There were some concerns that Ontario Premier Doug Ford would be slow to transition from campaigning to governing after winning a majority in the June provincial election. To be fair, there were plenty of hints during the summer session that he wasn’t quite ready to shut down the campaign.
 
But there is no doubt today.
 
The campaign is over. The Ford government is in full blown governing mode. 
 
The Premier has made it abundantly clear that he will do pretty much what he wants, when he wants – because he can.
 
He commands an unassailable majority in the legislature. That means he sets the agenda. He drives the agenda – because he can.
 
That point was made unequivocally when Ford announced his intention to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms to override the Ontario Superior Court ruling that declared his Better Local Governments Act unconstitutional. He dismissed any notion that it was an over reach on his part. He insists it’s the prerogative of his duly elected government to decide what’s best for the people of the province. The judge, he emphasized, was “appointed” by the former Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty. (Not quite. Superior Court appointments are made by the PM of the day who was Paul Martin.)
 
Premier Ford simply reasoned he is using all the tools available to him to ensure his bill is enacted. He did it – because he can.

So, the Premier would be correct when he points out he is doing what is legal and allowed. It’s the same argument he used when he decided he would reduce the size of Toronto City Council.

Ford slashed Council in half - because he can.
 
So, for all the sound and fury that will consume the oxygen of the political stage in the coming days, our question and focus should be on “What does this really mean” and “What’s next?”
 
Thanks to Doug Ford, Section 33 of the Charter is now simply a political “tool” in any premier’s toolkit to use to lash back against an appointed judiciary to ensure “the agenda” of the elected body of the day is achieved. Ford is bucking the conventional view that if you invoke the Clause you are somehow ‘going nuclear’, that you are somehow going to risk a political backlash.

This premier has decided that the Notwithstanding Clause isn’t reserved for ‘extreme’ circumstance, i.e., insurrection or acts of war, being preached by some. It's not a 'break-glass-in-case-of-a-constitutional-emergency' tool.

And he would be correct. That was never its intention nor how it’s been applied to date elsewhere.

It’s important to know and remember that Section 33 of the Charter exists because former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed was properly concerned that the made-in-Canada constitution would shift power from elected officials to the judiciary, giving the courts the final word. Lougheed was right then. Is he right now? Doug Ford thinks so.

And let's remember, the Notwithstanding Clause was cast as an anti-Canadian, anti-rights cudgel primarily because Rene Levesque used it first to preserve  separatist language laws in Quebec. Of course, the real irony in all of that is Levesque refused to sign onto the homegrown constitution and its companion Charter.

Quebec and the country survive that 'crisis.' Doug Ford is betting that we can and will survive this "nuclear" constitutional option.

And the Premier’s made it clear that he will happily and easily apply it whenever timing, process or a judge of the land disagrees with his own constitutional interpretation.
 
Because he can.

We better get use to it.

Colin Kaepernick is the face of Nike’s 30th annual “Just Do It” campaign. And it took all of 6 seconds, (about the time needed to read and comprehend Kaepernick’s tweet to that effect) for the campaign to catch fire and explode on social media. It read: “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything. #JustDoIt”
 
What makes this so incendiary is Kaepernick is also the face of the ‘take-a-knee’ campaign in the NFL. He lost his job as a starting quarterback because he refused to stand for the pre-game Star Spangle Banner in 2016. He says he was protesting racial injustice in the United States. He hasn’t been able land a pro-football job since.
 
The reaction, on both sides, is entirely predictable. At one extreme there are those who are burning their Nike apparel, some have even found it necessary to share video of them urinating on their shoes. Otherwise, there is a legion of  converts vowing to make Nike their brand of choice for athletic wear.
 
I have little doubt that this will soon be the subject of a presidential tweet that will slam “failing Nike” and raise this ‘elitist campaign’ to a capitol offense against the POTUS (people of the United States), not to mention a personal affront to the White House resident.
 
In the clichéd short term – Nike wins when you consider all the earned media its enjoying. Good or bad, the discussion and comment about the campaign will be on cable news teleprompters for days. This is the opening week of the NFL regular season after all, so it will reignite the interest and attention in what made Colin Kaepernick famous (or infamous) to non-football enthusiasts.
 
So, it’s easy to say Nike’s opportunistic and timely in it’s use of Kaepernick. But it’s more than that.
 
This makes perfect sense for the Nike brand. Nike isn’t about running shoes or hockey helmets or sweat-wicking workout wear.

It’s also about you doing the right thing – whatever you think that may be. One campaign encouraged us to let girls play organized sports – Just Do It. Another highlighted an elite athlete who ran 80 miles a week and 10 marathons and year; he lived with HIV – Just Do It.
 
So the Kaepernick campaign isn’t out of character for Nike. Nor would I say is it all that risky. The notion that Kaepernick stood up for something he believed in, that was beyond himself, is a growing trend in athletic marketing.
 
The emphasis is on unselfishness rather than winning at all cost.
 
Graeme Newell is the President of 602 Communications; he specializes in emotional branding. He says we’re all familiar with sports marketing campaigns that focused on winning as an individual accomplishment. Teamwork isn’t part of the narrative.
 
But that’s changing since Millennials have asserted themselves as a primary market for sports gear. Newell says advertising to that demographic is changing the definition of winning.  He points to a Nike ad from 2014 in which Lebron James wins for his team and his community.

Millennial values have forced  the marketing narrative to shift from me to we. Newell says Nike’s not alone. There is a growing list of purpose driven companies that have reformed their business model to capture that shift. It affects everything from hiring protocols to customer engagement. Their success is based on their ability to make their brand about their consumers’ experience.
 
Nike saw this coming years ago. If there were a brand for emotional branding – it would be Nike.
 
You’re missing the point if you think this new campaign is about Kaepernick’s brand. It’s about a powerful Millennial market. It’s about a company willing to take its own advice to confidently venture outside of the comfort zone and “Just Do It”.