MONTREAL—Doug Ford was elected leader of Canada’s largest provincial conservative party last weekend with little support from the caucus he will soon lead in an election or, for that matter, from much of the Ontario Tory establishment.A mobilized so-called Ford nation and an assist from the social conservative wing of the party helped the former Toronto mayoral candidate secure the leadership.The grassroots path — for lack of a better word — to political leadership has become a well-trodden one in Canada.Three years ago, a strong ground game allowed Ford’s predecessor, Patrick Brown, to rise from the relative obscurity of Stephen Harper’s backbench to claim one of the top political jobs in the country. These days Martine Ouellet remains at the helm of the Bloc Québécois despite having lost the confidence of 70 per cent of her caucus and in the face of public calls by a long list of Bloc veterans for her to step down.The more militant faction of the sovereignty movement from which she hails has seized control of the much-weakened federal party. Last fall Jagmeet Singh, who has yet to serve a single day in the House of Commons, easily beat frontline MPs to become Thomas Mulcair’s successor.Singh might have won the NDP leadership without the help of scores of fellow members of the Sikh community but probably not on the first ballot. Almost a year ago, a coalition of Quebec dairy farmers determined to punish Conservative front-runner Maxime Bernier for his opposition to Canada’s supply management system helped tilt the balance in favor of rival Andrew Scheer. At the time of Justin Trudeau’s 2013 leadership bid, his political rock-star status and the impressive social-media following that attended it made his ascension to the top virtually unstoppable. Like Singh, he might have a harder run for his money under a system that was not based on winning a membership drive.For most of Canada’s history, t ...
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