Ontario premier Ford has fallen on failing times. It was not just swallowing a bee the other day—that, at least, was funny. It is incidents such as watching him read from a teleprompter and realizing that nobody has taught him how to use it. It is his conservative caucus blind-siding him and voting for a speaker of the house who was not his choice. It is his not knowing when to shut up about his ‘strong mayor’ proposal. If he doesn’t stop talking about it, people are going to realize what it really means. And if there was one error that will hamstring his government over the next four years—it is the conservatives collective lack of empathy.
Quite frankly, that private-schooled education minister is going to be the first cabinet road kill. That poor fool is facing a gathering swarm of teachers and education unions who are not going to pay any attention when he offers minimal wage increases. In an education system that has failed its students and abused teachers and staff throughout the pandemic, Stephen Lecce, has no solutions, no money, no plan and faces off against people facing runaway inflation.
And here we have Ontario hospitals crashing. And people are dying. The replacement health minister will probably not even be there long enough to institute private medicine, even if she could.
And there are people in Ontario who are waiting to see just what Doug Ford will accomplish for them. I keep waiting for a ceremony to start the building of highway 413. This is the highway through rich farmland and wetlands from Milton to Vaughan that nobody really needs. No doubt transport minister Caroline Mulroney already has her shovel polished and ready for the event.
At least Ontario voters in the cities of Hamilton and Vaughan have the amusing chance to vote for the two losers for Ford’s job earlier this year. Ms. Horwath is running for ‘strong mayor’ in Hamilton and Mr. Del Duca is running for mayor in Vaughan. What neither of them realize is that this ‘strong-mayor’ proposal really means that the mayor reports to Queen’s Park. It is quite likely that the only time one of these super mayors can stop something passed by their council is when the provincial government of the day disagrees with it.
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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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