Dear Editor:
Sitting in the emergency room for six hours provides ample time to reflect. Six years and eight months is a long time, Doug Ford – but apparently not long enough.
Not long enough to meaningfully tackle Ontario’s housing crisis, yet long enough to grant sweetheart deals to developers, attempt to open the Greenbelt for private gain, and backtrack only when caught. Instead of making housing more affordable, your government has prioritized profits for the few, leaving younger Ontarians struggling to pay rent or afford even a modest home.
Not long enough to properly fund health care and education, yet long enough to impose wage caps on frontline workers, gut essential services, and stand by as hospitals close ERs due to staff shortages and colleges and universities slash programs. Nurses have been overworked and underpaid, teachers have fought for fair wages, and postsecondary students have faced deteriorating classrooms with fewer resources – all while your government hands out tax breaks instead of adequately investing in the health and training of those who keep Ontario running.
Not long enough to fix Ontario’s crumbling public transit and gridlocked highways, but long enough to propose a ludicrous $100-billion tunnel under the 401 while spending millions to remove bike lanes.
This while the Financial Accountability Office reported in 2023 that your government was allocating $21 billion less than required to fund healthcare adequately over the past six-year period. Furthermore, the underutilized 407 could provide real relief—if only your government had the will and wits to negotiate its effective use.
Not long enough to expand services for the most vulnerable—those struggling with poverty, abuse, mental illness, and addiction—but long enough to cut programs, demonize the homeless, and pretend these issues will resolve themselves. Your government has done little to create meaningful pathways out of hardship, instead choosing to abandon those most in need.
Not long enough to safeguard Ontario’s environment, yet long enough to undermine conservation authorities, underfund provincial parks, attempt to carve up the Greenbelt and delay sustainable energy projects.
But worse still – six years was not long enough to dampen your allegiance to Trump. In 2018, you proudly declared your “unwavering” support for him. Just weeks ago, you doubled down, saying you were happy he won.
Even after his criminal convictions and years of protectionism, nativism and sexism, you remained willfully blind to the danger he represented. Now you accuse Trump of “shifting goalposts and constant chaos, putting our economy at risk”.
How gullible – or foolishly self-serving – must Ontario’s “Captain Canada” have been not to have seen through Trump?
Mr. Ford has prematurely called a cynically self-serving election with at least a $150-millio price tag to try and grab another mandate.
Six years and eight months has been a long time, he and his government shouldn’t be trusted with more.
Jonathan Schmidt,
Elora