TORONTO — The Ford government’s renewed push to cap ticket resale prices is being sold as a win for fans. It sounds good on the surface. But in reality, it looks a lot like a policy Ontario has already tried, failed to enforce, and quietly abandoned.That matters. The province brought in similar rules under the Ticket Sales Act, 2017, then dropped them in 2019 after concluding they simply did not work. Nothing important has changed since then. Tickets are still bought and sold online across platforms that are often outside provincial control. Trying to regulate resale prices in that kind of market is not just difficult. It is largely unrealistic.Yet here it is again, presented as if it were something new.That is becoming a pattern with Doug Ford. Bring back an old idea, leave out the part where it failed, and trust that most people will not remember.The government says this is about protecting consumers. But even that claim is not landing cleanly. A recent Léger poll found 36% of Ontarians do not think governments should regulate market prices at all. That is not some fringe opinion. It reflects a pretty common instinct that if you own something, you should be able to decide what to sell it for..There are also real concerns that this could make things worse. About 34% of Ontarians say resale caps could actually increase the risk of fraud. That lines up with what has happened in other places. When legal resale options are restricted, people do not stop buying tickets. They just move to less regulated spaces.Ontario already has a problem there. Nearly one in five people say they or someone they know has been scammed while buying tickets through social media. Making legitimate resale harder could push even more people into those risky situations.Then there is the basic question of ownership. If you buy a ticket, is it really the government’s job to decide what you can sell it for later? The poll suggests most people do not think so. 85% say you should be allowed to resell a ticket you cannot use. More than half say you should be able to set the price yourself.There is also a bigger issue being ignored. Resale is only about 9% of the ticket market. The real power sits with the primary sellers. Instead of dealing with that, the government is going after a smaller, more competitive part of the system. That risks reducing competition without fixing the actual problem.On its own, this would already be a weak policy. But it is also part of something bigger..Ford has done this before.He once called speed cameras a “blatant money grab,” tapping into frustration from drivers when banning them. The problem is that under his own government, those same cameras were put in. There has been no real effort to explain the shift. It is just treated as if the earlier policy never happened.That is the through line here. It is not just about one policy. It is about a style of governing that assumes people are not keeping track.Governments are allowed to change their minds. Sometimes they should. But when they do, they should explain why. They should acknowledge what they said before and what has changed since. That is how accountability works..What we are seeing instead is different. Old ideas come back with a fresh coat of paint, and the past is left out of the conversation.Ford is betting that is enough. That voters will focus on what is being announced today, not what was said or done a few years ago.Maybe he is right.But Ontario has already learned this lesson once. It did not work then. There is not much reason to believe it will work now.
