Ford Lemon

Thinking of Ford, almost exactly two years after his ascension to the Leadership of the PCO, I am minded of Churchill's comment on the ill-fated Anzio invasion. "I thought we were throwing a Tiger on to the beach but we got a Whale instead!" I thought we were getting a real fiscal conservative who understood that ours was "the most indebted subordinate jurisdiction in the World" TM and that we needed to get control of that or we were all toast. Plus, it might be nice if we make it finally not an indictable offence to do business in this province again. Oh, and BTW, I'm even gonna "consider" ridding you of those larcenous hydro bills we have needlessly stuck you with. Hell, he was not only the Brother of "Stop the Gravy Train", he would be a mix of Ronald Reagan, Max Bernier and Conan the Barbarian with a little bit of Hitler around the edges so how could we political marks, otherwise known as conservative voters lose, right?

Well, despite being told that our Hero was "unelectable", stupid and uncouth Trump Lite, he won the Leadership and then the Election humiliating his only real opposition into the worst result it had of all time. A foolproof 30 seat majority was obtained with an obtuse feckless NDP opposition leftover. All was in front of us. We could do whatever we wanted.  It was Then that the troubles began.

The "consideration" of killing the big Hydro bills was the first to quickly disappear. Then the commitment to a balanced budget faded away. Then the taxes that were to be cut were to be cut...once the budget was balanced. Besieged business owners were delighted to hear that Ontario was indeed "open for business". Doug Ford's signs on Ontario's borders told us so. Aside from an early, no doubt a "pour encourager les autres" award of optimism more than anything for being a "Regulation Buster", all pretence to any real fiscal conservatism was out the door. (it would be interesting to find out if Ford really has promulgated any fewer regs than Wynne did in the equivalent period)

Oh, but you say,"The Star tells me that the Ford government is a vicious fiscal hawk gutting our social safety net to help all of our, er, I mean, their rich friends on Bay Street"? Well, good for you if you think that but none of us who can do the math can see it. What we do see are a bunch of lily livered scuzzbag Albany Club types who have got a hold of our man and told him that it's too early to do anything really tough or "bold" to save our economy. Then, when the term's almost up, they'll say,"Wait until we're re-elected". The same people who did the same thing to Harper. But, I'm not naive. Just like Stephen, I believe Doug is an adult, the most powerful man in the biggest province for God's sake, who really believes that not going too hard will win him re-election while he blames others for his achieving zip. 

Which reminds me of the latest disaster. The question of the day is: would he have won that election if he had said that he was going to enable a province wide teacher strike by paying us $60 a day for daycare? I think not. Just as he surely would have lost if he had said,"I have no better clue how to get us out of this fiscal and economic mess than the others do!" (although he might have got some points for honesty)

Then again Someone might have told him then that Harris (who dealt with the last province wide teachers' strike very differently as I recall) balanced the budget and saw the economy grow like topsy in his first term after being handed a deficit and other disasters that were far larger and seemingly intractable than the ones he's facing. It just takes courage, a real plan and the barest of competence (Harris was a golf pro and a teacher). Sadly, fear seems to actuate Ford and his cabinet and caucus and that makes everything seem more hard than it really is. So soon you are bargaining with yourself, as in the Teachers' mess, giving things away and still not getting even the meagre goals you've set for yourself remotely done while still being called a "Nazi" by the Sainted Press and John Tory for your trouble.

It is perhaps not a surprise that what with being saddled with the "People's Compromise" or whatever that bloody encyclopedic platform of ours was called, that Doug felt constrained from being a Ralph Klein (who actually was initially less fiscally sound than his Liberal opponent). But, how hard was it to articulate a simple truth that all of us, even our professional martyr schoolteachers and taxpayer-to-be charges, should be concerned with the province's finances? It certainly could not have been as hard as suggesting other deep, complex propositions like that we are overtaxed or that we pay too much for that rare, newfangled thing called electric power. Right? Hey, right?! Hello? Are you still listening...

The losers in all this will eventually be the Tories who the People will correctly blame for this, for not doing what they were hired by us to do. The People of Ontario will not get to wait until 2022 to lose. A Martian looking down on Whale Land from 20,000 feet will not have even noticed there was a change in government.