In 1995, when then-rookie premier Mike Harris was facing the same sort of mass demonstrations at Queen’s Park that Premier Doug Ford is today, he delivered one of the most memorable lines in the history of Ontario politics.
A Progressive Conservative premier having inherited a fiscal train wreck from the previous NDP government, as Ford has today from the previous Liberal government, Harris said the protests would not deter him from the job he needed to do.
“By the time we’re done,” Harris famously said, “there won’t be a single blade of grass on the south lawn at Queen’s Park that hasn’t been trod upon by some protester.”
Today, history is repeating itself with mass demonstrations, including masked protesters calling for Ford’s beheading and a vandal spray painting profanities aimed at Ford on the legislative building and a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald.
So it’s nothing new for a PC premier trying to clean up the financial mess left to him by a previous government.
Inevitably, there will be protests against imposing necessary financial restraint by demonstrators who — to be clear — have every right to protest, but no right to threaten the premier or vandalize Queen’s Park.
Ford responded on Wednesday to these threats and obscenities, saying he doesn’t take them too seriously.
“I just consider the source. It is unbelievable but you have to look at where it’s coming from. Somebody’s paying people to go out and protest like that to stir stuff up and people know that.”
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See Also:
(1) Ontario lawyers score victory for free thought in Law Society election
(2) Police called over mock guillotine protest aimed at Premier Ford
(3) Ford’s not waging a war on teachers
(5) Anti-carbon tax crusaders Doug Ford, Jason Kenney meet at Queen’s Park
