It is not just Ontario residents who are confused. They are in a “lockdown” that nobody understands. The wife and I very much wanted to see an old friend this weekend. We finally figured out that under premier Ford’s lockdown rules, the two of us could not go and visit the other person but the one person could come and see us. Go figure that one?
To be honest with you, I never have been a fan of Mr. Ford. He is a label salesman gone amok. He was the worst councilor ever on Toronto city council for one term. He lost in his attempt at immediately running for mayor and landed in the premier’s job more by accident than design.
As premier of Canada’s most populous province, he immediately proved himself vindictive—disrupting the Toronto elections by reducing the number of councilors. He showed his true colors as an anti-environmentalist—promising developers they would be able to build on Toronto’s natural aquifer.
And while he never really provided us beer drinkers with his promised buck-a-beer, he proved his calling by ordering libelous stickers making false claims about the federal government’s carbon tax—until the courts instructed the province to take them down.
But when the pandemic first swept through Ontario, Ford was unprepared and rarely listened to anybody. It is the second wave that is threatening to decimate our population that has left him confused and angry. He begs and blusters for the news media instead of directing them to scientific sources. He, shamelessly, uses his cabinet colleagues to confuse and cover for him. He uses expert sources as a last resort.
It is his latest lockdown that has left us all in the dark. He tells us what is open and closed and what hours the open can be open. And what makes no sense is who can be dealing out the front door and who can invite you in to shop and why the big box stores are open when the desperate small store can starve.
This must be what happens when a label salesman tries to run a province. Let us hope that Ontario remembers when the opportunity for change comes along.
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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