Ontario

Saturday June 8, 2019

June 8, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday June 8, 2019

Andrew Scheer has an Ontario problem — and it could be Doug Ford

October 2, 2004

Andrew Scheer’s Conservative Party is struggling to make inroads in Ontario, the battleground province that’s likely to decide October’s federal election. He might have Ontario Premier Doug Ford to thank for that.

Multiple polls suggest Ford and his Progressive Conservative government are deeply unpopular, just one year after ousting Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals from office.

While those polls undoubtedly aren’t being welcomed by provincial Progressive Conservatives — and may have been the motive behind Monday’s about-face on cuts to municipal funding — they don’t necessarily represent a pressing problem for Ford. He still has another three years to go before the next provincial election.

But the Ford government’s dismal poll numbers could present a big problem for Scheer, who needs Ontario if he’s to win the federal vote that’s now less than five months away.

The Conservatives continue to hold a six-point lead over the Liberals nationwide in the CBC’s Canada Poll Tracker, an aggregation of all publicly available polling data. The Conservatives have led ever since the SNC-Lavalin affair sent Liberal support tumbling.

June 5, 2019

The party has seen some significant gains in certain parts of the country. Compared to where the Poll Tracker pegged Conservative support in January and early February (before the SNC-Lavalin story broke), the party has gained up to five points in Quebec and the Prairies and between five and nine points in Atlantic Canada.

The Conservatives are also holding their support in British Columbia and Alberta. The drop in Liberal support has increased the Conservatives’ lead by about four points in B.C., five points in Alberta and nine points in the Prairies, while shrinking the Liberal lead in Quebec and Atlantic Canada by about 11 and 22 points, respectively.

But the dial has not moved as dramatically in Ontario.

The Conservatives hold a slight edge over the Liberals in the province, with 37 to 34 per cent support. While that represents a big drop for the Liberals, who won 45 per cent of the vote in Ontario in the 2015 election, it shows Scheer’s party up only two points over the result that cost Stephen Harper his job — and down as much as five points from where the Conservatives were in the province at the beginning of the year. (Toronto Star) 

 

Wednesday June 5, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 5, 2019

Cabinet must stop enabling Ford’s incompetence

An enabler, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “a person or thing that makes something possible.”

August 9, 2018

In light of the Ontario government’s obsession with alcohol, it’s also instructive to turn to literature on the psychology of addiction, which further defines an enabler as someone who “passively permits or unwittingly encourages” destructive behaviour and often “feels powerless to prevent it.”

And that brings us to the 20 men and women who were elected by Ontario voters a year ago this Friday and subsequently named to Premier Doug Ford’s cabinet.

When a series of unlikely circumstances collided to make Ford leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, those who had experienced the Ford brand of governing by chaos rather than consensus at Toronto City Hall were incredulous.

If he can’t be trusted to run a city, how can he run the entire province?

March 13, 2018

Don’t worry, his supporters said, Ford will shake things up a bit but he won’t do anything too reckless because Queen’s Park isn’t anything like city hall and the seasoned politicians who will join him at the cabinet table will temper the worst of his tendencies.

In short, they’ll keep him in check.

But, as we’ve seen, it’s been the other way around.

The City of Toronto, for all the seeming messiness of its council meetings, is full of independent thinkers.

It’s under the party system that Ford’s brand of reckless governing has been able to spread like measles through an unvaccinated community.

September 14, 2018

With the help of his chief of staff, Dean French, Ford has brought all those experienced and capable politicians who were supposed to lift him up, down to his level. A level that surely the likes of Caroline Mulroney and Christine Elliott, who had ambitions to lead the party, could scarcely have imagined.

As attorney general, Mulroney acquiesced to Ford’s rush to hit the nuclear button with the “notwithstanding” clause of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in his vindictive move to cut Toronto city council in half with the municipal election already underway. And the government has churned out legislation to shield itself from the financial liabilities that go with its desire to tear up contracts.

Ford may want to use powers that are rarely used for good reason, as though they’re free candy for the taking, but the adults in the building are supposed to know better.

While everything may begin with Ford and his unelected advisers, it can’t come to pass without the attorney general and the rest of the cabinet.

One of them, Environment Minister Rod Phillips, once said he was running for the Ontario PCs to be part of a “positive, inclusive” team.

November 17, 2018

How is that going?

Finance Minister Vic Fedeli happily adds and subtracts billions from the provincial deficit depending, it seems, on the day of the week and whether Ford is in a mood to attack the past Liberal government or tout his success as a leader and general good guy.

Under Ford, cabinet ministers jump up like trained seals, clap wildly and support the unsupportable with canned lines that don’t pass even a cursory sniff test.

Did they all agree to check their brains and backbones at the door to cabinet?

Health Minister Christine Elliott, Education Minister Lisa Thompson, Municipal Affairs Minister Steve Clark, and Children and Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod all lurch from one half-baked policy to the next depending on which way Ford Nation winds blow.

January 12, 2019

Some of these cabinet ministers may want to tell themselves they’re powerless to stop this and that’s par for the course with enablers. But it’s not true. As Oxford tells us, enablers make things possible.

Some of Ford’s cabinet might also still be imagining a future for themselves where memoirs are written about their time in politics. They should start thinking about how they want the 2018-2022 chapter to read.

While Ontarians are gasping at how Year One under the Ford government has gone, and holding their breath for what’s to come in Year Two, his cabinet ministers can — and should — do more than that.

Those 20 men and women can ask themselves whether they want to continue to be enablers or whether they want to relocate their spines and try for something more. (Hamilton SpectatorEditorial) https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/9408338-editorial-cabinet-must-stop-enabling-ford-s-incompetence/

 

Thursday May 10, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 30, 2019

Ontario to end Beer Store deal, paving way for beer in corner stores

The Progressive Conservative government has tabled legislation that would terminate a contract with The Beer Store.

The previous Liberal government signed a 10-year deal with the brewers that permitted an expansion of beer and wine sales to hundreds of grocery stores.

Premier Doug Ford has indicated he plans to put beer and wine in corner stores, but he has to break that agreement to do so and the industry has warned that could trigger steep financial penalties.

While tabling today’s bill, Finance Minister Vic Fedeli said the current system is a monopoly that is a bad deal for consumers and businesses.

The legislation comes after the province’s special adviser on alcohol delivered a report Friday to Fedeli on ways to improve consumer choice and convenience.

The Tories also announced a number of loosened alcohol restrictions in last month’s budget, including allowing alcohol to be served at 9 a.m., seven days a week, letting people consume booze in parks, and legalizing tailgating parties near sports events.

Meanwhile, there’s been a swift reaction from Labatt Brewing Company Limited and Molson Canada 2005 — two of the three large brewers who predominantly own The Beer Store — to the legislation tabled Monday.

CBC Toronto obtained a copy of a lawyers’ letter from Labatt  and Molson putting the government on notice of a potential legal challenge to the beer legislation. Blake, Cassels and Graydon LLP represent Labatt, while Molson is represented by Gowling WLG.

In the letter, the lawyers note that the 2015 Master Framework Agreement was negotiated with the province to enhance customer convenience, choice and shopping experience, while ensuring that customers in Ontario can purchase beer at prices below the Canadian average, and to enhance the beer retailing system for all brewers selling beer in Ontario.

“The Bill will destroy those benefits, legislate 7,000 Ontario-based The Beer Store employees out of work and cause billions of dollars in damages … and result in higher costs and prices for consumers,” the lawyers wrote. (CBC) 

 

Wednesday May 29, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday May 29, 2019

Doug Ford’s ‘government that listens’ is hearing the polls

Premier Doug Ford wants you to believe that his decision to postpone municipal budget cuts had absolutely nothing to do with successive polls showing a sharp drop in voter support for his party.

October 23, 2008

Ford insists he made his about-face because he heard loudly and clearly from mayors across the province

“They need more time,” he told a news conference Monday. “We’re a government that listens.”

There’s no doubt the mayors’ argument resonated at Queen’s Park, simply because it was rather reasonable: that it was completely unfair for the province to cut municipal funding for 2019 when cities were already part-way through their budgets for the year.

The sustained public-relations offensive from Toronto Mayor John Tory can’t help but have contributed to Ford’s polling numbers. The man who beat Ford in the 2014 mayoral race was also beating Ford in the realm of public opinion over budget 2019.

Tory’s tactics to keep the story alive included distributing leaflets to voters in PC-held ridings, gathering signatures on a petition and holding a news conference at a city-run daycare.

Tory’s conservative credentials as a former PC leader meant that Ford could not dismiss his critique as mere ideology. (CBC) 

Thursday May 23, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 23, 2019

Ford offers school boards and municipalities money to hunt for savings

After hitting municipalities with cutbacks in provincial funding, Premier Doug Ford says his government will now spend $7.35 million to help them find savings.

Toronto Mayor John Tory immediately panned the move, calling it a “$7 million public relations exercise by the government of Ontario.”

“It does us no good getting money for a line-by-line audit that we’re already doing without consideration from the province of the fact that these retroactive, mid-year cuts will seriously hurt residents and families,” Tory said in a statement of the estimated $178 million in funding clawbacks the city faces to public health, daycare and transit.

The mayor said he is “committed to finding more and great efficiencies” — but is urging the Ford government to halt the current cuts.

On Tuesday, Ford — repeating the “four cents on the dollar” mantra he used on the election campaign trail a year ago — said in a lunchtime speech in Ajax that the province will provide the money for cities and school boards to conduct in-depth financial audits to identify where they can trim budgets by 4 per cent.

Later, speaking to reporters, Ford said it’s not unfair for the province to impose clawbacks on the city well into its fiscal year.

“We’re asking to work with him as a partner,” Ford said. “We are working collaboratively with any municipality that wants to take us up on the offer.”

The premier noted that more than 90 per cent of provincial funding “goes to municipal partners and hospitals and universities. They’re our partners. We don’t have like Fort Knox sitting down at Queen’s Park, a whole bunch of gold sitting there. Ninety two per cent of our money goes to municipalities and other partners, so we’re asking them to work with us. And we’ll work with them and support them.”

Ford made the $7.35 million announcement speaking to members of the chambers of commerce in Whitby and Greater Oshawa, as well as the Ajax-Pickering Board of Trade.

Cathy Abraham, president of the Ontario Public School Boards Association, said boards “already operate very efficiently, because we’ve had to.”

She said it will be up to individual boards to take the province up on its offer, “but they’ll be hard-pressed to find 4 per cent in efficiencies” given about 80 per cent of funding is in staffing and contracts, and other pockets of money are “sweatered,” meaning they can only be spent on the programs they are intended for, said Abraham, of the Kawartha Pine Ridge public board.

But Ford said cities and school boards must do their part as the province tightens its fiscal belt.

“Our government was elected to fix 15 years of Liberal mismanagement, put the province on a path to balance and protect services like health care and education,” Ford said. (Toronto Star)