The last conservative to tell the truth in Ontario was premier Bill Davis and it caused his party to lose power in the provincial election in 1985. In the 21st Century, we have yet to hear of a conservative leader in Ontario with a penchant for truth. The biggest liar is our current premier Doug Ford.
He is still struggling to figure out what else Ontario voters would respond to without it costing more billions in deficits next year. Premier Ford is a blowhard. He thinks any political problem can be solved by offering to throw money at it. And if he really spent that money, that he promised taxpayers that he would spend, the province would be heading for the highest deficit ever.
The crassest of all bribes from the blowhard was to Ontario’s nurses. Because he had continued the short-term law limiting salaries to provincial workers, he actually offered the nurses a one-time bribe. Because the law limits front-line nurses to a maximum raise of just one per cent per year, he offered them a retention bonus of $5000. They would get half before the election and if he was still premier after the election, they would get the other half.
The problem is that Ford’s government has been short-changing the front-line medical staffs in our hospitals since the beginning of the pandemic. These people have worked long, hard hours throughout the worst of the pandemic with little or no recognition of their very difficult and high-risk jobs.
And next in line are the teachers of Ontario who have been put through the wringer over the pandemic with the on-again and off-again shutting down of schools—on the assumption that remote learning would work for all. And anyone who has had any experience with computerized learning programs knows that they do not work for all children. Mr. Ford and his private-schooled education minister have much to answer for.
But now we find out that Mr. Ford has been dicking with Ontario’s hydro rates over the past four years. His government has been building the provincial deficit at almost $7 billion a year while Ontario homeowners and industries have been supposedly enjoying reasonable rates for electricity.
And the promises keep rolling along.
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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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