Ford must do more than just destroy things
Only weeks in office, Doug Ford has withdrawn from cap-and-trade, cancelled the sex education curriculum, replaced the board of Ontario Hydro and blown up Toronto city council.
He’s moved quickly, resolutely and spitefully. Some measures he promised in the campaign and one he plainly did not, which makes it all the more cynical. No matter; when you’re premier of Canada’s most populous province, endowed with a majority government, much like the president of the United States who controls both houses of Congress, you do whatever you want.
If that means destroying more than creating, so be it. Doug Ford is not Donald Trump — he is not a nativist, a protectionist or a bigot — but their approach to governing is similar. They are driven by impulse, ignorance, insecurity and personal animus. In this sense, they are soulmates.
Both want fervently to dismantle what their predecessors built — often out of a desire to get even. It’s the politics of repeal and revenge.
In his year and a half in office, Trump has rescinded long-standing commercial and environmental regulations, withdrawn from international treaties and tried to repeal universal health care, Barack Obama’s signature achievement (which, unprecedented for major social reform in the U.S., passed without Republican support). Trump has reduced newly created national parks and tried to roll back rules on abortion.
In his first month and a half as premier, Ford has shown some of the same instincts. His canvas is smaller and his palette of powers is weaker than Trump’s. But in one way, Ford has more latitude. Trump has to deal with a recalcitrant Congress. By contrast, Ford has absolute control of his caucus.
We might ask: Is rescind and rebuke the new reality of new governments today? Is it now standard practice of any new regime to abolish the policies and practices of the one before?
Not necessarily. But voters give governments a mandate for change and leave the details to them. Increasingly, new means “no” to what went before.
When Brian Mulroney replaced Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals in 1984, he fired Bryce Mackasey and Eugene Whelan, former cabinet ministers who Trudeau had recently made ambassadors. Mulroney abolished the Foreign Investment Review Agency. He privatized Petro-Canada and Air Canada.
But the Conservatives did not reverse official bilingualism, return the death penalty or revoke the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (though Mulroney tried unsuccessfully at Meech Lake to reopen the constitution to accommodate Quebec). He accepted, as a Canadian, a level of national consensus.
Jean Chrétien cancelled military helicopters Mulroney had contracted to buy, but he built on the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and NAFTA. He kept the HST, despite promises to scrap it when he was in opposition.
Justin Trudeau followed Stephen Harper and, predictably, restored the long-form census, lifted the gag on scientists and diplomats, restored Canada’s stature at the United Nations and returned to peacekeeping. He also traded a budgetary surplus for a deficit. But he kept taxfree savings plans, Harper’s only real achievement.
In each case, governments acted but did not aspire to destroy as Trump does — and as Ford threatens to do.
This instinct to repeal, particularly in the United States, reflects the broader collapse of consensus, the bi-partisanship that characterized politics in the postwar era. Dwight Eisenhower, for example, did not dismantle Harry Truman’s Fair Deal and FDR’s New Deal. The Republicans didn’t try to roll back social security, one of the landmarks in American history.
Richard Nixon didn’t embrace all of LBJ’s Great Society, but he did not touch the Civil Rights Act, Medicare or consumer protection.
Trump destroys. He has built nothing as president — not a wall, not a treaty, not a program. His sole legislative achievement is the tax cut, which benefits the wealthy.
Ford has four years and a free hand to remake Ontario. But if he doesn’t start with creating consensus, he invites the Liberals to do to his legacy what he’s doing to theirs.