It’s ‘Back to the ’50s’ in Ford Nation

Even though Ford has a majority, Trudeau’s Liberals also speak for Ontario

Hon. Doug Ford,

Premier of Ontario, Queen’s Park, Toronto

My Dear Premier Ford, Please find enclosed my application for membership in Ford Nation.

It’s my way of demonstrating my enthusiastic support for the work that you and your new Progressive Conservative government are doing.

You are a man of your word. You promised you would get rid of that $6 million man at Hydro One. Boom, he’s gone, and it’s only going to cost $9 million. Good job, Sir!

You are scrapping Kathleen Wynne’s Green Energy Act. You are eliminating subsidies on purchases of electric cars, ripping windmills out of the ground, and I’m sure you will soon be tearing solar panels off rooftops across the province.

You are doing a splendid job to prepare Ontario to confront the daunting challenges of the 1950s. Leslie Frost would be so proud!

You have rolled the clock back on other fronts. You have taken the sex out of sex education. Kids don’t need to know about gay and lesbian or bisexual and transgender or HIV and AIDS. They can still learn all they need to know about sex in the back seat of the family Studebaker.

Too much knowledge is a dangerous thing. That’s why you had the foresight to fire the province’s science officer. That may stop all the loose talk about human activity causing global warming. It is nonsense to suggest that Ontario’s cars and trucks, factories, mines and smelters create pollution. They create jobs, as we Ford Nation-builders know.

You canned Wynne’s “cap and trade” scheme. And you told that twerp from Ottawa, Justin Trudeau, where to put it when he came to warn you that if Ontario bailed on his national climate plan, he would impose his own carbon tax.

The effrontery of the man! Just because he is prime minister of Canada, he thinks he can speak for the people of Ontario. You, Sir, have a majority government. You and only you speak for Ontarians (we’ll overlook the inconvenient reality that Trudeau’s Liberals hold 80 of Ontario’s 121 parliamentary seats.).

You really told Trudeau off when he tried to con you into picking up part of the tab for resettling refugees who have flooded into Ontario in search of safety and a better life. He calls them “asylum-seekers,” but you set him straight. They are “illegal border-crossers.” If he wants to allow such criminals into Canada, let the feds pay.

You drove that argument home when you sent Lisa McLeod from your cabinet out to Winnipeg to slap down federal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen at last week’s ministerial meeting.

Poor Hussen was not happy. He called your attitude to refugees “irresponsible … It’s divisive, it’s fear mongering and it’s not Canadian, adding: “The track record of collaboration between Canada and Ontario is being challenged by the new (Ontario) government.”

Yes! Of course! That’s your point, isn’t it Premier Ford? The cosy days

You are doing a splendid job to prepare Ontario to confront the daunting challenges of the 1950s.

of collaboration between levels of government are over. Ontario is darned mad and isn’t going to take it any more. That’s the message you will be delivering this week in Saint Andrews, N.B., at the annual summer gathering of premiers (now tarted up as the “Council of the Federation”).

You are ready to lead us back to those heady days when provincial leaders such as Joey Smallwood in Newfoundland, “Wacky” Bennett in B.C., and Ross Thatcher in Saskatchewan, stood up for provincial rights. They relished a good fight with Ottawa. And let us not forget “Old Man Ontario,” Leslie Frost, who made such a valiant effort to seize control of income tax from Ottawa.

Premier Ford, please hurry with my Ford Nation membership card. I’m enclosing a five-cent stamp to cover postage.

As soon as it comes, we will fill the bathtub with your one-buck beer, crank up the Elvis and have ourselves a rip-roaring “Back to the ’50s” bash in your honour.

So hop in your Edsel and come on down!

Your huge fan, etc., etc.

Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. His column appears Mondays. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens@sympatico.ca