There is no point in complaining that our Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte member of the legislature is never in the electoral district. He obviously drives through it every time he goes to or from the legislature in Toronto and his home. When you live where MPP Doug Downey lives you still have a way to go past Barrie before you are home in Severn.
Whether it is fair to the people of his electoral district is another matter.
Downey was a parachute candidate. A former Orillia councillor and the go-to guy up in Severn for the Ontario conservatives, he was appointed by Doug Ford to run in Barrie to keep Patrick Brown out of making a comeback from here. And now that Orillia has its own Costco, he does not need to come to Barrie very often.
But after six months in office, nobody here seems to have heard from our MPP. You would suspect that especially a parachute candidate would want to be noted at special events around town. And while I have not been at all the major events in Barrie in that time, I have been at those where you would expect an MPP to make an appearance.
Mr. Downey is a disappointment.
But then his entire conservative caucus at Queen’s Park have been letting us down. They have a responsibility to temper the ignorance that Doug Ford brings to his job. You would think as a lawyer himself, Mr. Downey would realize the limitations of the advice of New York trained Caroline Mulroney. He and other lawyers in the caucus have to be prepared to caution her on some of her errors. She is obviously not listening to her civil service advisors. Caucus members need to help.
Nor is likely that anyone can temper the right-wing rage of a Lisa MacLeod but with her heading up the new controls on Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), the caucus must feel like it is on an out-of-control bus careening down the highway. You really do not want the types of problems that woman is going to create. The proof will be in the levers she pulls. There will obviously be more on this subject.
But it is safe to guess that Mr. Downey is just a one-time MPP for Barrie. Why bother getting to know him?
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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry
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