Ford sticking it to Ontario motorists
Of all the buffoonery wrought by Doug Ford since winning power last year, one blunder sticks out for sheer boneheaded obstinacy.
This month, the premier is forcing gas stations to affix a sticker onto all 25,000 fuel pumps in the province as part of his puerile propaganda war against a federal carbon levy. Never mind that this compelled speech offends free speech, or that it demonstrably distorts the truth and misstates reality.
Our Progressive Conservative premier — whose party has always stressed individual rights and freedoms — says it must be said. On pain of a $10,000 penalty, per day, for failing to do as told.
It conjures up images of the neighbourhood bully grabbing you by the scruff of the neck and forcing you to say, “Doug’s your uncle.”
The premier has long made a meal of the federal carbon tax, opportunistically decrying it at every opportunity. He ran against it for the Progressive Conservative leadership, he railed against it in the last provincial election, and he is rallying people against it again ahead of October’s federal election.
His partner in crime — or more precisely, criminalizing those who disobey — is the ever-obedient energy minister, Greg Rickford, a loyal lap dog still getting his licks in against Ottawa: “We’re going to stick it to the Liberals and remind the people of Ontario how much this job-killing regressive carbon tax costs,” Rickford announced.
It is not uncommon for the party in power to erect billboards that boast of building public works with public funds. Over the years, governments have plastered stickers on TTC subways and buses announcing their generosity in subsidizing transit.
But it is a flagrant abuse of power for a provincial government to commandeer public funds to command private enterprise to participate in a politically inspired attack against an elected national government. Never before has a premier drafted gas station owners as foot soldiers in a grudge match against Ottawa.
Saskatchewan and Alberta, Ford’s allies in a failing legal battle against the carbon levy, announced this week they have ruled out similar sticker tactics. Undeterred, Ontario is now mailing out 25,000 of them to be pasted in place in time for the federal election campaign that kicks off next month.
“The federal carbon tax will cost you,” the blue stickers falsely insist.
In fact, Ford’s Tories are taking motorists for a ride.
To be clear, the highest courts in Ontario and Saskatchewan have rejected Ford’s claims, ruling that Ottawa has the constitutional authority to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, and that carbon levy is not, in fact, a tax at the pump: It does not remain in federal coffers because it is being fully rebated to motorists — $307 this year for the average family, rising to $718 by 2022, as the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer has attested.
Yes, people who drive far more than average will end up out of pocket because the carbon levy of 4.4 cents a litre serves as a deterrent (or, as true old-fashioned conservatives used to say, a “price signal”). Conversely, motorists who drive less would come out ahead, thanks to the rebate.
Ford’s stickers conveniently omit those details. As for the phoney claims by Ford’s Tories that it is a “job-killing” tax, Ontario’s total employment increased by as much as 68,000 jobs in the months after the carbon levy came into force on April 1.
That’s not the only thing the stickers get wrong. After all his rhetoric about getting government out of the way, Ford is gumming things up with his stickers. The war on red tape has become a battle over blue stickers as he forces the private sector to do his bidding in badgering Ottawa.
To its credit, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce publicly condemned the Ford government’s actions last spring as “an example of unnecessary red tape,” singling out the “punitive and outsized fines for non-compliance.” Curiously, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, always leaping lustily into any fray, tells me it has issued no public statements beyond a few tweets on its Twitter feed, preferring to raise its concerns privately with the government (lest it offend Ford?).
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has warned the government of legal consequences for unreasonably violating the Charter of Rights. Given that Ford hasn’t hesitated in the past to threaten use of the Charter’s “notwithstanding clause” to override constitutional freedoms to get his way, would he do so again for the sake of a sticker?
Some governments are known for drafting laws that stick. Some governments are notorious for crafting laws that stick it to others.
When you try to force a message down people’s throats, they might just respond with boos.