In thinking about the type of conservative Ontario premier Doug Ford might be, we have come to the conclusion that he is a bully. He is a conservative, though he isn’t really knowledgeable about what that means. It is hard to give him marks for intelligence ahead of former premier Mike Harris. At least Ford has not had anyone shot yet, or made ill by E. coli in their municipal water supply.
The difference was that Harris had a plan, his ‘Common Sense Revolution’ meant disastrous cuts in welfare, down loading provincial costs on municipalities, smaller government (cutting water inspectors is an example) and forced amalgamation of cities such as Toronto and Ottawa.
Mr. Ford is still fighting battles with his old foes at Toronto City Hall. His first act when he took over at Queen’s Park in 2018 was to interrupt the municipal election already under way in Toronto and reduce the number of councillors back to 25 from 47. It left the city councillors with the same number of constituents as the provincial MPPs and federal MPs. The city people said it left them with an impossible workload because of their direct relationship with their constituents. At the time, it was obvious that instead of saving money, Ford was getting even.
Seeing him in action at Queen’s Park, you quickly get the impression when he is in the House, it is all about me. Ford is self-centred, he is pugilistic and he is a bully. And to round it out, he is also a sneak. One of his funniest gaffs during the Covid-19 Pandemic was his announcing from Queen’s Park that we should all stay home and not go up north spreading covid. After the announcement, we found out that he was up in Muskoka enjoying himself in his motor boat.
His major problem in office is that he wants to come through on his offer to his developer friends to supply them with good opportunities to build subdivisions where no developer has gone before.
While he has found some prime sites in the Greenbelt for them, he is running into resistance to that in the media, in the polls and even with some of his own caucus. The problem is that the Greenbelt is not the place to build the thousands of homes needed in Toronto. Even along his unneeded highway 413, it is too far a drive into Toronto. He might keep trying.
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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry
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