The old Doug Ford rears his head

What is it with Doug Ford and his never-ending desire to determine Toronto’s future?

Municipal politicians and voters be damned: The Ontario premier wants things done his way, no matter the cost.

Two years ago, Ford slashed Toronto council in half in the middle of a municipal election. It was a brutal assault on local democracy that served no purpose but his own vindictive desire for a bit of partisan score-settling. And now — in the middle of a pandemic — he’s at it again. The Ford government introduced surprise legislation this week that strips away the right Toronto and other municipalities have to use ranked ballots in local elections, if they so choose.

Ford is wrong on both the substance of this change and the appalling way he’s implementing it.

Cities should be able to decide for themselves whether to stick with the familiar first-past-the-post system or move to a different voting method that holds the potential for a more engaged electorate, less divisive politics and more diverse councils.

There’s no reason to fear municipalities adopting ranked ballots. The system is used all over the world; political parties, including Ford’s own Ontario PC Party, use it to elect their leaders; and London, Ont., has already used it in a municipal election.

Voters rank candidates in order of preference — first, second, third and so on. Any candidate who gets more than 50 per cent of first-choice votes wins. If no one gets a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and his or her supporters’ second-place choices are counted. The process continues until a winner crosses the 50 per cent mark.

Every electoral system has supporters and opponents, so Ford doesn’t need to like this system — though without it he’d still be running the family label business instead of the entire province.

What should matter is that Toronto’s duly elected council voted to use it. So did London’s council and the citizens of Kingston and Cambridge, through referendums.

Ford’s government has big-footed all those democratic decisions with this unnecessary and unilateral move.

Stripping cities of their ability to determine their future without debate or consultation is bad enough, but the Ford government also saw fit to sneak this change into a pandemic response bill. That’s a gross violation of the spirit of governing in a crisis.

The government touted its Supporting Ontario’s Recovery Act as legislation that would improve liability protection for “workers, volunteers and organizations who make honest efforts to follow COVID-19 public health guidelines and laws.”

More controversially it will help to shield long-term-care homes, some of which are already facing class-action lawsuits. And, oh yeah, that pandemic recovery bill also changes the Municipal Elections Act by revoking the power of towns and cities to conduct rankedballot elections.

Unbelievably, the government has stooped to using this legislative trick at least twice this month already. The Better for People, Smarter for Business Act, a grab-bag of measures, contains a bizarre provision to turn conservative evangelical pastor — and staunch Ford supporter — Charles McVety’s college into a degree-granting university.

So, in the midst of a health and economic crisis, Ford’s government has taken the opportunity to reward a friend and knock local democracy down another peg.

Governments have given themselves emergency powers because of COVID-19 and they have been granted plenty of political leeway to govern outside the norm. And people have, for the most part, trusted them not to abuse any of that.

But Ford is abusing that trust by using the crisis to advance his party’s agenda and satiate his personal obsession with the governing of Toronto.

For much of the pandemic Ford has been playing unusually nice with Toronto Mayor John Tory. He routinely talks about the need to work together and take his cues from local officials to get Ontarians through the crisis. So much so, that, at times, it is almost possible to believe that the Ford of 2020 is indeed a different politician than he was in 2018.

But then he goes and does something like this and that illusion is wiped away.

When Ford was asked why he suddenly had to ban municipalities from using ranked ballots he said first-past-the-post works fine. “We’re just going to do the same way we’ve been doing since 1867,” he said.

Evoking the good ol’ days when women couldn’t vote, nor could Indigenous people or judges, postal workers or city folk who didn’t meet a minimum income requirement is an odd move for a politician in the 21st century. Indeed, it makes about as much sense as when Ford said slashing Toronto’s council in half would be good for the environment since less paper would be needed for fewer councillors. Ford might as well have just said: “Because I want to.” The ban on ranked ballots does nothing to make Toronto’s government better.

This is all about remaking Canada’s largest city, a fixation for the premier, into something closer to his vision of what’s best — local democracy be damned.

The Ford government saw fit to sneak this change into a pandemic response bill. That’s a gross violation of the spirit of governing in a crisis