dismiss them, or be forced to absorb parts of their agenda to maintain support on his right flank?
• Media Coverage: Do they gain traction in mainstream debate, or stay confined to policy circles?
• Public Reception: Will Ontarians respond positively to their calls for fiscal restraint, or view them as too ideological for provincial politics?