Young Doug Ford

Thursday February 18, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 18, 2021

Doug Ford facing online backlash after visiting Hazel McCallion on her birthday

Premier Doug Ford is facing some online backlash for going against his own message of asking people to stay home on Family Day.

Ford visited former Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion as she celebrated her 100th birthday over the weekend.

Photos of Ford’s visit appeared on social media.

One person writing on Twitter, “Ford’s never-ending hypocrisy is infuriating.”

Another tweeting, “so what does the stay at home order mean and who does it apply to?”

November 5, 2020

Most of the province remained under a stay-at-home order over the weekend with 27 health units lifting the order as of Tuesday.

The order states every person shall stay in their residence unless leaving is necessary for a permitted purpose, which includes but is not limited to:

• working or volunteering (if cannot be done from home)

• attending school

• obtaining child care

• obtaining food, beverages and personal care items

• obtaining financial, government, social or health care services

• necessary maintenance for household or business

• exercise for oneself or one’s animal

• obtaining food or necessary goods/services necessary for the health/safety of an animal

• to support or provide assistance to someone that requires it

• attending a gathering for a funeral, wedding or religious services permitted under the Reopening Act

Young Doug Ford: The Series

Toronto, Peel Region, York Region and North Bay Parry Sound are set to remain under the stay-at-home order until at least Feb. 22.

This isn’t the first time Ford has faced criticism for failing to follow his own advice.

Last April, after telling people not to visit their cottages during the first wave of the pandemic, the premier’s office confirmed that Ford went to his family cottage on Easter Sunday.

In September, Ford called on police to crack down on large gatherings, as he faced some criticism for attending an MPP’s wedding. (CityNews) 

 

Friday December 4, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday December 4, 2020

Doug Ford Approval Rating Poll Finds His Popularity Is Slipping

Series: Young Doug Ford

Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s pandemic sheen may be wearing off, a new poll suggests, but he still enjoys support from a majority of the province. 

Ford’s approval rating has fallen to 55 per cent, a drop of 14 percentage points since May, according to the poll released by Angus Reid Institute Tuesday.

At his high point, that rating was 69 per cent. The moment came early in the pandemic, a couple months after the premier started holding daily press briefings on the status of COVID-19. 

He showed a side of himself that was noticeably different from the tough-talking premier Ontarians saw early in his mandate. He spoke frankly about the coming economic crisis — “some people are gonna face some tough times” — and got choked up speaking about his own mother-in-law, who caught COVID-19 in a long-term care home.

November 19, 2020

“From a public opinion perspective, the early days of the pandemic were a strongpoint for Premier Doug Ford in Ontario,” the institute’s new report said. “Ford’s shift in persona enabled him to earn the approval of Ontarians previously entrenched along party lines.”

He’s now on the less popular side of the Canadian premiers’ spectrum. 

Ford’s drop comes as cases of COVID-19 surge once again. Ontario’s reported more than 1,700 new cases of the novel coronavirus every day for the past four days. And the premier’s faced an onslaught of criticism in recent weeks, after the auditor general said his government’s response to the pandemic was “disorganized and inconsistent” and the Toronto Star reported he had ignored public health advice.

October 27, 2020

B.C. Premier John Horgan, who won re-election in October, is tied with Quebec Premier François Legault for most popular premier in Canada. Both are approved of by 64 per cent of voters in their provinces. 

Legault’s popularity stands up even though his province has seen more COVID-19 infections and deaths per capita than any other in Canada. 

“Despite this, Premier François Legault continues to be perceived as a fixture of strength, his approval statistically unchanged at 64 per cent,” Angus Reid Institute said.

The least popular are Manitoba’s Brian Pallister, at 32 per cent approval, and Alberta’s Jason Kenney, at 40 per cent. The two Prairie premiers are grappling with soaring second waves of COVID-19 cases and devastating outbreaks at institutions. (Huffington Post) 

Saturday October 3, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday October 3, 2020

Doug Ford should take a serious shot at himself

Doug and the people. He’s for the people, he says, but so’s everyone, en principe. Now it’s at a point where he should take time off from hectoring the people about their own failures and yell at himself.

Young Doug Ford: The Series

He’s good at it. He went after the thousand yahoos who attended a car rally in Ancaster: “If they had brains they’d be dangerous.” Those types are “a few fries short of a Happy Meal.” They’re clichés, but not typical Ford ones — they hover above his usual arsenal. At such moments, his vocabulary glows.

The problem? He puts blame for the mess we’re back into, on individuals: student partiers, car ralliers. But the difference between them and him is they didn’t have the capacity to alleviate or screw up the lives of a whole province.

The students and car guys should yell back: Stop screaming at us and fix the damn testing system! Why weren’t you ready for the fall surge you knew was coming? There’s no excuse for standing in line for hours, then being sent home untested. He doesn’t take responsibility. Instead, he waxes Trumpian: our record is “fabulous,” “like you’ve never seen before,” others ask how I did it.

September 18, 2020

(I firmly believe that one duty of a “people’s” leader is not making citzens’ lives more miserable than need be. That includes wretched crowding on transit or airlines, grinding daily commutes — and ingeniously humiliating test lines.)

Why didn’t he mandate smaller classes, as we watch the schools grind predictably to a mass closing, instead of dicking around with more nurses and custodians? Sending teachers into those packed classrooms is sadistic. What about kids who go home, transmit the virus to parents and in the worst cases may have to spend the rest of their lives feeling guilty for it?

Long-term care homes are again the main source of this second wave, since Ford has done “nothing” for them (as the Globe and Mail said) since the first round.

What is he doing? Step one was tell us to get flu shots, which aren’t even available yet. Next was getting pharmacies to test. Huntsville didn’t have a test centre until its MPP called Doug and he conscripted Shoppers. I like the “on call” shtick, but it’s redolent of Russian serfs feeling if only the Czar knew, he’d fix it. Please, just acknowledge the difference between individual and political roles.

Still, compared to the U.S., they’re all there with their masks on at briefings, daintily distancing as they angle to the mic — though there’s always a moment when Doug says he relies on the advice of his chief medical officer. We deserve medals for not expiring each time he blurts that out. He did an impressive turnaround when this began. He’s managed to piss it all away since then. (Rick Salutin – Toronto Star) 

 

Wednesday July 8, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday July 8, 2020

Ontario plans to stop Grade 9 students from streaming into applied or academic tracks

Series: Young Doug Ford

The Ontario government plans to stop its Grade 9 “applied” and “academic” track streaming, a spokesperson for the ministry of education confirmed Monday.

High school students in Ontario typically have to choose between more practical, hands-on applied courses or more theoretical academic courses in core subjects.

“Students, families and staff deserve an education system that is inclusive, accountable, and transparent, and one that by design, is set up to fully and equally empower all children to achieve their potential,” Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce said in a statement on Monday afternoon.

December 5, 2019

“This government will move quickly and decisively to combat systemic racism so that every child – irrespective of colour of skin, heritage, faith or ability – can have a fighting chance at success.”

The streaming process was developed in the late 1990s as a way to cater to students with different learning styles, but experts say that streaming has disproportionately impacted racialized and low-income students, affecting graduation rates and test scores.

Advocacy group People for Education has long been calling for an end to the streaming process. They argue that it ends up dividing students rather than providing them with more options.

January 25, 2019

“There as a high disproportionate amount of kids in the applied stream who were Black, who were Indigenous, who came from low-income families,” Annie Kidder from People for Education said. “All of the research, every single year when it was looked at on who goes to applied found a disproportionate portion of kids from certain backgrounds.”

Kidder said that while eliminating the practice is the right thing to do, she wants to know more about how students with different learning styles will be supported during the transition as well as teachers.

“You can’t just flip a switch,” she said. “You have to be willing to do the other part of the work.”

Five years ago People for Education called on the Liberal government to merge the two levels of Grade 9 math classes after a survey found that students in the applied version of the course were less successful on EQAO tests, less likely to graduate and less likely to go on to post-secondary education. (CTV) 

 



 

Friday March 27, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday March 27, 2020

Doug Ford has risen to the coronavirus challenge

Coronavirus cartoons

As the spread of COVID-19 has utterly transformed life as we know it, it has also emerged as the most profound test of political leadership in a generation or more.

Of course, the pandemic is, first and foremost, a health crisis. In the global response, doctors and public health authorities have been foregrounded, and rightfully so. But it is also a crisis of public confidence and so it is appropriate to look at the crisis through the lens of the political leadership as well.

In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, having gotten Brexit done, now faces an even greater challenge. He has been forced to pivot from an initial anachronistic approach of herd immunity (i.e., letting the virus run amok) to proper suppression and mitigation efforts as in the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, in Ireland, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was voted out of office last month, but while a new government has been unable to form, the former doctor-turned-politician has, quite literally, risen to the role of caretaker government. On St. Patrick’s Day, he delivered a national address that marked the high watermark of his premiership.

The pandemic has forced Angela Merkel, long averse to televised displays of leadership, into doing precisely that. And in so doing proving why she continues to be primus inter pares among world leaders.

March 13, 2020

As for Donald Trump, there is only one word: disaster.

Here at home, Canadian leaders, at all orders of government, have acted on the advice of scientists, doctors and public health experts, as they bloody well should. And for that we can, as a people, be grateful.

From Prime Minister Trudeau to our premiers and mayors, the performances of our leaders have been commendable.

But perhaps the biggest success has been the commanding performance of Ontario Premier Doug Ford. It was not even two weeks ago that Ford was embroiled in a kerfuffle over manufacturing defects with new provincial licence plates; today, it seems hard to imagine a scandal with smaller stakes. And a protracted dispute with the teacher’s unions had dragged his government’s approval rating underwater. Now, in his daily briefings about the province’s response to COVID-19, he is modelling leadership in real time.

Series: Young Doug Ford

As the crisis has deepened, Ford is exemplifying the tenets of good crisis communication. He has been transparent and forthcoming, hosting daily briefings which may seem routine, but are in fact distinguished by attention to small details.

The premier begins promptly on time, wearing a suit and tie. He has been honest and plainspoken about the scale and severity of the challenge before us. He has delegated and empowered his bench of ministers, including Deputy Premier and Health Minister Christine Elliott and Finance Minister Rod Phillips. He has put aside partisan considerations.

He is working hand in hand with his federal counterparts. And, for a man whose political career has been defined by animosity towards the mainstream media, this week’s explicit recognition of their essential role marked a turning point. (Continued: Toronto Star)