He knows his audience, and this audience doesn't give a damn what happens as long as their house value goes up and their property taxes go down.

Durham is...weird. Other than some very small pockets, it's like no one really lives there. Oh, sure, there's schools and strip malls and housing developments, but there is almost no industry outside of big-box retail: everyone is either in construction, or works in Markham or Toronto. There's little to no stake that anyone has in the community, outside of mercenary concerns about taxes, so as long as you keep the numbers going in the right direction, you're golden. The reason Liberal support collapsed is purely because of those mercenary concerns: largely a) inflation, and b) housing (being either unaffordable, or, perversely, dropping in value. Yeah, weird, I know...)

So when you have a community that doesn't care about the community except for the value of it, it's going to be ripe for the kind of politician that only talks about money. Social concerns come into it, but only couched around how they're costing you money. It's Conservative, but more Doug Ford conservative than Pierre Poillevre conservative.

Put it this way. Toronto has "citizens". Montreal has "citizens". Even places like Lanark County, Ontario, have "citizens". Durham has "taxpayers".