by Robert Lee, author of the Twitter ClusterFord @downtownrob88
Doug Ford has opened up a new front in his land-use confrontation with Toronto over his plans to construct a giant health club on the city’s downtown lakefront.
The new mayor and about 3 million other Torontonians will be surprised to learn their city has been designated by Ford as a host city for the Therme Place Spa.
It’s as if there is a Spa & Massage Parlour Olympics and Doug has applied before an international body on behalf of Ontario to host it, but he didn’t bother letting the ultimate party-giver know about it.
What an honour…can’t wait for the Opening Ceremonies broadcast worldwide on CNN.
Ford laid out his new comms strategy Tuesday in front of reporters in Waterloo Region.
Ford, as usual in front of a corporate logo, declared Toronto the “Host City” of his waterfront massage parlour slated for the Ontario Place site.
Perhaps the legally challenged Doug believes he has introduced a further arrow in his quiver, weaponizing the phrase “Host City”, to double-down on his jurisdictional and amoral overstep into the affairs of the country’s largest city.
It might become a standoff if Mayor Olivia Chow has her way and is able to halt the 45-metre-high monstrosity of glass and steel that nobody wants except Ford and some foreign spa-hunting tourists.
A building height of 45 metres will present as a 15-storey high rise on a former public park.
Typically, the spectre of Chow refusing to cede city land over to the province was brushed off by the dictatorial premier.
“But this is moving down the tracks pretty quickly right now. We look forward to sitting down with the host city.”
Force majeure by dint of “Host City” characterization is yet another message that Toronto and the other 443 municipalities in the province are fifth wheels in the process of land-use decision making in their respective jurisdictions:
“Let’s all keep in mind,” lectured Doug, professor of political science at Muskoka University, “the people of Waterloo Region and everywhere else in the province, this is a provincial site. I respect that the host city is Toronto, and we were working hand in hand with the previous mayor, which we got along quite well. But this is a provincial site. We are going to do what is right for the province, and with respecting that that is in Toronto, and that it is the host city.”
Applying the ridiculous leap-of-faith Ford logic that never survives closer examination, Ford said Ontario Place had been left neglected, but has never made the case for handing over $600 million to a foreign company to build a spa.
The imperative to rip the place down is a Ford concoction. The Liberals had developed a plan to repurpose Ontario Place as a public park, “Celebration Common.”
But Ford scrapped those plans upon assuming office in 2018, outrageously launching a closed-door process ultimately identifying Austria’s Therme and US-based concert promoter Live Nation as tenants.
“Ontario Place had weeds growing out. It sat there like a city dump for what, 15 years? No one did anything. Nothing. We are making it into a beautiful destination.”
The east end of Ontario Place as depicted in this April 2023 photo shows Ford is lying when he describes the site as an infestation of weeds. Not even close.
Compounding the disinformation, Ford took to effervescing about another of his planning incursions, relocating the Ontario Science Centre to Ontario Place:
“You know, the Science Centre sat there, decrepit. It was being run down, it was dropping 30 per cent on visits every single year.”
This erroneous statement was debunked in April; Ford’s typically conniving communications team intentionally included Covid-era stats affected by lockdowns in the 30 per cent figure. The decrease was only 10 per cent, when fairly comparing statistics from 2013/14 to 2018/19, the last year unaffected by the pandemic. In addition, coming out of the lockdowns, onsite attendance in 2021-22 was 255,347, 179 per cent above expectations.
Hyperbolic Doug Ford describes this structure as decrepit, and says attendance has fallen 30 per cent, “every single year.” Wrong on both counts. Attendance at the Ontario Science Centre has bounced back since Covid lockdowns.
Nevertheless, the firehose of Ford obfuscation continued: “We are going to continue working hand in hand with the city, but that’s another project. We are going to get it done.
“And mark my words. The same detractors are going to show up at the ampitheatre (sic) because their favourite band’s going to be playing, a brand new ampitheater (sic). The same group is going to bring their kids to the water slides; the same group is going to be going to their hiking at Ontario Place. So it is going to be beautiful. And I can’t wait.”
Meanwhile, many Ontarians can’t wait for Election Day 2026.
by Robert Lee, author of the Twitter ClusterFord @downtownrob88
Depending on your generational cohort, Premier Doug Ford of Ontario either got ratioed, dissed and/or slapped upside the head by a cross-section of Toronto voters last night.
While Ford remains the de facto mayor of the declawed City of Toronto, he faces a new Nemesis in Town, Olivia Chow, a civic veteran with an attitude and a worthy mandate – 37% of the vote in a crowded field – who won’t go along like John Tory did for five agonizing years.
That mandate should intimidate the Muskoka Misanthrope to no end.
Chow Nation swept downtown and Scarborough, and tacked on Willowdale while burying Mark Saunders in Ford Nation wards in Etobicoke. (Map by CBC).
The heretofore marginalized downtown core delivered for the new Mayor Chow, but her inroads into presumed Ford Nation territory in Scarborough — and even North Etobicoke — put Chow over the top.
Talk of Chow deriving an unearned benefit from name recognition downplayed the profiles of Ana Bailao as a Toronto councillor, Mark Saunders as the police chief/CP24 favourite and columnist Anthony Furey, who has been platformed in a newspaper with a purported six-figure readership for about a decade, even if it is a Postmedia fabrication.
The Ford Candidate was rejected by 11 of 12 voters.
Chow is seen as a sharp strategist who works well behind the scenes with others. She also possesses a gruelling work ethic, anathema to Muskoka Crew Boss Ford, who does business through intermediaries carrying USB drives for maximum deniability.
Chow’s facility with facts and reality might startle the premier.
Ford’s attempt to orchestrate a hit on Chow followed the premier’s standard overkill method.
“God forbid Olivia Chow gets elected, your taxes are going up at an unprecedented rate,” Ford charged five days pre-vote, taking aim at the former New Democrat MP, city councillor and school trustee.
“Businesses are going to be fleeing Toronto, as far as I’m concerned,” said the always hyperbolic Ford.
No doubt the premier is pondering the potential break fees facing his government, not to mention feedback from his business allies at Therme of Austria, whose unwanted Spa on the Waterfront boondoggle confronts a mayor with a mandate to preserve Ontario Place as a park, not a parking lot sitting beneath a 45-metre-high, energy-sucking glass box on a Great Lake.
Chow destroyed the competition downtown.
Doug’s joy is full when a public institution like Ontario Place takes a hit. Chow defends such institutions.
Ford’s delegate Saunders was an also-ran third, as Chow beat Saunders in the north and central Etobicoke wards and in old-time Ford strongholds in Weston and York.
When mapped onto the results the last time Ford ran for Toronto mayor, in 2014, when his second place tally was anchored in his Northwest Toronto support, Ford coat-tails were torn to shreds this time.
The Ford Nation Machine did not deliver: Chow outpolled Saunders 27.9% to 15.4% in Etobicoke North and 21.2% to 13.6% in Etobicoke Centre.
And then there were 44 (in the 2014 mayoralty): The dark blue wards, top left, delivered huge majorities in the 60% range for Ford. But the premier’s anointed candidate came in 3rd, in 2023.
Margins were even larger in Humber River-Black Creek, 28.2% to 10.7%, and 24% to 11.3% in York Centre, 29.6% to 10% in York South-Weston.
The so-called “woke left” woke up and turned out at the polls, as did the racialized communities.
Tipping the scales in favour of Olivia Chow, Scarborough now realizes it had been used and abused by the Old Guard of Ford, his brother Rob and John Tory, who ganged up on and destroyed David Miller’s sensible LRT plans for the old borough that Toronto forgot, the land they used to call Scarberia.
That old guard promised “Subways, subways, subways” to lure votes, but delivered squat; underground transit is nowhere to be found in the city of 630,000 residents.
The upshot is Chow almost swept Scarborough’s six wards, clobbering Bailao 47.2% to 23.6% in Scarborough North, and losing only one, Rouge Park, by a mere 29 votes.
Chow’s best showing was in Toronto Centre, 54.6%, versus 20.7% for Bailao.
The media and the RW candidates will applaud Saunders, generally regarded as a mediocre police chief. But he ran a mediocre campaign. Credit the Ford Machine for investing in public speaking courses for Saunders, but it wasn’t enough.
Only one voter in 12 marked their ballot for Ford’s candidate.
Chow has repeatedly said on the campaign trail that she cannot put a number on any tax increases (such hikes always framed as a negative in the MSM despite Toronto’s ragged condition) until she gets a full picture of the city’s finances, but has pledged that any hike would be “modest.”
Meanwhile, the premier dragged out an old chestnut, often debunked, from his late brother’s 2010 campaign, 13 long years ago:
“My biggest fear is the gravy train 2.0 coming down the track.”
As if gravy train 1.0 loaded with a billion-plus dollars per year has ever been derailed en route to its long-time destination: Toronto Police headquarters at 40 College St., both during and after his brother’s term of office.
Chow has promised to get the city more directly involved in building affordable housing, reverse TTC service cuts and reinvest in parks and other services that many felt suffered under Tory’s centre-right, low-tax rule.
Such initiatives are anathema to the ideology of the current premier.
While a mere seven of Toronto’s 25 wards are in the downtown core, the end result is a smashing victory for the left: the post-1953 Toronto that extended from Hogg’s Hollow south to the Toronto Islands and from Victoria Park west to the Humber Marshes no longer has its own mayor, but for at least the next four years, it is no longer a political non-entity.
by Robert Lee, author of the Twitter ClusterFord @downtownrob88
Teflon Doug Ford of Ontario is getting a little tacky in the wake of his recent policy failures. And the flak is beginning to stick to his thin-skinned hide.
Having ridden a five-year wave of unscrupulous incompetence and belligerence, his actions on the Greenbelt have caused an implosion of his popularity as he now presents as a politician unable to compromise, dismissive of consultation.
With typical chutzpah, The King of Ford Nation was on the Scam Patrol recently, contending the two million acre land-use preserve/jewel known as the Ontario Greenbelt was a Liberal Party swindle.
“I think we are doing pretty good on the so-called Greenbelt, as the Liberals made up that name. It was just a big scam, as far as I am concerned,” the bellicose Ford proclaimed.
While the MSM hypes a narrative that says PM Justin Trudeau is toast after eight years, it appears Ontario has a five-year itch for a change at Queen’s Park.
The dictionary defines a scam as “a dishonest play for making money or getting an advantage, especially one that involves tricking people.”
It is fair to say more Ontarians are concerned about wealthy land speculators benefiting from the government’s release of 7,400 acres of protected Greenbelt than they are about Ford’s psychoanalytical projections about who’s scamming who.
His outlandish 150,000 per year housing starts boondoggle is a 10-year commitment that an economist would characterize as a scam when the province has never hit 100,000 in any construction season.
Doug’s goal of 150,000 housing starts a year is out of Ronald Reagan’s voodoo economics. Ford uses the overblown target to justify a land grab.
Safe to say the mask has slipped and the worm has turned for many Ontario voters, having grasped that Ford took them down a figurative Greenbelt Garden Path in the 2018 and 2022 provincial elections; they have quickly downgraded his approval rating to 33 per cent.
Clearly, an initiative to put a roof over the heads of as many Ontarians as possible was not Ford’s endgame.
In May, after declaring the jig was up on Greenbelt scamming on his watch, a ruddy-faced Ford sputtered this statement:
“You know, we had a Liberal government where a bunch of staffers randomly got a highlighter and went up and down roads [to demarcate the Greenbelt buffer]. They were going through golf courses, through buildings.”
“What he said was quite stunning,” said Ford’s new worst enemy, former Toronto mayor and Greenbelt activist David Crombie. “He said, first of all, that the Greenbelt was a scam. He said the Greenbelt was simply a field of weeds. He said it was a failed policy,” said the Progressive Conservative Crombie, visibly irritated, at a recent press conference.
Doug Ford press conferences are filled with diatribes about the evil ways of his opponents.
“And he kept on talking about how it was of no consequence to him or this province.”
Victor Doyle, the professional Ontario planner who led the creation of the two million acre Greenbelt under then PM Dalton McGuinty, thinks Ford is about to face the music. The OPP is standing by, he suggests.
“The OPP may be waiting for the Auditor General to report out, which will happen shortly because she is leaving office in September.
“I think it is going to be a real hard-hitting piece on this.”
Doyle has been busy. He has met with the Auditor General, and has sent material to the Integrity Commissioner and to the OPP.
“The Auditor General will be interviewing Ministry of Housing staff,” said Doyle. “On the Greenbelt take-outs, there was only, like, eight people involved, right? There was the Deputy, the Assistant Deputy, the Director Manager, a couple of planners who work on the Greenbelt stuff, and then a couple of mapping guys.
The media has finally turned a critical eye on the Ford style of government by fiat, where his majority rules absolutely.
“And they said they were given a map of the lands to take out of the Greenbelt from the Premier’s Office on a USB key, down through the Minister’s office.
“But the Premier and Minister both said ‘No, no, no, staff made us do it. They came to us with a proposal,’ which is an outright lie, in my view.”
Doyle was advised of the existence and role of the USB key from a former Ministry staffer.
“Others have heard similarly – but no one is willing to speak. The NDP and Narwhal freedom-of-information requests were hopefully going to uncover something, but have not to date — although most recent info is that there are records dating back to last August, about Greenbelt removal discussions at Cabinet Office.”
This, said Doyle, conflicts with Premier and ministerial statements to the Integrity Commissioner that they only heard about the staff generated proposal for Greenbelt removals just prior to the posting on Nov 1, 2022.
Doyle predicted Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk is ready to lower the boom on Ford.
“She has released some scathing reports. And there are two other threads that people don’t talk about, related to the removals. One is they are not even asking [Ministry of Housing] staff for advice anymore. They bypass them regularly. They get information directly from the development industry as to the planning stuff, what the Minister’s decisions on these municipal plans should be, and they are just overriding municipal councils.
“I think there are 15 requests with the OPP to investigate; the AG is investigating, and the Integrity Commissioner. The OPP says they need a smoking gun. They need a witness to stand up, right? – and say something.”
Don’t expect a whistleblowing government staffer to expose the dealings:
“These guys have such a tight rein and control over all the information. They would find out who leaked what. But, you know, people have families and careers and — so it is a big, big step, and there is no protection. You get ostracized and, in this case, you would probably get fired.”
Ironically, if the Greenbelt is a social policy scam, it’s the longest con in political history, extending back to the 1973 Niagara Escarpment Planning and Development Act of Ford’s fellow Conservative, Premier William Davis.
On the Greenbelt changes, Ford bypassed everybody; there was no formalized process.
“None of the municipalities knew about any of this till they announced it. None of them had even — well, York had proposed a little bit, but none of them really proposed using Greenbelt land or that they needed Greenbelt land for housing.”
Asked for comment, BILD said it was not involved in any discussions with the government or consultations on the Greenbelt severances.
“BILD has no position, and has not taken a position on changes to the Greenbelt, other than governments at all levels must be firmly focused on adding housing supply to meet rapidly growing demand.”
Doyle cites recent articles regarding FOIs from the Narwhal and the NDP, which show that someone in Cabinet or Premier’s Office was talking Greenbelt removals months before they happened.
“So they happened in, like, November 1st, let’s say, but they have e-mails showing chitter-chatter back in August. And we know that is when one of the big deals was to close. They closed on the lands up in King, the 700 acres, that Rice Group speculated on.”
Doyle says Ford is systematically stripping away the ability of citizens and landowners to even comment on land use, by restricting consultation, removing appeal rights, bypassing local councils and blaming them and citizen NIMBYs for Ontario’s housing challenges.
“They added thousands of acres in Hamilton and Halton and in York. And in Waterloo they just added another 5,000, without ever even talking to the region.
“And they are really anti-democratic, so many things they have done. So the other angle is what we are hearing is they are specifically telling NGOs and even private firms, like infrastructure and consulting firms, if any of their staff say anything negative about the government, they won’t get any contracts or any funding; their funding is at risk if they are an NGO.
“Even the Greenbelt Foundation, they can’t say anything about the removals because they would lose their funding. The Federation of Agriculture, we are hearing they are being told, ‘Don’t,’ even though they did just speak out about all these new proposed severances in the agricultural area.
“And the auditor even did a report last year, looking at certain things, saying Ministry staff are coming forward saying ‘They are not doing what they are supposed to,” according to the laws, like, endangered species, whatever it might be, “because they are just being bypassed by the government.”
A localized view of Ontario warming shows a post-2000 spike in temperatures.
There is a kind of wilful ignorance, arrogance and dishonesty that reflects his government’s attitude not only towards the Greenbelt, but to the province’s basic institutions.
As sprawl in the Greater Golden Horseshoe spreads like lava at 319 acres per day, the region’s precious-metal nickname might well be busted down to the Asphalt Crescent or the Concrete Semi-Circle.
Perhaps, in Doug’s honour, we should each uproot a tree on the Niagara Escarpment.
“We will open up the Greenbelt, not — not all of it. We are going to open a big chunk of it up, and we are going to start building,” the tactless Ford announced to backers in 2018 as captured by a candid cinematographer for the benefit of shocked Ontarians.
A US television producer is touting a new series, Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent. A Ford Family Compact episode chronicling the transmogrification of Doug from a 22-year-old Dime Bag dealer into a Ringmaster of a Circus Maximus of belligerence and wilful disruption of democratic norms would write itself.
Canada has not seen a premier like Ford since Maurice Duplessis kept Quebec in a dictatorial chokehold from 1936 to 1939 and from 1944 to 1959 — 18 years of belligerent control. Ford has wreaked foundational change in only five.
by Robert Lee, author of the Twitter ClusterFord @downtownrob88
A breaking news story says the Windsor EV plant is in jeopardy, that Ottawa’s offer to bump-start the now-suspended project has been rebuffed by its joint venture owners, Stellantis NV and LG Energy Solution.
In familiar #CanadianMediaFailed style, the Toronto Star wants you to think the project is on the brink, headed for a US destination.
But the paper refuses to grapple with the mammoth economic implications of the project or research the history of the main actors involved.
The numbers at stake are GDP-level huge, too massive for Ontario or Ottawa to abandon.
Perhaps the investment-fund-owned right-of-centre TorStar knows it has an issue it can easily exaggerate for click effect.
Cynically downplaying the long-established presence of Stellantis in Windsor and the implications of the EV initiative on the financial health of Ontario gave the publisher the opportunity to post an ominous headline at the expense of the Trudeau Liberals.
Job suspended at Stellantis Windsor.
Stellantis shut down construction on the plant May 15, saying it wanted the same deal offered to Volkswagen for its battery-making operation in St. Thomas.
First, to suggest Stellantis is holding Ottawa and Ontario for ransom is overstatement. The company has obligations to shareholders to maximize its margins; if it receives a better offer in the U.S., it is obliged to take it.
Tellingly, the media has withheld from its coverage the fact that Stellantis, although headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands, is Windsor’s largest employer.
Stellantis has had Windsor in its DNA for almost a century.
Stellantis is not a parts manufacturer, it is an automaker created by a merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and France’s Peugeot SA in 2021. But those who live in the region recognize Stellantis as the successor of the company formerly known as Chrysler, which began operations in the area in 1925.
For almost a hundred years, then, it has employed generations of Windsor workers at its facilities.
Second, these aren’t $200 Crappy Tire batteries suitable only for soon-to-be-obsolete, gas-fired vehicles.
They carry price tags as high as $20,000. Production estimates at Windsor/St. Thomas top 1.4 million units annually. Even at $10,000 apiece, that’s $14 billion.
A quick Google search indicates the price of an electric car battery can run between $4,000 to $20,000 (USD). The Windsor plant will turn out 400,000 units annually.
EV batteries aren’t off-the-shelf items at Canadian Tire.
Calculated at an average midpoint price of $12,000 per unit, it translates into a staggering $4.8 billion in gross sales per year at Stellantis/LG Windsor alone. Trudeau’s 5% GST take on the sale of those batteries would be $240 million; Ford’s 8% PST would reap $384 million annually.
The dustup over who is shelling out sufficient subsidies will no doubt test the maxim that “politics is the art of the possible,” that sensible pragmatism, not idealism and purity, leads to achievable goals in the real world.
It might mean Ottawa will have to allow Ontario to mine lithium from the Ring of Fire and maybe cancel some environmental impact studies into Premier Doug Ford’s contentious highway plans.
Here is the March 23, 2022 press release from the joint venture’s plan for the country’s first large-scale, domestic, EV battery manufacturing facility:
“Volkswagen will become the sixth original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to locate a production facility in Ontario, unmatched by any other jurisdiction in North America. Those companies also represent six of the seven largest automakers in the world.”
Sounds like a corporation with a stake in the neighbourhood, a firm with roots in what locals call Windsor-Essex.
Consider this as a more consequential backstory: The current Ford-Trudeau cha-cha-cha will turn into a breakdance around environmental impact studies on the Ring of Fire and – wait for it – Highway 413.
Trudeau-Ford breakdance over the Ring of Fire might spin out onto Hwy. 413.
If Ford can link the EV plants to parts suppliers from Windsor to Quebec needing to bypass Highways 401 and 407, Trudeau may feel compelled to not only help the province in any Ring of Fire environmental assessments, but jump-start Highway 413 to help get auto parts out of GTA traffic.
Torontonians tend to forget Chrysler Stellantis has a Brampton assembly plant only 26 miles from the Bay Street skyscrapers. Many jobs in the GTA rely on selling parts to Stellantis in its Brampton plant.
So count on Backroom Doug Ford to try to leverage a free pass on highway environmental impact studies. A PM with a creepy habit of gladhanding with the transactional Ford also has an interest in building EV plants on the Canadian side of the Ambassador Bridge.
Assembling cars close to Toronto gridlock might prompt more highway approvals.
But it means the QC-based PM might have to sacrifice his environment minister on the altar of the economy of the Windsor-Quebec City corridor on this one.
Quebec’s automotive manufacturing industry employed an estimated 10,719 workers across 68 businesses, based on a 2018 study. The province is home to bus assembly plants that employed an estimated 2,900 workers, and independent parts suppliers in Quebec employ nearly 8,000 workers. Prevost Car in Ste.-Claire has made buses for the US president.
The joint venture’s press release from 14 months ago affirms the viability of the deals:
“Stellantis and LG today announced they have executed binding, definitive agreements to establish the first large-scale, domestic, electric vehicle battery manufacturing facility in Canada. The joint venture company will produce leading edge lithium-ion battery cells and modules to meet a significant portion of Stellantis’ vehicle production requirements in North America.
“The joint venture company will invest over $5 billion CAD ($4.1 billion USD) to establish operations, which will include an all-new battery manufacturing plant located in Windsor, Ontario. Plant construction activities are scheduled to begin later this year with production operations planned to launch in the first quarter of 2024.”
Added the Windsor mayor:
“With this announcement, we are securing the future for thousands more local workers and securing Windsor’s strategic location as the home of Canada’s electric vehicle future. As the world pivots to EVs, Windsor will soon be home to the battery manufacturing facility that powers it all.”
Doug Ford meanwhile continues his passive-aggressive routine, putting heat on the Liberals in recent press events. But then no leader is better than Doug the Shirker at demanding other jurisdictions bear responsibility for the issues of the day.
Ford, characteristically, criticizes Ottawa while showering it with praise:
“And we need the federal government to come to the table and show their support like they have all along. They have been great partners, by the way, in every deal that we have made.”
Ontario gave Volkswagen and Stellantis $500 million each, (while teachers and healthcare workers sat in stunned silence).
“You know, that is going to be up to the federal government. But we are competing against the IRA [the US Inflation Reduction Act] supported by the federal US government,” said Ford. “We don’t have the bandwidth to compete against the US federal government.”
Then both a shot and flowers for Trudeau:
“We don’t have the printingpress, like the federal government does. They need to step up like they have. And they have been great partners — I have said this three times — they need to step up and commit to the promise they gave to the people of Windsor. It’s as simple as that.”
Nevertheless, confusion over who will drag the stalled Stellantis/LG project over the finish line remains.
Stellantis also announced a sweetener in its 2022 annual report, the establishment of a Automotive Research and Development Centre in Windsor, employing 650 people, “to establish a battery lab developing and validating vehicle cells, modules and battery packs.”
Auto R&D at Windsor.
It further substantiates that Trudeau will not leave the table without closing this deal. No way this doesn’t come to fruition.
by Robert Lee, author of the Twitter ClusterFord @downtownrob88
The premier who runs roughshod over municipal councillors and public sector workers assumed his usual sappy, saccharine, sentimental Muskoka Motormouth persona Friday, Doug Ford goose-stepping through a 20-minute press conference extolling his collaborative instincts and heartfelt respect for the “lower tiers” of Ontario governance.
Despite his regime’s obsession with imposing decisions that do not align with local plans, Ford preached community kumbaya while stubbornly signing off on Greenbelt highways and hospital operating rooms in a town not remotely near you.
The performance had to please communications handlers looking for Ford to employ his standard bullshit-baffles-brains oratorical gimmickry.
“Maybe it goes back to my roots at city council, and I always hated the upper-tier governments, you know, dictating here, there and the other thing?
“We are there to support them, we are there to fund them provincially, and so is the federal government. But they have to make decisions themselves.”
Doug’s reputation for treating cities like the vile creatures they are never quite catches up to him because the rural-urban electoral split in Ontario favours the farmers.
The confounding segments of a Doug Ford press conference are the moments of sheer detachment from reality only a review of the tapes can reveal.
“But everyone wants to, you know, call their own shots, per se. And I don’t disagree with them.”
Yeah, Doug, do enlighten us:
“I know I sound like I am preaching all the time, but I can’t stand these political stripes.”
Hard to believe the king of Minister’s Zoning Orders, legislative overreach and late-night votes rammed through the House with a notwithstanding clause rider is masquerading as a nonaligned conciliator always looking to reach across an aisle.
If Italian swindler and confidence man Charles Ponzi (1882-1949) was out on the streets scheming people out of their money today, chances are he’d be suing Ford for copyright infringement.
The premier who prompts jaw-drops with the best of them has again left mouths agape in jarring disconnection with fact and reality.
Carolyn Mulroney was suitably deferential to the Champion of Transit at a St. Catharines press event.
“We work so well with the chair and mayors of other political stripes. We all have something in common; we want to make sure we have the best quality of life for our residents in every community.”
As if issuing a Charter challenge to the bargaining rights of public-facing teachers and HCWs during a pandemic wasn’t bad enough, the Great Collaborator has robbed municipalities of development fees that pay for libraries, community centres, infrastructure, roads, trees, pools and youth programs through Bill 23.
But Doug in his paranoid mind — or at least when acting out in front of cameras — is both a Progressive Conservative and the de facto leader of a Non-Partisan Alliance of selfless elected representatives waving the blue-orange-red tricolour of the PCs, NDP and Liberals.
Doug abhors political stripes? The guy is a hack more hyperpartisan than any ward heeler active in machine politics today.
IRL, Ford Nation is a gangsterish combination of huckster doofus, crass ideology, and a narcissistic cult of personality that has nostalgia for a different Canada that was whiter, more male and not as free as those wallowing in maudlin recall can accurately remember.
Ford is currently pitching his half-baked Ponzi-ish housing scheme for 1.5 million homes (one for every 10 residents) in the same manner Danny Aykroyd as Irving Mainway would pitch bags of glass for the kids on SNL. To Ford, it’s all just selling.
Rogers should put this guy on The Shopping Channel.
Charles Ponzi was a pitchman who might have had marketable skills as an Ontario premier in the 2020s.
It was another verbatim assault and battery on fact and relevance Friday morning in the “great city of St. Catharines, Ontario,” where invented myths concocted out of thin air formed the basis of another Doug Ford harangue/speech evoking a CNE carnival barker:
Ottawa is the tech centre of North America;
Ontario has added 670,000 jobs in 4.5 years (with a carbon tax?);
Niagara is one of the great tourism regions of the world;
Before he came into office, you could shoot a cannon down the street in the middle of downtown Windsor, and you wouldn’t hit anyone;
$70 billion is not only the biggest transit expansion in Canadian history, but in North America. “Right now, that is the largest transit project anywhere, including new subways and reliable rail options from Niagara in the West to Bowmanville in the East, and to Timmins and Cochrane in the North.”
“And while we expand our transit system, we are investing $25 billion over 10 years to build new roads and highways, including Highway 413, the Bradford Bypass — and the QEW Garden City Skyway Bridge twinning project.”
“And as much as the world is a massive place, and when it comes to the auto sector or the tech sector or life science sector, it is very, very small. And everyone talks. And the word on the street right now around the world is ‘Come to Ontario, invest in Ontario. It is one of the greatest places in the world to live, work and for — open a business.'”
Note the twinning of the Garden City Skyway is now handcuffed to a huge plan that includes the controversial and highly unpopular Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass projects.
Keeping to Niagara (if it’s Friday it must be the Falls), Ford short-listed the beautiful views of the cataracts, the vineyards, casinos — and gaming – no doubt a shot across the bow against a developing resistance to youth exposure to Wayne Gretzky encouraging TV viewers to let some blue money ride on the Maple Leafs.
“Friends, our government has a plan to build Ontario, helping people, businesses and communities today, while laying a strong foundation for generations to come. We are creating the conditions for businesses to thrive and jobs to grow in every part of the province.
Doug has a new cause(way): Twinning the QEW Garden City Skyway Bridge. Money is no object when it comes to laying concrete, steel and asphalt.
“We are building the transportation infrastructure our economy needs to reach its full potential, to keep people and goods moving. Together with our partners, we are building Ontario now, and for the future.”
Yet the Ford government is trashing the Greenbelt, closing hospital services and using the Charter’s notwithstanding clause to erase worker’s rights. Some people have been reciting this phrase for half a decade: it’s a bad government with little redeeming social value.
Is it all for warped ideological reasons relating to destroying government by the people and sharing the resultant spoils?
It’s not a stretch to believe Doug is creating apocalyptic conditions conducive to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. (Only Stephen Harper, Pierre Poilievre and Gerald Chipeur know for certain).
Someone who for decades mucked about in a tailings pond of cheap municipal politics now runs Ontario like Mussolini ran Italy, but the trains don’t run on time on the Eglinton Crosstown.
“No one knows their towns and cities better than the mayors and the city councillors,” proclaimed Doug, completely writing off community activists and long-time resideants.
It is an amoral makeover undertaken by a dictatorial Ford whose power grew out of a voter suppression law deemed unconstitutional. The choice of barely more than one in six eligible voters, it puts Ford below a Mendoza Line of electoral legitimacy.
“I walked a mile in their [municipal politicians’] shoes,” Ford the Fixer contended. “You are on their front doorstep. You are dealing with Mrs. Jones’ crack in the sidewalk, or a pothole, and everything in between.”
Which would be what, the boulevard? The fire hydrant?
It’s as if he’s Mussolini and thereby always right.
“You know, folks, our plan, working with again the municipalities and the federal government and Ontario, I have had an opportunity to talk to ambassadors, consul generals and governors all throughout the world and obviously down in the States. Man, with the cooperation of everyone, we are doing well here in Ontario.
“You know, it is quality of life, not only for the people to live and raise a family, but a quality of life for businesses to come here and open up.”
Ford should revisit quality of life on the Eglinton Crosstown project, where the buck has stopped at 15 empty stations and the people in charge are Doug and Brian Mulroney’s Cabinet-minister daughter, Carolyn.
An empty tunnel is a metaphor for Toronto transit after almost five years of Ford.
Ford has become a poster boy for a distressing era when manipulative politics is possibly the way it’s going to be for some considerable duration. Doug Ford has schadenfreude in his DNA, literally a “joy from damage.” Perhaps it’s a Ford hobby, deriving pleasure from the misfortune of others.
by Robert Lee, author of the Twitter ClusterFord @downtownrob88
Premier Doug Ford of the God-blessed Province of Ontario devoted 15 minutes of his precious time Monday to patronizing the media, spinning breaking news and displaying a knack for deflection that would impress any confirmed narcissist.
Watching the Doofus of QP announce yet more support for predominantly male firefighters while sloughing off violence against predominantly female teachers showed Ford at his misogynistic worst.
“An alarming number (77 per cent) of members of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) say they have personally experienced violence or witnessed violence against another staff member,” according to a survey conducted for the Fed in February and March 2023.
Ford promptly opted for the regressive solution, stationing a more intimidating security presence in schools, after he was confronted with the eye-opening stats at the Mississauga press conference.
Then he brought out the heavier artillery:
“When we all grew up, that is the last thing you would think of, is hitting a teacher or showing violence towards a teacher. I think honestly, as well, it starts at home. Man, if I — I don’t speak for my parents, God forbid I ever went up and hit a teacher?
“I would get twice the hit when I got home.
“And I think everyone out there would say the same thing.”So, you know something? It starts at home.”
ETFO President Karen Brown says chronic underfunding, under-resourcing, and understaffing is creating environments where student needs are going unmet. (Photo by Toronto Star).
The school violence issue would challenge even a brilliant leader. Ford’s solution, aside from corporal punishment, has been to underfund and understaff education to the tune of $1,200 per student since taking over the reins of power in 2018.
“If you want me to put legislation, if you are asking me about putting police in schools, well, I think that decision has been made. So we are going to always advocate for the teachers, and make sure there is never violence in our schools.”
It was the second of two press conferences this week, the Chaplinesque Great Dictator characterizing the Greenbelt as a scam while advocating loudly and proudly for police officers, firefighters, convenience store operators, building contractors and (indirectly) money launderers, while simultaneously demanding Justin Trudeau step up and issue a $5 billion ransom payment to Dutch-based automaker Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler), chump change when compared to Doug’s handouts for constables and smoke-eaters, and to corporate cronies in the form of subsidies and contract break fees.
A starring role in a sequel to this Chaplin classic might suit Doug Ford.
It was undoubtedly a treat for the assembled to hear the premier get all granular during questions from the media horde; unfortunately, the single follow-up format prevents him from drilling down and brainstorming on weighty matters of the day.
The perpetually devious premier released a torrent of non sequiturs into the ether at a mammoth 37-acre firefighting training centre in Mississauga that a naive viewer might have guessed was a Doug Ford Nation Creation, but which in fact opened in 2012.
“You respect your teachers. They are there to teach you, give you guidance, make you a better person. So enough of going after teachers.”
Figuratively picking itself off the floor, ETFO returned serve on the subject of blackboard jungles:
“The province must provide adequate funding so learning and working environments are physically and psychologically safe for students, teachers, and education workers.
“Learning is being disrupted and violence is being normalized in schools because the Ford government refuses to adequately invest in public education. The system is suffering from chronic underfunding, under-resourcing, and understaffing, creating environments where student needs are going unmet,” said ETFO President Karen Brown in a news release.
Ford was hosted at the May 15 press conference by Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie.
Crier Media spoke to a veteran Ontario teacher who has opted for supply teaching in response to the deteriorating environment in the classroom:
“Cops react to violence, they don’t prevent it. Social workers, child and youth counsellors, guidance counsellors, child and family services is the less authoritarian solution,” she said, requesting anonymity.
Meanwhile, supply teachers are a hot temp position as the industry confronts wage suppression, low morale and an aggressive culture in the classroom:
“I fielded 15 phone calls for supply jobs today,” said the teacher.
Regrettably, Doug Ford is a paradigm of the Peter Principle by way of Il Duce of Italy, a belligerent Mussolini-like buffoon who has copped what he perceives to be sweeping, unilateral powers because he won more than half the seats in a legislature, even if five of nine voters stayed home. But the narcissistic premier aka leader of 15 million can’t answer a question without passing blame onto someone or something else.
As the Ford government continues to make cuts to public education funding, the ETFO survey results reveal that educators working with younger students are more likely to experience violence:
• 86 per cent of members who work in special education have personally experienced violence or witnessed it against another staff person;
•66 per cent say the severity of violent incidents has increased;
•80 per cent state there are more incidents of violence in schools now than when they started working in the Ontario public elementary school system;
• 72 per cent say the number of incidents has increased since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic;
• more than 80 per cent agree that violence in schools is making working with students more difficult and that it interferes with classroom management.
Front-line supports are often not available to educators and students. A majority report that educational assistants (61 per cent), social workers (56 per cent), and child and youth workers (53 per cent) were available only some of the time, rarely or never when needed this school year.
Ford is not a president, but merely one of 124 MPPs in a parliamentary system that exposes his conspicuous shortcomings in Queen’s Park, but which can’t rein in his personal job objective, turning opportunity for all into political hackery and cookies for a few of his real “friends.”
Then another stunningly inconsistent statement from the brazen leader:
ETFO says Doug Ford’s cuts have led to deteriorating conditions, in turn spiking violence. Doug blames the parents.
“Teachers — I couldn’t do the teacher’s job, to be very frank with you.”
As if anyone believed otherwise:
“They have a tough job but…for the kids? Man, you guys got to get your act together, and don’t ever go after a teacher.”
The reporter maximizes her follow-up, ripping the premier for blatant grandstanding:
“So that was very colourful, but it didn’t answer the question at all: The question was what is your government doing to tackle violence in elementary schools, unless you are advocating some sort of, you know, notice out to parents or something?”
Ford doesn’t miss a beat, despite the newsie’s sarcastic blowback:
“Well, that’s our goal, always make sure we advocate for the teachers, protecting the teachers.”
It is YelichSpeak, availing himself of all manner of diversions, deflections and outright five-alarm lies while running a press conference suited for a Twilight Zone episode exploring the media under fascism.
Meanwhile, rank-and-file teachers crack open cold ones, heads spinning. The premier continues to suck and blow at the same time, a political performer in the dual role of ventriloquist and dummy with a script out of a supply teacher horror flick.
by Robert Lee, author of the Twitter ClusterFord @downtownrob88
Multiple class-action Defendant Doug Ford, aka the premier of Ontario, took his press conference schtick to a parking lot in Bramalea Thursday.
Convened to hype the upgrade of the local GO Train station, the event locale was a fitting choice.
Bramalea, Canada’s first “satellite city,” was the brainchild in the late 1960s of what became one of the largest real estate developers in Canada, Bramalea Ltd.
Doubtless in cahoots with the PC government of the day (although not as audaciously as is exhibited by the present-day Ford regime) developer Bramalea Ltd. plunked its contrived namesake municipality between Brampton and Malton and a lea, and then quickly built up a long list of investments all over Canada and the US.
By 1995, overextended, at one time $5 billion in debt, Bramalea Ltd. declared bankruptcy (but not before abandoning, on the cheap, the Bay Street property on which Scotiabank Arena now stands).
Against that suburban Ford Nation-adjacent backdrop, the fanboy of twice-impeached and accused rapist Donald Trump went on a defensive rant that likely didn’t make your local news.
For starters, Ford and entourage hit the podium roughly 30 minutes late, successfully delivering a subtle message that, having attained power, the King of Ford Nation is accountable to no one.
Visible on camera for the entirety of the live-streamed press event, Ford lurked stage right of the lectern (unless speaking), arms hung stiffly at his side — like Trump.
The Ontario government’s YouTube feed remained locked in a two-shot on the Premier for a solid 45 minutes, Doug presenting his breezy and brassy persona for the assembled press pack, deflecting questions on matters ranging from the Greenbelt, the minimum wage, the Ring of Fire and casino money laundering.
But the belligerent, undereducated autocrat couldn’t resist cheap-shotting the Liberals even as he proclaimed himself a “collaborator” throughout his closely managed and controlled press conference wherein he applied his version of a premier’s notwithstanding clause — one question and one follow-up per reporter.
The format helps Ford stay on message and makes it less obvious when he refuses to answer questions. The tactic is more egregious in his case because he doesn’t care what anyone thinks beyond his own base of support.
But then he always has his elbows up.
Taking a cue from the presser’s transit theme, Ford spoke directly to a favoured constituency, suburban small towners and rural residents obsessed with cars, asphalt, gas stations, parking lots and gas prices – this, after congratulating himself for foisting a core-destroying avalanche of new subways on Toronto that pleases construction unions but will turn the city’s downtown into a goldmine for concrete forming contractors for a decade:
“Friends, over the next 10 years, across the province, our government is investing over $70 billion in the biggest transit expansion in Canadian history. We are building fast and reliable rail options from Niagara in the west to Bowmanville in the east, and to Timmins and Cochrane in the north. We are building new subways, including the Ontario Line, Scarborough’s subway extension and the York North subway extension.
Greater Golden Horseshoe transit plans are beginning to look like the famous map of the London (UK) Underground, all part of a bloated $70 billion Ford-mandated construction boom that will test the patience of residents.
“While some people may say that we have to choose between building roads and transit, that doesn’t have to be the case. While we expand our transit system, we are investing $25 billion over the next 10 years to build new roads and highways.”
Note “Toronto” is a word never to be spoken.
Doubling down, Doug recites some unsubstantiated non-facts in a style reminiscent of Trump, his US mentor and soulmate:
Doug Ford channels Donald Trump in his hyperpartisan press conferences.
“This includes the new Highway 413, which I know the people of Peel love; we heard it every single day, which will save drivers in Halton-Peel and York Regions up to 30 minutes each way on their commute.
“And the Bradford Bypass, a new, four-lane highway that connects Highways 400 and 404, that will save drivers up to 35 minutes per trip.
“We are building the transportation infrastructure the economy needs to reach its full potential, to keep people and goods moving.”
End announcement, cue questions, it’s a wrap. No dissent brooked.
On a hike in the minimum wage:
“I think we have the highest minimum wage in the country, $16 and change.”
Doug doesn’t know Ontario’s minimum wage, (he overstated it) and then proclaimed it the largest in Canada. Wrong, again, Doug — it’s fourth of 13.
Incorrect: Ontario’s rate is pegged at $15.50 (fourth highest in Canada) rising to $16.55 on Oct. 1, 2023.
Conveniently forgetting the 2007-2009 job-killing Great Recession that almost destroyed the North American auto sector and cut world GDP by 5.1%, the hyperpartisan collaborator continued:
“I want to remind everyone, under the provincial Liberal government, 300,000 people, they were in [the unemployment] line; they weren’t — they didn’t even have a job to pay the bills. 650,000 people are working today that weren’t working four and a half years ago.
“We have a thriving economy, companies are coming in here by the droves. They are continuing to invest in cities like Brampton every single day. And we are going to make sure everyone has good-paying jobs so they don’t have to rely on the minimum wage. Sure, some people may start there; but it is a stepping stone to get up into the higher wage category.
“And the other area, this is an employees’ market. You know, sometimes, it is the other way around. But nowadays, people are in desperate need of hiring people.”
Inserting more TrumpSpeak:
“We could walk through this business park all day, and every single door we knock on they say ‘We need, you know, one, two, 10, 15 people.’ And we just need more people coming through our door here in Ontario and calling it home.”
Independent scribe Charlie Pinkerton confronted Ford on the Greenbelt scandals:
“Staff in your office discussed changes to the Greenbelt months before the government announced them in early November, as reporting from this morning suggested. What was being discussed related to the Greenbelt by your staff, last August?”
Cue more deflection from the premier:
“Well, I just want to categorically say no. It wasn’t discussed. That is very simple: What we are there to do is to build homes, to make sure that we hit our targets of 1.5 million homes, and build it as quickly as possible, to knock down any barrier that is in the way of building homes. We had 445,000 people come to Ontario, and I used this example last time: You know, Florida and Texas always brag, they are the fastest-growing region in North America, a thousand people a day — that is 365,000.
“Texas is twice our size. We have 445,000 people coming here. We need homes, and we are going to knock down every barrier there is to make sure we build affordable, attainable, non-profit homes for the people of Ontario.”
Then the dreaded follow-up question, the bane of any tinpot leader’s existence:
“It has been seven months since you announced removal of properties from the Greenbelt. It has been a controversy ever since, and you face questions and criticism about it on a weekly, if not daily basis. The Auditor General and Integrity Commissioner, which are both investigating this [Greenbelt severance] decision, they each have powers that, as I understand it, will allow them to find out where the decision originated and how the process worked.
Doug thinks he has been exonerated by integrity boss J. David Wake over his alleged Greenbelt cronyism. Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk may have an alternative take.
“So why not waive privilege and release the documents that show where this came from, if they did in fact come from the public service?”
Ford, channelling Trump’s, “It was a beautiful call,” responded:
“Well, we are always going to work with the Commissioner, and we always have. And we continue to do so. But again, there was nothing wrong that happened here.”
Blame-shifting as he snubs the Auditor General, Doug shifts gear, offering up his “insider” information:
“You know, we had a Liberal government that a bunch of staffers randomly got a highlighter and went up and down [and marked] roads. They were going through golf courses, through buildings. It was just a big scam, as far as I am concerned.
“And, by the way, I just want to point out one more thing that no one has ever commented on. When I took office four and a half years ago, to now, the Greenbelt is 2,000 acres larger than when I took office. So I think we are doing pretty good on the so-called Greenbelt, as they — as the Liberals made up that name.”
Turns out Ford knows all about the backroom minutiae from the Liberal era.
Now comes the eco-warrior persona to the fore:
“We have one of the best environmental records in the history of Ontario. I will challenge anyone to put our environmental record up against the previous government. And isn’t it amazing, isn’t it amazing, not one person in the media, when the Liberals decided to change it, not once, not twice, not four or five times — 17 times. I am going to repeat it — 17 times. There was no inquiry, there was nothing.”
On First Nations (FN) resistance to the extraction of critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt and nickel buried in the Ring of Fire (500 km. north of Thunder Bay), an independent journalist suggested there was resistance among bands in the region.
In effect, would Ford rethink the project and get off his bulldozer, given FN opposition?
Ford has quietly spent a billion dollars on road access to the Ring of Fire (see top right). The area sits atop cobalt, graphite, lithium and other “critical minerals” that also happen to be available elsewhere.
Cue Ford the Collaborator:
“Well, you know something? We are building that Ring of Fire as sure as I am talking to you. It is going to benefit the FN community. We put a billion dollars towards the roads. But this isn’t just going to bring opportunity and employment to the FN community; it is going to bring proper healthcare to the community, it is going to bring fresh food to the community. These communities are fly-in communities, and they are struggling. And, you know, we are going to work with the FN community; we will always be collaborative.
“We are going to work with them, anyways. It is going to benefit everyone, and we do need those critical minerals to be a leader in electric vehicles. We need lithium, we need cobalt, we need nickel. We need the processing plants to process these, right here. There are 34 critical minerals that we have, probably even more.”
Trump and Ford mind-melding via tinfoil transmission then ensues:
“If you want to get a real eye-opener? Do you want to see what critical minerals Ontario has? Go to the Royal Ontario Museum. It is the best — probably the worst-kept secret, because it is beautiful in there, and we have all the critical minerals right there, for people to see. It is really astounding, and I just want to thank the people — and specifically Kim Tait, who runs the critical mineral area. She is a champion, by the way. And that is another selling tool for the world to come and take a look.”
The press, back on point, follows up:
“What are you going to do if they follow through on promises to block construction from crossing the Attawapiskat River? It seems like, if nothing changes, we are on path to some kind of conflict here.”
An independent journalist raised a red flag in Doug Ford’s direction at his May 11, 2023 presser: What if there is no unanimity among the FN bands in the Ring of Fire region? Doug sloughed it off.
“Well, we don’t like conflict,” said Ford, identified by many as the slayer of the health and education sectors in Ontario. “We want to work with them, hand in hand, and be collaborative. And that is something, we would sit down with them and the other communities, to work things out. But this is critical to the future of Ontario, to be one of the leaders when it comes to critical minerals, not just in Canada and North America, but around the world.”
Against the backdrop of his outlandish and unilateral imposition of an online gaming culture on the province, Ford was asked about $372 million in suspicious transactions at Ontario casinos:
“One man in particular did $4 million of these kinds of transactions. Other jurisdictions aren’t letting cash move in such big amounts. So why is Ontario?”
Ford, the shifty pol, comes back with more mental dishonesty:
“Well, the OLG, if they see anything conspicuous or out of the norm, they call the OPP in. And they will do an investigation, like anything else. And I have all the confidence in the world in our OPP and along with the OLG. So any suspicious money flowing, they get contacted, and they will do an investigation.”
Sure they will, Doug. It is more glib, fortune-cookie wisdom and dealing from the bottom of the deck from a reckless chiseller standing atop a personality cult backed by less than two of five voters.
by Robert Lee, author of the Twitter ClusterFord @downtownrob88
Ontario’s highest Court has administered a leather strap across the sweaty, chubby palms of the Mobster of the Muskokas, naming his government a certified defendant in a class action for the second time in less than six months.
This time out, the Ford government is allegedly negligent in its treatment of a class of adults with disabilities.
In the process, Premier Doug Ford’s waitlist tactic — last seen employed against parents of autistic children — is being wielded against a new demographic that has caught the eye of a unanimous panel of three judges.
The Court of Appeal delivered the corporal punishment in a May 4 decision (Leroux v. Ontario) that aside from a CP wire report elicited a yawn from a mainstream media more focused on imaginary Manchurian candidates in Parliament and a royal succession in London’s House of Windsor.
The newly certified class is composed of adults with developmental disabilities who have been assessed and approved to receive supports and services but who did not receive them or experienced substantial delays.
The Court found patients were denied the entitlement to services arbitrarily as a result of unreasonably managed — wait for it — waitlists maintained by regional offices.
It is the same dreaded waitlist scam employed by Ford in 2018, when humanity came knocking in the form of parents of autistic children seeking intensive schooling and Doug said he couldn’t afford it.
The ruling follows a certification decision against Ford involving a class of long-term care (LTC) patients from the Ontario Superior Court in December 2022.
Doug has taken a hands-on approach to steamrolling select “classes” of Ontarians, specifically disabled young adults and seniors in LTCs. (Photo by Jenny Lee Shue).
Some adolescents turned adults who had been assessed as eligible and approved for developmental services were simply placed on a waitlist with no estimate as to its duration.
The emerging issue of mistreatment of disabled adults comes out of nowhere, even as the misanthrope’s court schedule already features public sector wage suppression, excessive fatalities in LTCs and his infamous campaign gag law that lent an air of invincibility to the Conservatives’ June 2022 stampede to re-election.
The news proves Ford’s political to-do list/roadmap is assembled in such a nonlinear way that no observer could analyze it and be able to predict what comes next.
Doug Ford’s belligerent agenda has experienced pushback from the Ontario Court of Appeal.
The Court of Appeal for one has shown itself willing to take on the Bully of Queen’s Park; in early March, it tossed out the above-noted election gag law.
In this new ruling, the Court has left the litigious premier with red hands and a defeat in a venue where facts prevail over press statements and more than one follow-up question is permitted.
Ford & Co. Ltd., must now face the music on this failure and its lack of response to the devastating effects of Covid-19 on seniors trapped in LTCs.
Doug and his lawyers lost on two fundamental points of class action law: 1) the class action complainants were found to have legitimate grounds to bring a suit offering a reasonable chance of success and, 2) the government’s scheme to withhold services constituted mismanagement, not a core policy decision for which the government enjoys immunity.
The balanced budget warrior doesn’t hesitate opening up spending taps for friends, acquaintances and business associates looking to boost profits.
The loss presents Ford with a familiar conundrum: Whether to drop even more double-digit millions in taxpayer funds on an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
This time, Doug’s minions in the provincial treasurer’s backoffice will be disbursing a relatively paltry $170,000 – historically minimal, by Ford standards.
Ford believes all problems can be solved through privatization, yet is oblivious to higher costs when cash flows are diverted to private interests.
It is another example of the “wasteful today/thrifty tomorrow” approach of the undereducated doofus, who racks up substantial court costs while on a never-ending quest to deprive citizens of public services in the name of a balanced budget.
Once again, the autocrat whose lawyers can’t shoot straight because he provides them with blank ammo is on the hook because he won’t lift a finger for anyone without a court fight. Meanwhile, his freewheeling corporate philanthropy is well documented.
The Doug Ford regime’s two-front war on education and health isn’t going as well as his sycophants in the press seek to convey to their dwindling customer bases.
Justice Benjamin Zarnett of the Court confirmed the case was about “the negligent utilization and administration of existing resources.
“I see no error (in the lower court judge’s conclusion) that the question can be determined on a class-wide basis, as the available evidence suggests that Ontario has a ‘singular approach’ to administering waitlists.
“Similarly, I see no error in the determination that the record suggests Ontario subjects the class to a single common course of conduct that may constitute a section 7 Charter breach.”
The appellant representing the class in court was suing about “the indeterminate delays in the wait-listed services, the flawed computer programs and bad databases and poor prioritization and matching of available resources,” said Zarnett.
During a deadly pandemic, Premier Doug Ford is wreaking havoc on the province’s most critical institutions, all hinging on a fabricated deficit crisis that justifies a costs freeze in his narrow world view; as with all Conservative Party operatives, Doug assumes the mantle of deficit slayer when it suits his ulterior motives.
While his education minister ignores teachers like the plague and his health minister shutters hospital emergency departments with aplomb, Doug keeps close his friends in construction and law enforcement. But he departs from the “keep your enemies closer” aspect of the adage, choosing to maintain an arm’s-length relationship with his antagonists in healthcare and education.
The province has been Jonesing for an empathetic health minister since Sylvia J. took the reins and embraced emergency room closures.
The claim lists “mental anguish” and the “development of new mental, psychological or psychiatric disorders” as some of the harms stemming from the impugned conduct of Ontario’s “ad hoc, irrational prioritization approach,” amid practices that “are not coherent or rational.”
In effect, Doug has introduced bait and switch tactics to Ontario healthcare, where the endgame is the negligent operation of a social assistance system that was designed to deliver much-needed support and services, but where no one shows up.
by Robert Lee, author of the Twitter ClusterFord @downtownrob88
Ontarians who had April 18 circled on their calendars in anticipation of a quick decision in the Ford Cabinet mandate letters case were left to ponder another upside down result when the Supreme Court reserved its decision Monday.
It was thought the immediate release of the 23 missives to the ministers would finally blow the roof off a regime that interprets its majority as a wild card permitting it to do anything it wants, with belligerence, malice and often revenge. The anti-Doug demographic was convinced smoking gun residue was all over the paperwork.
But it might come as a greater shock that there is a chance the Muskoka Misanthrope’s fight could ultimately end in a victory for his government and a loss for those hopeful defenders of democracy.
Turns out the case is no longer about those secret mandate letters; it’s about how robust are the protections around Cabinet secrecy.
A short bench of seven SCC justices presiding over Doug Ford’s Cabinet mandate letters case may take the opportunity to expand Cabinet secrecy, fears the Centre for Free Expression.
The irony is delicious: the secretive regime that had lost its case at the province’s Information and Privacy Commission, the Ontario Divisional Court and the province’s top court, the Court of Appeal, might succeed in creating a new black hole for mandate letters and endless other government minutiae.
Three consecutive wins at a privacy commission and at two lower courts against Ford over the much-discussed letters were a cause for optimism in the fight for open government.
But a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada last spring, critically close to the June 2022 election, allowed Doug to park the letters debate and gave him a final kick at the can beyond Election Day.
The spring 2022 decision consenting to hear an appeal of his Court of Appeal loss confounded huge swathes of the general public. Yet another court was yielding to Ford — the Supreme Court, no less — and offering up the Muskoka Misanthrope an escape hatch on a clear public’s right-to-know issue.
Observers wondered why the Court agreed to hear the case at all, when a precedent had already been set by Ford’s predecessors, the Wynne and McGuinty administrations, and the Trudeau government, all of whom released their letters of mandate to their respective Cabinets.
The province’s substantial anti-Ford demographic was left grasping for an explanation.
COURT’S QUESTIONS PROMPT MORE QUESTIONS
There exists a common caution in legal circles: divining a court’s opinion from its questions is reckless analysis, but they may have got their answers at the Monday Supreme Court hearing.
Crier Media spoke to James L. Turk, director at the Centre for Free Expression (CFE) at Toronto Metropolitan University, Tuesday, whose lawyers acted as joint interveners with the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, The Canadian Association of Journalists and the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network at the hearing before seven judges (not nine, due to a suspension) of the Supreme Court of Canada.
James L. Turk, director at the Centre for Free Expression, is concerned the Supreme Court of Canada will rule on the side of restrictive Cabinet secrecy.
Mr. Turk, instructed by the intervener group’s counsel after the Ottawa hearing, is not optimistic that the Supreme Court will release the letters:
“I naively was thinking, given the string of decisions that had been made up to getting to the Supreme Court — that is, the decision of the Information and Privacy Commission, the decision of the Superior Court, the decision of the Court of Appeal, albeit with the one dissent — I think we were all a little taken aback by the response of the judges, which seemed — I mean, it is always risky, drawing conclusions based on the questions they ask and so forth. It is a little bit of a game of tea-leaf reading.
“But nevertheless, there seemed to be some strong sentiment for a very robust conception of Cabinet confidences.
“It is a serious issue, and I am more discouraged than I ever have been by what happened [Monday], because the Cabinet confidences section is one of the sections in which things are more easily hidden than any other. And it seems as if the Court is inclined to dramatically broaden that exclusion, or that exception.”
The fight hinges on section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, 1988, dealing with Cabinet records that the CFE says has implications for the ability of the media to report on matters of public concern, for the right of the public to know about government policies and priorities and for its capacity to participate in the democratic process in an informed and meaningful way.
The legislation is far from air-tight on the definition of a “Cabinet exemption,” and Ford is typically looking to drive an F-150 pick-up truck through its sections.
The possibility exists that Ford was spoiling for this fight on access to his government’s documentary holdings. Perhaps the mandate letters were a suitable vehicle.
“It is really curious as to why the Ontario government, the Ford government, decided to draw the line on this matter. So he was just a relatively new premier, his first mandate letters. His predecessors have given out mandate letters, the federal government gives out its mandate letters. Why does the Ontario government take a hard line and say, ‘No, this violates Cabinet confidences’, and then to fight it all the way?”
LETTERS NOT OFFICIALLY PRESENTED TO CABINET
Ford, unwittingly or not, may have revealed that his government’s litigation strategy looks well beyond the letters, when he conceded they were not read aloud in Cabinet. Ford evidently has more important access-to-information rights to infringe.
The Star’s Martin Regg Cohn was on TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin recently, discussing “Corruption.” Predictably, Ford’s name came up:
“On the mandate letters, of course the government should release them, as the previous Liberal government did, as the federal government did, because then people would stop talking about mandate letters. Because I read them in the Wynne government, and I read them from the Trudeau government. Whenever we have an interview with a federal or provincial minister, I read those mandate letters, and they are almost irrelevant.”
“The letters are irrelevant at this point,” Turk agreed. “These were the letters that Ford gave his ministers in 2018. I mean, there have been mandate letters since then.”
Does the secrecy around them justifiably heighten suspicions about their contents?
“I thought that initially,” said Turk. “But I think it is more that they have a position that the government should be less transparent. I can’t imagine there is anything in the mandate letters of any interest to them, to keep secret.”
“One of the biggest culprits is the FIPPA section on Cabinet confidences. And instead of looking at ways to be restrictive so that we can protect what is the actual Cabinet deliberations for the term of the Cabinet, or the term of the government, but to expand it so that all sorts of documents can be hidden behind that exclusion, is really worrisome. And that seemed to be the line that was being taken by the Court today.”
Doug the Builder might have been spoiling for a fight on the mandate letters. The net result after costly litigation at four venues might serve up a more secretive Cabinet process in Ontario.
The spectre exists that the Court will rule in favour of Ford. It may also declare sections of the FIPPA legislation null and void, as did the Ontario Court of Appeal on Ford’s election gag law. Or it could release the hounds, i.e., the letters.
Wasn’t Doug abandoning a key aspect of his appeal by conceding the letters were not effectively involved in Cabinet deliberations?
“I listened to him say that at the presser today, and I would have thought so. But Ontario is making the argument that that provision of the legislation has to refer to anything that might come to Cabinet.
“I mean, if you read the position of the Ontario government, it is as if Cabinet is a black hole, and anything that gets near that black hole falls into it, of being excluded from access to information.
“The Ontario legislation refers to Cabinet discussions, you know, the actual deliberations of Cabinet. And there was none of that with regard to the mandate letters. They didn’t come to Cabinet, they were not discussed in Cabinet,” said Turk.
“It is a truly troubling argument, because very much of what the government does or what is considered — policy papers that are written in Cabinet — you know, in various departments and whatever, might someday come to Cabinet, and could be excluded with this robust definition.”
ACCESS EVERY FOUR YEARS
Rationalizing the embargoes, the provinces often cite the voter’s once-every-four-years access to the ballot box — if the public doesn’t like it, they can wait till their next opportunity to pencil in an “x.”
“I mean, it’s ‘toss us out’, but we wouldn’t even know (what was being withheld),” said Turk. “FIPPA already has lots of problems. And it is not an ideal access to information legislation in the sense that a democracy depends on the public being informed so that when it goes to the ballot box in four years, it knows what it is talking about, it knows about the issues are, it knows what governments have been doing or not doing.”
A well-informed public is essential to an effective democracy.
“And the balance that right-to-information legislation is supposed to strike, I think is tipped in the balance of government and against the public already, in FIPPA…”
The court heard oral arguments concerning Ontario’s attempt to block the release of 23 letters Premier Doug Ford wrote to cabinet ministers shortly after his Progressive Conservative government took office five years ago.
At the first level, the information and privacy commissioner found no evidence that the records in question were tabled at a cabinet meeting, or that the letters analyzed the reasons for a particular plan or spelled out the views or ideas of cabinet members.
The commissioner found the cabinet office had failed to show the letters would reveal the substance of cabinet deliberations.
In rebuttal, Ford’s attorney general argues the commissioner’s narrow and restrictive interpretation of “substance of deliberations” is an “unwarranted incursion” into the functioning of cabinet.
The mandate letters likely fall somewhere in the middle, between the deliberations about minister mandates and the plans or proposed policies a minister might put before cabinet.
A MANDATE LETTER ISN’T SUBSTANTIVE DELIBERATION
The Ontario government contends the disclosure of mandate letters would reveal the substance of deliberations of the premier and his cabinet, breaching a key tenet of Westminster-style government.
“For most of us, the exclusion is already too broad,” said Turk. “I am a firm believer in the value of the exclusion when it refers to Cabinet deliberations. That is, it is important for Cabinet to be able to have a free and frank discussion, brainstorming sessions, whatever, and for people to really have at each other and try to figure out the right way to go ahead. And there is no doubt that if all that were subject to public view, it would inhibit the conversations. There is no question about that.”
But does Ford have bigger plans for government data holdings?
“Yes. It is the big black hole, like a real black hole, that will suck in everything; they aren’t going to even hide it there. It is just anything that comes around Cabinet or could come to Cabinet, gets sucked into the hole.”
Injecting a US-style talking point in the discussion, it was noted that, of the seven judges, four are Trudeau appointees and three were chosen by Harper. But Turk suggested those tea leaves aren’t worth reading.
“It’s not worth a lot. One of the reasons is Rowe, a very conservative judge, is a Trudeau appointment. I think he is actually more conservative than some of the Harper appointees. So you can get some indications. But things aren’t quite as polarized, fortunately, as they are in the US, or not quite as predictable — although on express freedom issues, you really see the lack of predictability.”
If a more restrictive application of Cabinet secrecy is what the Court has decided, it is a very bad day for democracy, said Turk.
“Democracy depends on the public being informed so that when it goes to the ballot box in four years, it knows what it is talking about, it knows about the issues are, it knows what governments have been doing or not doing, and a well-informed public is essential to an effective democracy. And the balance that right-to-information legislation is supposed to strike, I think is tipped the balance in favour of government and against the public already, in FIPPA.”
by Robert Lee, author of the Twitter ClusterFord @downtownrob88
“They paved paradise And put up a parking lot With a pink hotel, a boutique And a swinging hot [spa]…”
— Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi
Voters looking to fill the vacant Toronto mayor’s chair are coalescing around the name candidates who want no part of Premier Doug Ford’s perverse plot to build an energy-hogging spa and underground parking lot on the city’s waterfront.
Extolling the virtues of a 45-metre-high glass box on the West Island of Ontario Place (est. 1971) doesn’t look like a vote catcher in 2023.
The upshot is Ford Nation’s confidential development deal with Therme Group spas has dropped a slippery banana peel in the path to the mayoralty of Ford Nationals such as Mark Saunders, the law & order candidate, Georgio Mammoliti, the suburbanite candidate, Chris Saccoccia, the anti-mandate candidate and Anthony Furey, the Postmedia candidate.
The results put Josh Matlow at 18.1 per cent of decided and leaning voters, followed by Ana Bailão at 16.8 per cent and Olivia Chow at 16.2 per cent.
Ana Bailão, Olivia Chow and frontrunner Josh Matlow were top 3 after the first Mainstreet poll.
By contrast, those candidates attempting to ride the muddied coattails of the Muskoka Misanthrope into the Toronto mayoralty may find it advisable to jump off before Ford does a celebratory drive-by visit to Ontario Place.
Doug may for once have to face ramifications for his racketeering impulses, if the Therme Place boondoggle delivers a progressive to the mayor’s chair at 100 Queen St. W.
The Mainstreet Research poll must have sent an inconvenient truth wave crashing through resort developer Therme Canada’s Toronto office and its Vienna, Austria headquarters.
These four Ford-friendly candidates were also rans in the Toronto election’s first poll: Saccoccia (10th), Furey (9th), Mammoliti (7th) and Saunders (4th).
Of the Ford Fab Four, only Saunders hit double-digits in the poll of 785 residents.
Two of the three early frontrunners in the 15-candidate field (Chow and Matlow) believe the Austrian group should buckle under to public opinion and abandon the confidential and controversial 10-year waterfront spa/parking lot redevelopment proposed for the landmark site.
As in any byelection, voters may see the June 26 Toronto election as an opportunity to punish the autocratic premier.
Saunders, a self-anointed Ford ally, is a Therme benefactor and former chief of Toronto police benefitting from name recognition, but he sits an also-ran fourth, about 10 weeks out from the vote.
The automated phone survey concluded that Matlow (17 per cent) and Bailão (16 per cent) lead the pack in the voters’ eyes on issues directly affecting the redevelopment of Ontario Place.
Critical for Saunders, he has zero experience on the campaign trail at any level. Running for mayor of the country’s largest city is not an entry-level activity for a rookie vote catcher.
Whether he can make up the difference and pass three high-profile candidates is doubtful.
The Top 3 claiming slightly more than half the decided and leaning vote (51.1%) also highlights a poll finding that escaped the notice of a press seeking a horserace: the undecided voter has been snuffed practically out of existence.
Only 10 per cent of those polled remaining undecided is a consequential number, demonstrating a staggering level of commitment for a municipal vote offering 15 candidates, many with solid name recognition.
Gil Penalosa stumbled badly in a competitive race at 3.3 per cent, as did provincial Liberal Mitzie Hunter at 5.8 per cent (third among African-Canadian voters), while Furey’s name recognition as a Toronto Sun Conservative party apologist translates into a laughable 2 per cent support, or one in 50 of decided voters.
DECIDED VOTERS: A fearsome threesome has been established at the front of the pack: Matlow, Bailão, Chow. Well back in 4th is the self-anointed Ford candidate, Mark Saunders, at only 10.3%, despite name recognition.
Even lower numbers likely disappointed handlers of Brad Bradford (5.8%), Anthony Furey (2.1%) and Chris Saccoccia (2%).
(Respondents were interviewed on landlines and cellular phones, April 12 to 13, 2023, among a sample of 785 adults, 18 years of age or older, living in Toronto. The survey was conducted using automated telephone interviews conducted in English, with a margin of error of +/- 3.5 per cent at the 95 per cent confidence level).
The realization may be sinking in among Torontonians that Doug Ford runs a contrarian, petulant administration offering little in the way of redeeming social value, a government of epic lassitude, mendacity and honed incompetence.
Revenge plainly is his key motivation. Toronto dismissed his tacky copycat Ferris wheel proposal; Doug returned serve with a 66,000 square metre spa.
City councillors shut down Doug’s brother who, as Toronto mayor, was an out-of-control recreational drug user; Doug as premier quickly cut city wards from 47 to 25.
Any mayoral candidate who falls into the RW Conservative spectrum like Saunders, Bradford, Mammoliti, Saccoccia, Furey, etc., will not only be aligned with Ford but will be seen to be helping the Toronto-averse premier exact revenge against the Toronto elite for its treatment of late brother Rob.
Toronto refused a casino on the waterfront: Ford introduces iGaming to every cable channel near you.
Many thought an LRT was a quick and practical solution to Scarborough transit woes. Not on in Ford World. Yet Toronto’s famous Queen Street will be torn up for four years for subways, subways and more subways despite a recently completed decades-long investment in Queen’s streetcar infrastructure.
Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty bequeaths a Greenbelt to the province: Ford proposes to cut a 150-foot wide path through it for a 400-series highway.
Doug Ford’s municipal ground game is a demonstration of fundamentals drawn not from hockey or football, but the choreographed scam known as professional wrestling.
So fixed not even Ford’s iGaming takes bets on it, the result of a pro wrestling match is predetermined, befitting a narrative detached from fact, Doug’s always preferred and favoured scenario.
In Ford Nation, if you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying, and a fair fight on a level playing field is to be avoided at all costs.
Belligerent Doug pointing a finger at a City Hall gallery member is a familiar stance as he runs roughshod over the City of Toronto.
The premier said that his government had consulted with “everyone” regarding Ontario Place — but no such consultation took place in the June 2022 election.
Having good debates on important issues is one thing. Arguing without facts and information in a reality vacuum is another, where Ford wields backroom authority with little pushback.
Journalists are supposed to initiate a chain reaction of accountability. In the Toronto market, they don’t.
Instead, the media environment rewards outrage and outlandishness; we have allowed brainless, antiscience “Luddites” like Ford to take office.
This Ontario Place planning mulligan, which no doubt came courtesy a Doug Ford back-of-the-envelope brainstorming session, is as wretched a mix of artist’s renderings as has been dished up in any cabinet meeting.
Seven football fields under glass and structural steel: “It is hard to imagine a worse, more inappropriate intervention in Ontario Place.”
The developers of the energy inefficient, nine-storey glassed-in spa should pack up their hot towels and abandon the project altogether, says a former adviser to three Toronto mayors.
Ken Greenberg, a design consultant who worked for the city under David Crombie, John Sewell and Art Eggleton from 1977 to 1987, believes even the Prince of Construction himself, King Doug of Ford Nation, might abandon the idea of massage tables on the waterfront.
Development Consultant Ken Greenberg was Toronto’s director of urban design and architecture from 1977 to 1987. He describes the Therme project as an “energy hog.”
Therme Group’s projects in Europe build on the long traditions of thermal and mineral bathing in the region, from Ancient Roman baths in historical spa towns to contemporary Scandinavian sauna concepts and popular wellbeing festivals.
It is not and never has been a Toronto tradition.
The shiny object on a Great Lake is an election issue.
The willingness of the province to make decisions that do not align with municipal plans has upended the certainty that both the municipal and development communities need.
Municipal land-use plans and the infrastructure required to support these decisions can take years to design, fund and consult with the community.
“I think the opposition that is mounting is so widespread, so vociferous, one of two things may happen. They may actually feel, although in theory they could overrule everybody and just go ahead with it, the political cost would be too high,” said Greenberg.
Opened in 1971, Ontario Place was meant to be a stand-in for a day at the cottage, not a destination for wealthy tourists.
“Or what I think is actually quite likely is Therme itself will find that it is so embroiled in a complicated approval situation with the City and extremely unpopular, it may just pull out.”
The bellicose Ford oversaw a confidential bidding process that would convert the West Island of Ontario Place into a spa, underground parking lot and a science centre, among other clashing and classless uses.
A City of Toronto planning staff report raises a host of fundamental objections: the site-dominating height of the planned spa building, the underground garage, the clearing of more than 800 trees, the inappropriate scale of the main building and narrow walking paths, among other issues.
“Overall, in their current form, the applications do not adequately respond to key policy directions of the Official Plan and the Central Waterfront Secondary Plan,” the city said.
Trillium Park and the William G. Davis Trail at Ontario Place represent the successful outcome of a tripartite effort of the Toronto, Ontario and Ottawa governments. Dictator Doug Ford isn’t following the precedent.
In short, the crucial decisions continue to be made behind closed doors without respect for Ontarians.
Connecting the Dots... 