Dear Editor:
During the last provincial election only 43% of Ontarians voted. It may be that people are becoming discouraged by politics and no longer want to bother showing up at the polls. The result of this is that democratic, just and thoughtful government is slipping away from us under Doug Ford.
He is attempting dangerous changes to legislation and is setting threatening precedents.
This writer has not forgotten Ford’s passing Bill 124, which limited salary increases for nurses to one per cent over three years, even though we all knew how desperately these workers needed to be supported and upheld. That bill was deemed to be unconstitutional by the Ontario courts.
More recently, he was at it again. With Bill 28 he used the “notwithstanding” clause to limit salary increases for low paid educational workers so that they would not get a decent pay raise. He failed at this attempt because workers threatened a province-wide strike.
Bill 23 was created to allow developers (using former Greenbelt land) to be exempted from paying development fees to the municipalities where they are building. The power of self government for municipalities is already threatened by Ministerial Zoning Orders which are being used by the Ford government to prevent these municipalities from having the right to make their own decisions when it comes to future development. This action has not been stopped. Conservation authorities have also had their powers decimated.
He has tampered with the size of city councils and the powers that mayors have. He wanted to pick his friend Ron Taverner to be chief of police even though he was clearly not qualified for the job. That was stopped due to public outcry. Now he would like to have control of the selection of the next chief of the Ontario Court of Justice. It seems he would like the courts to reflect his own personal values.
So our premier would like to have complete control over workers’ wages, our conservation authorities and green spaces, mayoral powers, municipalities, the police and even judges to name a few.
This is an alarming state of affairs. It is long past time for this province to wake up and stop the seizure of rights and powers by this man.
A premier who is only “Open for Business” but closed to the people of Ontario is not working for us and he will do our province long-term damage.
Jennifer Trott,
Braeside