With Ford, the chaos will be plenty
Ontario premier-designate Doug Ford has many promises to keep. The first, I assume, will be rolling back the minimum wwage and the second will be buck-a-beer sales coming to corner stores near you. Ah, intoxicants.
So working people will be financially underwater again but at these prices they can soothe themselves drunk. Kathleen Wynne raised the floor price for beer in 2008 for reasons of social responsibility or inflation or higher tax revennue or all three. It’s easy enough for Ford to change that.
Beer is shorthand for the tthings that Ford Nation likes just as public libraries are shorthand for my cohort. So indulge in both, I guess.
Alcohol eases the rub of life on the nerves but it also withers health and sends harddrinking men into violent rages. I put more faith in Prime Minister Trudeau’s cannabis dispensaries to keep people happy but again, that’s my cohort.
Ford is not a patient man. He does not, as Hillary Clinton said of Donald Trump, have the ““temperament” needed for the job and he’ll have to fight his oown tendency toward knuck- led anger rather than compromise.
He has to remember that he no longer represents Ford Nation, a sovereign state somewwhat enlarged on Thursday by v voters who weren’t left-wing, wwanted an end to Wynne’s Liberals and voted for Ford because they felt they had no other option.
Ford will govern all Ontarians, including the ones who voted against him. If only he wwere more centrist to suit his new placement but face it, he is eternally himself and will get more so in the next four years.
Ford faces a grim lawsuit ffrom his late brother Rob’s f financially bereft widow Rena- ta, which will be a fascinating distraction for everyone. He may also end rent control and restore health to real estate developers who had hoped to build rental units.
Toronto’s transit hopes are dead. Forget the downtown relief line, it’s elitist.
Ford said he’d cut personal and corporate taxes, which will not be possible without huge spending cuts — remember that $6 billion in efficiencies he promised — as well as lowering ggas prices and hydro bills. This can’t be done without a hiring aand spending freeze, with layoffs.
He has confirmed that he’ll repeal the sex-ed curriculum for Ontario students. There is a small select scattering of men wwho will cheer this for their o own reasons — the classes wwere meant to give youngsters t the knowledge to protect themselves from these men — but Ford will bow to new Canadians refusing to adapt to Canadian ways and women’s rights.
On that issue, Ford has increasingly sounded less enthusiastic about wading into antiabortion territory though many extremist MPPs will urge him to. “It’s not on top of mmy priority list,” he said, given t that there’s a big gender gap in his support. Women don’t like him or trust him. Best to try to win them over.
Plans for dental care may survive since Ford attracts older voters who truly need tthis. But whack! It’s easy to cut f from the budget.
What does the Ford win mean for others? Again, Ford’s temperament will make him do unwise things that will provide the PM with all the compare-and-contrast he needs to win Ontario in 2019. Set against Ford’s inevitable cchaos, Trudeau — man of rea- son along with passion — will look good. But that could be said of anyone really.
The NDP in Alberta will also contrast with Ford’s Ontario. Left-wing Rachel Notley is working hard for Alberta while hard-right populist Ford has a good chance of floundering in a generally centrist province. His caucus will be as quarrelsome as his own family.
Ford should keep his mom, Diane, and her offspring and their offspring behind the scenes, but he won’t. It will end in a knife fight, just as it does every Christmas, I imagine.
But the Ford win will play up vvulnerabilities on the federal level. One of them goes almost unmentioned. The flow of migrants and asylum seekers across the U.S.-Canada border, originating from Haiti, Nigeria and elsewhere, is more unpopular than Ottawa realizes.
Canadians believe in organized systems. It’s not clear how many people have been sent back and to where. Ahmed Hussen, minister for immigration, refugees and citizenship, has failed to convince Canadians that there are enough border guards, court staff and shelters to deal with the influx through Quebec.
The feds are finally helping but Ford won’t help pay for extra shelters filling up in TToronto. New Canadians who struggled for years to get here legally resent the back-door newcomers. Seeing prosperous-looking people come to Canada by taxi, well, it annoys them.
Along with Ford’s resistance to cap-and-trade, broken immigration rules are a ticking bomb for Trudeau. Ontario is a wwelcoming place. Toronto certainly is. But we don’t like chaos.
With Doug Ford, there will be more than enough chaos to go around.