Ford’s Ontario is all fantasy

Re All Ontarians will pay the price for Doug Ford zapping public sector wages, Martin Regg Cohn, June 6 Martin Regg Cohn is right — no fiscal crisis in Ontario. Doug Ford’s Ontario is fantasy and lies. Ford wants to destroy civil society and civilization! Regg Cohn wrote his column on June 6, when the world celebrated the defence of and sacrifices for civil society and civilization. If asked what he was fighting for of a soldier on Juno Beach, it would not have been Ford’s Ontario.

As Linda McQuaig recently wrote, Ontario’s financial problems are essentially revenue problems and not expenditure problems: it is revenue that needs to increase! There is no problem or set of problems that justify Ford’s financial violence. Inflicting new rules without consultation or, obviously, considering consequences is the atom bomb. A civil and supportive society like Ontario is complex and expensive — and well worth having.

Ford’s spending cuts have a multiplier effect. In Economics 101 (of course, Ford never got to university) I was taught that every $1 of new productivity created $4.20 — the dollar was spent and re-spent and re-spent again. Because the Depression had shrunk money supply and spending power, the federal government created Unemployment Insurance to fix that: every $1 paid created $4.20 in spending power. Ford’s spending cuts will shrink Ontario’s spending power/collective wealth by a multiplier of 4.2 — dumb!

It is absolutely necessary to understand that the issue is not only money, but civilization — drinking water, health care and all those little “no-one-left-behind” things. Ford’s regime is sheer folly.

Robert Burton, Toronto