Ontario Politics

Ford government credibility on Covid crumbles as province unnecessarily cancels Halloween and Ontario’s testing regime descends into chaos

  On Monday, Dr. David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer, said the “high transmission” of COVID-19 in the four Ontario regions now under modified Stage 2 restrictions had prompted him to recommend against traditional Halloween night trick-or-treating. Ontario Premier Doug Ford strongly endorsed Dr. Williams' position. In Dr. Williams' view, the current Covid situation has made it too dangerous for door-to-door trick or treating in Toronto, Peel, York and Ottawa. The ban on trick and...

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Doug Ford needs a real plan to reopen Ontario schools full-time in September

The pandemic has thrust governments into a more proactive role than anyone would have imagined just a few months ago. As Canada moves beyond the immediate COVID-19 health crisis, policymakers must seize the opportunity to implement bold, forward-looking reforms. These include redesigning income support programs for the unemployed, regulating the labour market in a way that encourages full-time, high wage jobs, and improving the distribution of risk and return between the public, the state, and...

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Low COVID-19 testing rates undermining fight against virus in Ontario

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ontario has trailed the rest of the country when it comes to testing people for the virus. It’s been a fatal gap in the province’s pandemic response, since a key method of stopping the outbreak involves figuring out who has the virus, and then isolating them and their contacts. Doing public health without adequate testing is like telling the fire department to rush to a nine-alarm blaze, and...

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The World Health Organization had a plan for the coronavirus but much of the world ignored it.

It is increasingly obvious that if there was a set of globally enforceable rules regarding public health practices that all nations had to implement at the first signs of a possible pandemic, we would not be facing the catastrophic health and economic crisis we are facing today with the coronavirus. What most people don't know is that in 2005, the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) put in place a set of practices to prevent a coronavirus...

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Ford government fires another Dean French connection as Ontario patronage scandal grows

  Another Ontario patronage appointee was fired Thursday as the Toronto Star revealed his ties to Premier Doug Ford’s former chief of staff, Dean French, who left government two weeks ago amid a growing cronyism scandal. Peter Fenwick, a senior bureaucrat in Ontario's cabinet office, was turfed by the Cabinet Office Secretary, Steven Davidson. Last week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford's office announced a review of government appointments which included a review of the appointment of...

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Ford friend Taverner withdraws name for top OPP job – fired Deputy Commissioner Brad Blair claims vindication

Supt. Ron Taverner, a close confidant of the Ford family for years, has decided to withdraw his name for the top OPP job “to protect the integrity of rank and file police officers given the controversy surrounding my appointment.” “This decision is not an easy one for me to make,” Supt. Taverner said in a letter to Community Safety and Correctional Services Minister Sylvia Jones, which was released by the government late Wednesday. In a...

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Can Canadian democracy withstand the era of the strongmen?

Canadians who value democratic institutions such as a free press, an independent judiciary, and fair elections, need to be vigilant in safeguarding these important democratic institutions. Ontario Premier Ford's justification in invoking the "notwithstanding" clause to overrule a judge who ruled that his legislation to cut Toronto City Council in half was unconstitutional, suggests a leader who seems to think his electoral mandate entitles him to do whatever he pleases and any opposition is illegitimate....

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Trump and Ford: The new politics of resentment in Canada and the United States

Introduction To understand Donald Trump's victory one has to understand resentment in white America. While visible minority Americans voted overwhelmingly for the Democrats, the fact is that whites still make up an overwhelming number of U. S. voters (Pew Research has whites at 74 percent of all voters in 2016 , and second, it has whites without a college degree, Trump’s key constituency, at 44 percent of all voters). This means that American politics is still defined primarily by...

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The Ontario election: Why Doug Ford is the enemy of the “little guy”

Introduction A previous post made the argument that the core appeal of Doug Ford populism (much like Trump populism) is a cultural resentment against the professional class as opposed to an economic populism in which working and middle class resentment is directed against the wealthy and large corporations. In other words, the "elites" that Ford rants against are professionals such as bureaucrats, academics, lawyers, journalists and teachers who Ford portrays as "looking down" on average...

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Ford populism and the 2018 Ontario election

Introduction This is the first in a series of articles on the upcoming June 7, Ontario election. The series will look at both the partisan political strategies and policy issues at play during the election. This article takes an in-depth look at the dynamics of Ford populism and the basis of its appeal to its supporters. The basic argument is that the core appeal of Ford populism is cultural resentment against the professional class as opposed...

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