Ford keeps on flexing his majority muscle
News flash: Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives won a thumping majority government on June 7.
So why are the Tories still such sore winners?
Someone should remind Doug Ford that he vanquished the New Democrats. And vaporized the Liberals.
Six months later, this might be a good time to ask: Why not be gracious in victory, rather than trying to settle scores real or imagined?
Why do his loyal Tories leap to their feet, applauding wildly almost every time Ford speaks in the legislature? Why does the premier hurl insults at opposition MPPs unlike any of his predecessors?
The churlishness started on election night, when Ford broke with tradition by bigfooting Kathleen Wynne — talking over her on TV before she could finish her concession speech. A minor point of protocol, perhaps, but it set the tone.
In one of his first acts as premier, he went after Wynne by accusing her of financial improprieties.
Ford created a special committee to examine how the Liberals ran the province’s finances — pursuing his predecessors with unprecedented venom.
On Monday, Wynne set foot in the lion’s den — or more precisely, the kangaroo court. For nearly three hours, she faced questions from a gaggle of Progressive Conservative MPPs about her “fair hydro plan,” which borrowed billions of dollars to deliver the rate reductions that the Tories had been clamouring for in opposition (and which they are qui- etly retaining now in government).
The committee hearings are not exactly a Stalinist show trial, but they are akin to a reality show — and very much for show. Flexing his majority muscle, Ford packed the committee with his own loyal MPPs and a couple of New Democrats, but not a single Liberal — on the flimsy pretext that they fell short of official party status in the new legislature.
Channelling their inner Perry Masons, the Tory troupe — four of them ambitious lawyers aspiring to act lawyerly — asked Wynne what she knew and when she knew it. But their aggressive antics — personified by York-Centre MPP Roman Baber, who had to be cautioned by the committee chair several times — were more farcical than ferocious, allowing the former premier to parry their questions with a practised calm.
Wynne countered with the one question her questioners couldn’t answer: Why have they blocked an NDP request to summon Cindy Veinot, the non-partisan public servant who signed off on the plan as the provincial controller responsible for the government’s accounting?
Good question. But a show trial isn’t a good show if a witness doesn’t follow their script.
And a Tory isn’t a Tory if he or she doesn’t follow the party line. That’s what Amanda Simard discovered as the Tories’ sole francophone MPP, when she objected to Ford’s downgrade of francophone rights in last month’s fall economic statement and became persona non grata (politico non grata) in the PC caucus.
Now she’s sitting as an Independent on the opposition side of the legislature. Had she joined forces immediately with the seven Liberal MPPs perched beside her, they would have met the existing threshold of eight seats to gain official party status. Instead, Ford moved the goalposts further back Monday, raising the minimum from eight to 12 seats — just in time to prevent the Liberals from gaining a toehold with Simard. For the record, both Simard and the Liberals say they haven’t discussed such a move for the moment.
But it’s instructive to see how quickly the Tories panic when they lose a single seat, how far they will go to keep the Liberals down — and how long it takes them to realize they still hold a commanding 74-seat majority (including the speaker’s riding).
Partisan ferocity pays off during elections, but political sagacity yields more enduring results post-campaign. All these months later, the Progressive Conservatives would be wise to shift from campaigning to governing.