After spending some time checking out the line-up of found-ins referred to as the Ontario cabinet, we have an uneasy feeling in the middle of our back. This is supposed to be the people’s cabinet. We are not sure just who the people are to whom this refers.
The cause of concern was the report from the Toronto Star’s bureau chief at Queen’s Park that none of the new cabinet ministers were being allowed to appoint their own chiefs of staff or communications heads. All such decisions are coming from the new premier’s office. And since the premier himself knows nothing about those skills, all decisions are obviously being made by the premier’s staff. And this implies that premier Ford himself did not have too much to say.
The day that Christine Elliott, with years of experience, does not know whom she would want in her office backing her up, there is something wrong. If the premier’s staff think they can push the new minister of health around, they are in for early trouble. And in her other role as deputy premier, she has to be read in on much more than the premier’s staff.
The same can be said for Vic Fedeli, the new minister of finance and former North Bay mayor. Fedeli is more of a right-wing ideologue than a populist and he will have a tough time fulfilling many of Doug Ford’s conflicting promises. If he ever says he has saved six billion somewhere, you will know you are hearing fairy tales.
It seems we have let the fox into the hen house when Ford’s people picked Caroline Mulroney to be attorney general of Ontario. We have the unusual situation of a member of the New York State bar being given the top legal job in Ontario. Luckily, she is not connected with our education system as her three children attend private schools. Her weekend home is an estate in Georgina (part of her electoral district of York-Simcoe) while during the week, her and her family are in residence at their multi-million dollar home in Toronto’s Forest Hill area.
Mulroney has also been named as head of francophone affairs. She was educated in French as a youngster in Ottawa when she lived in the prime minister’s residence on Sussex Drive. What she might know about francophone affairs she could only have learned from her father. She went to American universities and worked and married in New York until she and her husband and children came to Toronto.
There will be more to come on Ford’s Folly.
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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry
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