Ford gives Hamiltonians an object lesson

His political move against Toronto council might point to way he treats LRT

There’s a valuable lesson for Hamiltonians in Premier Doug Ford’s galloping readiness to use the notwithstanding clause to override a court decision that threatened his plan to chop the size of Toronto city council.

The obvious conclusion is Ford is a political leader who, when he has the bit between his teeth, is willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants.

For Hamilton, that means if Ford genuinely wants to let this city keep and use the $1 billion earmarked for LRT for other infrastructure projects, then, by God, that’s the way it’s going to be.

Despite reaffirmations of Ford’s campaign promise by local Conservative MPP Donna Skelly and other government officials, some skeptics with a legalistic turn of mind still believe the $1 billion is inextricably hitched to Metrolinx’s Big Move and therefore tied to regional transit planning and funding.

What a conventionally quaint way of thinking in this savage season of hurricanes, political and otherwise.

Like Donald Trump, another template-breaking self-proclaimed champion of the common people, Ford clearly isn’t worried about doing things differently or taking a sharp sword to Gordian knots, as both Toronto city council and Ontario Superior Court Justice Edward Belobaba have now discovered.

On Monday, Belobaba ruled that Ford’s plan to reduce Toronto council from 47 seats to 25, ostensibly to make it more efficient, was unconstitutional because, coming as it did in the midst of the municipal election, it infringed on the freedom of expression Charter rights of candidates and voters.

Within six hours of the release of the ruling, Ford was in front of the TV cameras proclaiming in his direct and incomplex way that he’s going to invoke the Charter’s notwithstanding clause rather than stand by and let an appointed judge trump the will of his government, democratically elected by 2.3 million people.

Whether Ford was asserting the principle of parliamentary supremacy or merely working off old grudges against left-wing councillors from his own time on Toronto council is beside the point. It’s not so much the motivation that matters as the length he’s willing to go to have his way. Plainly he’s willing to go the distance. Why let the courts or the Charter of Rights and Freedoms thwart his will when the heretofore hallowed notwithstanding clause is ready and waiting for legislatures to employ to overturn inconvenient protections and court rulings?

For a single-minded leader like Ford, the fact the clause has never before been used in Ontario — and rarely elsewhere outside of Quebec — since it was embedded in the 1982 Constitution Act probably suggests political timidity rather than judicious restraint. For Ford, the clause is just one more tool in his government’s tool box, a mechanism he says he’s quite prepared to use again. If so, hang on tight because Ontario is turning a sharp right at the corner of My Way or the Highway.

Say what you will about Ford, he’s no tail-chasing hand-wringer or adorer of the status quo. When he lowers his head, basic income pilot programs, new sex-ed courses, and cap-and-trade programs are like amateur matadors in the path of a fighting bull.

What about repercussions? Well, Ford believes people can render their verdict when they go to vote again in four years. On this particular file, he probably doesn’t have much to worry about.

Polls suggests while the majority of people in Toronto want to scrap or hold off changing the size of council until after the civic election, roughly a third of those surveyed support the move. More importantly, many people outside of Toronto are probably shrugging or quietly enjoying the city’s discomfiture, it being such a well-loved place and all.

Mind you, Hamiltonians would be shouting from the Mountain brow if Ford gave this city similar marching orders. And we may yet, depending on what happens with his $1 billion promise.