‘Nature hates a vacuum’

Dear Editor:

RE: ‘Authoritarian,’ May 7.

It is really easy to criticize, it is another thing to point out possible solutions, and yet another thing altogether to try to implement the solutions.  

At last count, Ontario is the most indebted non-sovereign entity in the world. To address this issue, what Doug Ford should be doing is eliminating at least 90% of the jobs listed on the sunshine list, and forcing a minimum 30% reduction per annum in government expenditures with emphasis to greater efficiency and/or privatization.

Instead, our cash-strapped province is looking to sell off more assets to meet its ever-increasing bureaucratic obligations. Doug Ford is not leading our province, he is merely managing its decline as painlessly as possible.

To address David Courtney’s comment on homelessness, Ontario has massive lands that are poor qualifiers for farmland, yet could be developed into residential lots.  The government or some financier could prepare these lots for development. The homeless could take courses on how to build their own home; on graduation, they would be allowed to finance the purchase of one of these lots, then given staged financing to build on their lot.

At the end of the day, rather than 85,000 homeless, we might only have 20,000 who don’t want a home (simplified rationale on the 20,000) and 65,000 who are happily housed with saleable skills and equity to move their lives forward, all at relatively small cost to government.

Ironically, Courtney ends with the truest path to authoritarianism. You see, nature hates a vacuum, and by supporting “Nobody,” he is in actual fact supporting ever-increasing levels of authoritarianism.  Again I ask, how far down this rabbit hole are we willing to go?

Wayne Baker,
Wellington North