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Doug Ford has completed what can best be described as a rocky first year as premier, one defined by hits and misses, self-inflicted wounds, public disaffection and sagging polls. It is not how the man who was the toast of the province only a year ago, after a commanding victory, would have imagined it. And with even more daunting challenges to come, the question is whether Ford has learned any lessons from his fraught first year.
Elections have consequences of course, and having won one, Ford had every right to bring in his own policies and have the legislature fall in line. And so he proceeded, as he put it, “at lightning speed.” From slashing the number of Toronto city councillors in mid-election, and threatening to use the Charter’s notwithstanding clause to block any court intervention; to the ill-fated changes to autism funding; to revamping health care and working to cut public health and paramedics; to breaking corporate contracts, Ford barrelled ahead with one controversial policy after another, showing no appetite for consultation or alternative views.
It goes without saying that Ford doesn’t see his first year as anything but a success. In his mind, he kept his promises, passed important legislation and created, he says, 190,000 jobs. “In one year, we have accomplished more than any government in Ontario’s history,” he claimed.
No one should be surprised that Ford reversed key policies of the previous Liberal government or embarked on major funding and program cuts. That’s in his DNA. The surprise is the apparent lack of discipline or forethought in planning and rolling out policy changes and funding cuts. The announcements came fast and furious, blindsiding municipal governments that provide most of the services and confounding citizens. For someone who so correctly read the public mood during the election campaign, Ford failed to understand how much austerity people would accept. The result was a severe backlash that forced the government into retreat on key issues.
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See Also:
(1) About 2,400 Ontario public servants take voluntary buyout
(2) Why Shariah mortgage is a deception
(3) No comeback, just contracts, for Shariah law in Ontario
(4) Fakery and pretense on highways should be ticketed offence
(5) #RingOfFire (#RoF) News – June 13, 2019
