Asking a question rather than making an accusation is another piece of equipment in the politician’s toolbox. Mayor John Tory of Toronto should be an expert at this form of bafflegab. He would have learned it in his years as a disciple of Ontario premier Bill Davis. Bill never publicly confronted his opponents. They were all friends.
This came home to me the other day reading about the letter Toronto’s mayor sent to the sitting conservative MPPs (other than the premier) from Toronto at Queen’s Park. What he was asking the MPPs to do was to speak up on behalf of their constituents. It seems that the provincial government had unilaterally and retroactively cut child care benefits of more than $80 million that subsidized day care spaces for more than 6000 Toronto families.
Tory had a perfect right to be disgusted with these MPPs but he knew their response before he asked. Backbenchers who rock the boat are sent to Purgatory. They become non-entities who do not get any good committee assignments or plum trips or chance of promotion. And if they ask too many questions or otherwise raise Doug Ford’s ire, they get sent to the far corner of the legislature to commiserate with former conservatives, MPPs, Amanda Simard, Jim Wilson and Randy Hillier.
Sure, John Tory would be well aware that conservative MPPs have a right to ask questions in the confines of caucus. The problem is that Doug Ford is not all that knowledgeable about the rights of the MPPs. Nobody wants to take the chance of angering him.
And while it is a long time since I took civics in school, there is little likelihood that any Canadian politician would be running for election solely for the purpose of representing his or her constituents. The road to power today is that you are elected in the sweep of your party, you answer only to your political party and your constituents be damned.
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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry
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