Doug Ford’s ‘Government for the People’ speaks but rarely listens.
At first, Doug Ford’s Tories proclaimed themselves Ontario’s “Government for the People.”
On second thought, never mind.
After two years in power, the premier who promised never to sever the people’s Greenbelt is laying the groundwork to carve it up — and serve it up to developers. That’s not listening to the people, nor protecting what is precious to them.
In mid-pandemic, under cover of COVID-19, the Tories are dividing and divvying up the Greenbelt by ministerial fiat. On Monday, Ford’s PCs used their majority muscle in the legislature to pass a sweeping new law that disembowels 36 local conversation authorities while emboldening countless local developers.
With his brazen attack on the governance of the Greenbelt, the premier has provoked a firestorm — not least among Progressive Conservatives for whom conservation is a core value. This is not about ideology but ecology.
An impassioned public appeal by former Toronto mayor David Crombie to his fellow Tories fell on deaf ears last month. Hence his dramatic public resignation as chair of the Greenbelt Council late on Saturday. For Crombie, who once served as a PC cabinet minister in the pro-environment government of Brian Mulroney, it was a cri de coeur. And cry of betrayal.
“This is not policy and institutional reform,” he raged. “This is high-level bombing and needs to be resisted.”
When Progressive Conservative conservationists call for resistance, you know they are calling out something insidious. If not quite a Saturday Night Massacre, it is a Saturday Night Immolation.
The flames are spreading, for Crombie’s desperation manoeuvre sparked a mutinous catharsis among conservationists. Six other board members have also quit in disgust, Tories and developers among them, all making the point that the government will drain the lifeblood out of the Greenbelt if they trample on watersheds that flow into it.
The PCs are making a habit of overreaching in governing. This week, they are also sowing division in an unrelated but equally contentious area quite apart from conservation — education. On the same day that Ford betrayed his party’s conservationist roots, he also repaid a political IOU to the fringe social conservatives who helped him win power in 2018. Resorting to unsavoury legislative tactics, the premier forced through a grab bag of changes — buried in his fall budget bill — that not only gut the Greenbelt but also undermine higher education in this province.
Remember the bizarre saga of Canada Christian College, which the PC government wanted accredited to full university status? On Monday, the Tories voted to empower its notoriously homophobic and Islamophobic president, “Dr.” Charles McVety — he who doubts evolution — to award coveted bachelor of science and bachelor of arts degrees.
Under pressure, the government announced that the controversial upgrade from college to university won’t formally take effect until an independent post-secondary quality assessment board reviews the proposal. But the Tory majority vote ignored the widespread opprobrium and criticism from thousands of people who made their views known via public committee hearings.
Not to mention the dissension within Ford’s PC caucus among MPPs who still believe in the core values of tolerance and pluralism (and environmentalism): “Caucus was not in support of this. A number of us flagged it … well before legislation was introduced,” a Progressive Conservative MPP told me, as noted in a previous column on McVety.
Why then does the so-called, self-styled “Government for the People” ignore the people? Even its own people?
Consider this heartfelt appeal for a “science-based” approach — speaking here not of postsecondary education but local conservation again — written by Jennifer Innis, chair of the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority’s board of directors:
“My history with the Conservative party is long,” she writes, citing federal party leaders of the past who inspired her — Brian Mulroney, Jean Charest — alongside former PC premier Bill Davis. “It saddens me that the party would turn away from that.”
Like his premier, Municipal Affairs Minister Steve Clark remains unperturbed and unrepentant on the erosion of conservation — notwithstanding the protests from his own political tribe: “I wanted a plan in place that would grow the Greenbelt, but there hasn’t been any progress in that regard,” he told reporters Monday.
As the premier’s veteran troubleshooter and damage control specialist, Clark managed to keep a straight face as he defended his use of Orwellian-sounding “minister’s zoning orders.” These orders, which empower him to repurpose land usage without recourse to appeal, have been used more than 30 times this year alone.
Back in early 2018, when Ford was first caught on video at a private fundraising event boasting that he’d “open a big chunk” of Greenbelt, he quickly promised he’d keep it intact. Now, he is taking another tack — attacking governance, enabling ministerial interference, and ignoring public vigilance.
The Government for the People has spoken. Too bad it’s not listening.