Will there be another Walkerton?

Like Mike Harris, Ford is obsessed with the need to slash spending

“I, as premier, must ultimately accept responsibility for any shortcomings of the government of Ontario ... I would also like to say that I am truly sorry for the pain and suffering that you have experienced.”

That was Mike Harris, the Progressive Conservative premier of Ontario, in Walkerton, Ont., in 2002 apologizing, as best he could, for the E. coli outbreak two years earlier that had made half of the town’s residents ill, killing seven of them. Some of the survivors are still suffering health issues 18 years after the crisis.

Walkerton will forever taint Harris’s legacy. Those seven deaths and thousands of illnesses were the result of the premier’s political priorities. Staff was reduced, and inspections of municipal water supplies were cut back, as Harris put his agenda of tax cutting and spending reduction ahead of the protection of the public. The people of Walkerton paid the price.

Here are some questions for today. Will there be another Walkerton? How soon might it happen? Will it be tainted water, or will it be some other public health or safety crisis caused by the same approach — chop now, repent later — adopted by another right-wing Conservative premier?

History does not have to repeat itself, but it will if a new generation of political leaders turns a blind eye to the past and refuses to learn from the experiences of their predecessors.

Like Mike Harris, today’s premier, Doug Ford, is obsessed with the need to slash spending so that he can lower taxes. The financial community, however, does not seem persuaded he is on the right course. Last week, the bond rating agency, Moody’s, lowered Ontario’s credit rating, signalling its concern that tax reductions will exacerbate the province’s deficit and debt problems.

(In a separate move, Standard & Poor’s warned it may lower the credit rating of Hydro One for a second time — this time due to concern about political interference by the Ford government in Hydro One’s affairs, as was noted by regulators in Washington state when they turned down Hydro One’s bid to take over the utility Avista Corp.)

Unless I am wildly mistaken, the Ford majority government was not elected because Ontarians wanted less protection, fewer government services or even lower taxes. It was elected because many voters felt the Liberals, too long in office, had stopped listening to them, and because they thought the PCs could do a better job of delivering the essential services they needed and were paying for.

They surely didn’t vote for Ford so that he could renege on his campaign promise to “protect the Greenbelt in its entirety.” Yet, as noted in last week’s column, that’s precisely what he is doing with Bill 66, which is before the Ontario legislature: he is reneging.

He intends to open the Greenbelt — two-million acres of land, lakes and streams circling the Greater Toronto Area — to industrial and commercial development. Under the guise of reducing the red tape that the government

Ontario voters surely didn’t vote for Ford so that he could renege on his campaign promise to ‘protect the Greenbelt’ in its entirety

has convinced itself is strangling business in Ontario, it will allow municipalities to allow the construction of factories and business parks in the Greenbelt.

The people who will work in those factories and offices will need places to live and to shop, along with schools for their children and places to park their cars. Houses, condos and shopping centres would seem to be inevitable.

To facilitate this development, municipalities will be allowed to exempt developers from measures that protect wildlife and from the Clean Water Act. This act was enacted by the Liberals following the Harris era with the express purpose of preventing another Walkerton.

Of course, exempting Greenbelt municipalities from the Clean Water Act does not mean Ontario will experience another tainted-water crisis. It simply increases the possibility.

Should it happen, would Doug Ford’s ego permit him to man up enough to accept responsibility, and to make a public apology the way Mike Harris did in Walkerton, albeit two years after the fact?

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