For those of you who don’t live in Ontario, we have a new premiere. That would be like a state governor for my American friends and family. The new premieres name is Doug Ford and he is the brother of the former mayor of Toronto. He was elected in a fog of controversy that included charges for mismanaging funds brought against him by other family members. The Ontario voters were so focused on getting rid of the person in power that they did not seem to pay a lot of attention to who they were electing. Mr Ford has proven to be a short sighted clone of Mr Trump in his first few weeks in office.
What has he done so far?
- He put an end to Ontario’s cap and trade program, which caps greenhouse emissions while allowing major polluters to buy and trade exemptions in the form of carbon credits.
- He’s backing away from funding refugee resettlement and blaming the liberal government for what he calls a refugee mess.
- He dialed back pharmacare by restricting the benefit to those without some form of private health coverage.
- He delayed the implementation of stronger police oversight.
- He paused plans to control the ticket-scalping industry.
- He delayed new vaccine reporting requirements.
- He delayed the onset of new anti-vaping laws.
- He fired Ontario’s first-ever chief scientist.
- He fired the head of Ontario Hydro and paid millions in severances.
- He cancelled the electric car rebate and put a hold on implementing new changing stations.
- He scrapped the Ontario sex education curriculum and reinstated the outdated old one.
In each case Mr. Fords reasons for these changes are lame and lean towards Mr. Trump’s vision that the world was much better off 40 years ago so we need to take a step back.
The chaos has just begun in Ontario but this form of regression has happened over and over again in history. It’s long past time for political reform. If the parties can’t pick leaders that the people want to vote for and the parties can’t implement policies that implement what the majority want, the system has failed us