Premier Ford of Ontario must think business people in the province are generally stupid. At an Ontario Chamber of Commerce sponsored luncheon, he told the business people there that the Ontario economy has been stagnant, businesses are closing, freezing people out of better jobs and that powerful forces are trying to thwart his government’s improvements. This is in conflict with the fact that, despite the premier’s paranoia, the Ontario economy has been doing quite well.
All we can conclude from the rest of Dougie’s speech is that Donald Trump in the United States might not be the biggest liar in politics today.
Why Dougie told these business executives that he “fights for the little guy” was a little hard to understand? There might not have been anyone in the room who thinks of himself as a “little guy.”
And why does Dougie think a $15 minimum wage is a disincentive for business? Over the past two years, the liberal government raised the minimum wage from $11.40 to $14.00 and Ontario now has the lowest unemployment in a generation. Dougie told the business people that he was cancelling the increase to $15.00 per hour in 2019 along with other improvements in employment conditions.
Would you believe that he is also cancelling the requirement for business to allow employees two sick days in a year? Who does he think he is helping with that?
What the premier was doing at this function in Niagara-on-the-Lake last Friday was giving one of his campaign-type speeches. Why he would give a campaign speech to a business audience defies understanding. He certainly did not treat them as business people. He belittled them as though they were some of the free-loaders from Ford Nation. He used hyperbole and B.S. He told lies—deliberate untruths, easily checked.
Prominent in his speech was a virulent attack on prime minister Trudeau and his answer to the Ford provincial government cancelling the ‘cap and trade’ system with California and Quebec. It means that industries in Ontario putting out carbon from manufacturing or through use of the product (such as gasoline) will pay an initial $20 per ton of carbon emissions. Dougie thinks it is just a tax but it is being returned to Ontario taxpayers in the form of a lump sum payment with income taxes starting in April 2019. (Dougie gets a bit apoplectic about that.)
When conservative plants around the room stood to applaud the premier after his speech, the business people also stood to make a hasty retreat, in case Dougie was passing the hat.
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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry
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