All's fair in love and oppo

Ford plays defence

🏝️ PROGRAMMING NOTE: I’m taking off for a two-week summer vacation after Friday’s newsletter (no, it’s not Jamaica) and will be back in your inbox on August 31. As usual, I’ll pop back in if any wild breaking news drops, like, say, a cabinet shuffle or a certain integrity commissioner report. Here’s hoping absence makes the heart grow fonder. Time-off policy.

SUN, SAND, SURVEILLANCE

A whirlwind presser from Premier DOUG FORD — his first meeting with reporters in several weeks. Highlights:

The spy who loved oppo: Ford is catching some serious flak for his “politics-as-usual” defence after the PC Party reportedly paid for an operative to surveil then-Liberal leader BONNIE CROMBIE on her private vacation to a Jamaican resort in 2023.

“Stuff happens,” he told reporters. “Talk to the party. I don’t approve of it.” He insisted he only “just found out” about the covert operation and brushed it off as “$3,000 of the party’s money.”

But because donors get a tax credit and the PCs receive milli…