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Nearly 40 people took part in a Fight Ford protest in Brantford on Saturday, March 28, 2026.
The protest was one of around 30 taking place in municipalities across the province. From Thunder Bay to Ottawa, Timmins, London, Bowmanville, Toronto, Windsor, Niagara, Hamilton and more, hundreds hit the streets to air their grievances and voice their frustrations with Ontario Premier Doug Ford and his conservative government.
Meeting in and around Brantford-Brant MPP Will Bouma’s office at 96 Nelson Street in Brantford, and later moving down to the corner of Nelson and Clarence streets, participants came bearing a variety of signs while chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, Doug Ford has got to go.”
Those in attendance explained that the protest wasn’t about just a single issue, but rather a range of concerns including health care, OSAP and education cuts, Bill 5, environmental protection, changes to Freedom of Information laws and more.
Madeleine Dewling, who was there with her parents Richard Dewling and Saundra Miles, said one of the main issues she was protesting was the changes to the Ontario Student Assistance Program, which beginning in the fall, will reduce non-repayable grants from around 85 per cent to just 25 per cent, and unfreezing tuition rates.
“I’m a university student, so those cuts to OSAP are not going to be great for me,” she said. “But I feel like, overall, Doug Ford has done so many things that I’m not happy with, I mean, we’re in the middle of a housing crisis, we have the highest-youth unemployment of any provinces in the country and on top of that, he’s just cutting all these sources of revenue for government, and the ones that he keeps, he just gives to his buddies. It just sucks. I think a lot of his policies are hurting all sorts of different people so it’s nice that we can come together like this. It feels encouraging.”
Simcoe resident Patti Townsend, who chose to protest in Brantford because her local MPP is independent rather than a conservative like Bouma, said she was there for multiple reasons, some of which stem from years prior.
“As a retired teacher, I worked for years in the system, and essentially watched the conservative party’s destruction of what was once revered as one of the best education systems in the world,” she said. “The first thing was eliminating Grade 13 [a decision made under the Progressive Conservative government of Premier Mike Harris in the early 2000s], which was essentially a free first year of college for so many young people and prevented a lot of debt. The next thing was taking away all the skills classes; Bill Davis, who was conservative, started skills-training in Industrial Arts and Family Studies in the public school system, and the later conservative government took it all away, which was basically just a waste of money.”
Townsend added that she was also there because of the destruction of the conservation system and the Green Belt, cuts to OSAP, the expansion of the runway at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, and the redevelopment of the Ontario Place waterfront to name a few.
“This public protest is really to bring all of these issues together to say that all of us, collectively, are angered by what Doug Ford is doing,” she said. “…My biggest concern is people’s apathy. People are exhausted. They are working ten-hour days and still not able to pay their bills, and so there’s really not a lot of energy left. I’m here on behalf of those people that can’t be here protesting like the students and those people that are affected by health concerns.”
Townsend, upon seeing how many people had also shown up, said it was nice to know she wasn’t alone.
“It’s rewarding to know that we’re not alone, right? I asked people to bring their old signs they’ve collected throughout the years because look at all the protests that we’ve had over the last eight years” she said. “And collectively, if we all come together, then it’s not divide and conquer, it’s more like unify and make a change. We’re not here for just one issue, it’s all of the issues.”
Burford resident, Cathy Cleverdon, said some of things she was protesting were changes to health care and education, as well as the proposed amendments to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which would exclude the premier, cabinet ministers, parliamentary assistants and their staff from having records released under freedom-of-information (FOI) requests.
“For me, the changes to Freedom of Information and his attempt to divert being transparent with the people of Ontario is my end of the line,” she said. “We need proper health care funding for fully-funded public health care, full- funded public education, and the OSAP has to be returned to its former state and improved.”
When asked why those things were so important to her, Cleverdon said she was seeing people falling through the cracks.
“I see we’re leaving people behind with OSAP and people won’t be able to afford to go to school,” she said. “It’s not easy to even qualify for OSAP sometimes, so there are already a lot of people being left out, and we’re not going to have a well-educated workforce for companies to come here. I’m also just very concerned about how Doug Ford is funding for-profit long-term care, instead of not-for-profit and how he’s making money off of people’s misfortune is reprehensible.”
Like Townsend, the Burford resident added that it was nice to see how many people shared her same view.
“It fills my heart that there are like minded people out there,” said Cleverdon. “They’re not people that are just willing to put up with more of the same, and we’re going to let our voices be heard.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
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