Ontario is literally coming undone.
With last week’s announced cancellation of plans to break up Peel Region, the list of Premier Doug Ford’s flip flops has begun to rival the number of guests at the developer table at a Ford family wedding.
On the Greenbelt alone, the premier has teeter-tottered four times. First he announced to a roomful of developers in 2018 that he would open up chunks of the protected space for development. However, when video of that secretive session leaked, he promised the following day to “maintain the Greenbelt in its entirety.”
Then, after receiving a second majority mandate from a clearly disinterested electorate (43% voter turnout) in 2022, he announced he would allow homes to be built on 7,400 acres of Greenbelt land.
To be fair, Ford stuck to his guns on the latter plan until well after it was denounced by Ontario’s auditor general and integrity commissioner, caused the resignation of two cabinet ministers and the OPP had referred an investigation into potential criminal implications of the move to the RCMP (which eventually launched an actual criminal investigation).
Can’t say he rolled right over on that one, I guess.
In the wake of the Greenbelt mess, the government reversed course on unilateral changes to some municipal official plans and urban and regional boundary expansions, including some affecting Wellington County municipalities. Turns out those changes, which generally came as a surprise to impacted municipalities, skipped all sorts of expected planning processes, and appeared to be entirely developer-driven, were not done “in a manner that maintains and reinforces public trust,” according to new Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Paul Calandra.
Ya think?
Other much-ballyhooed initiatives this government has been forced, by widespread public revulsion or ridicule, to undo include:
– use of the notwithstanding clause to impose a contract on education workers;
– introduction of license plates that, while a nice Tory-blue hue, were pretty much invisible after dark; and
– a plan to require high school students to earn four online credits before they graduate (later dropped to two credits with easy opt out options).
While there’s some merit in the idea that it’s better for a government to be willing to undo bad policy than to insist on persisting with it, one has to wonder if Ontarians wouldn’t prefer a government that occasionally got things right the first time?
The objection of Ontarians to Greenbelt development was entirely foreseeable and you would think people capable of gaining government office would recognize the problem with so transparently favouring donors to your own political cause.
There were numerous reports showing the Peel dissolution would negatively impact taxpayers in smaller municipalities in the union that were available long before the government introduced legislation to start that ill-fated ball rolling. In fact, if you needed a report to figure out that would be the outcome, you probably don’t belong in politics.
Winding up a press conference following the Peel backtrack, Official Opposition leader Marit Styles quipped to reporters, “See you at tomorrow’s reversal” – which would be funnier if weren’t so likely prescient.
The Ford government has been more about undoing than doing from day one, even if you ignore their many self-owns.
Among their first initiatives was the cancellation of green energy projects at considerable cost to the taxpayer, just to prove they were different from the previous Liberal government.
Today, Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator is prioritizing new renewable and sustainable sources of energy, to meet forecast demand increasing two per cent annually over the next 20 years (that’ll add up to 40 per cent Mr. Premier, in case you’re following along).
The Ford government also undid the previous administration’s cap and trade system when it took power in 2018, a move that the auditor general predicted at the time would cost the province $3 billion over four years. That move ended Ontario’s exemption from the federal government’s carbon pricing system. The only advantage of this seems to be that it has allowed Ford and his followers to rail about the “carbon tax” – which is useful for them, but for you, not so much.
More recently, they undid the fee for license plate renewals in Ontario, a pre-election vote-buying gesture Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office estimates at a cost to the provincial treasury of $1 billion annually for something that was a logical and generally well-accepted user fee.
Not exactly a practical move along the road to a balanced budget.
Thus far into its second mandate, this government has been characterized as many things: bullying, short-sighted and regressive among them.
Perhaps worst of all, it increasingly seems to have been largely a waste of time.
