We take a break from obsessing about the unfolding disaster in the Middle East to look at some stuff closer to home. The Premier of Ontario is Doug Ford, older brother to LEAFS SUCK's most famous citizen Rob the Crack Mayor Ford. Not much of a break - another way-too-long post ending in an angry rant, but at least it's about garden variety corruption instead of thousands of people dying violent deaths.
The current scandal that's plaguing the government is one that's been brewing now for over a year. The precipitating incident that set it all off was when Doug removed environmental protections for a bunch of properties in what we refer to as the Greenbelt. Doug has always been suspected of being on the take for land developers - in fact, this wasn't even the first time the whole Greenbelt thing was brought up. In the campaign for his first term, there was a leaked video of Doug addressing a group of developers telling them that he was totally going to open up the Greenbelt to development. Response was swift and decisive - this idea was so unpopular that he reversed his position. <a href="https://ontariopc.ca/ontario-pc-leader-doug-ford-promises-not-to-touch-the-greenbelt/">This is still posted on his political party's website</a>:
“The people have spoken – we won’t touch the greenbelt. Very simple. That’s it, the people have spoken. I’m going to listen to them, they don’t want me to touch the greenbelt, we won’t touch the greenbelt. Simple as that.”
Anyways, last year his government passed a law removing 7,400 acres of land from the Greenbelt. Unsurprisingly, the reaction was swift and strong. People were outraged again. But Ford, fresh from an electoral victory that saw his majority in the legislature increase - pushed forward. And this is where the democracy thing happened. Journalists at the Toronto Star and the Narwhal conducted an investigation - a very simple one, guided by one of the founding principles of investigative journalism - "follow the money". Turns out that the overwhelming majority of land being opened up belonged to a small handful of developers. All of whom were coincidentally max donors to the governing party. Well, the news stories provided an opening for the Opposition to accused the government of corruption and push for investigations by our Auditor-General and Ethics Commissioner. And the media investigating the story did not let up either. So we had a year of revelations, eventually leading to a pair of reports in August from the government excoriating the process.
Ford's government of course pretended like the reports were unimportant and continued to push forward with the scheme. But the writing was on the wall for it and a series of reversals and concessions followed with a handful of resignations and the eventual surrender of returning the removed lands to Greenbelt protection. It's a fun story with crazy details. $8.3 billion in property value, thick manilla envelopes getting handed from developers to political staff, a trip to Vegas and a meeting during a massage session, some dude named "Phoenix Kiss" - who ends up being the chief henchman to Mr. X. I encourage people to look into it themselves. It's really mind blowing how brazen a lot of this stuff was - and how utterly ridiculous too,
So what is it about this story that's bugging me? I mean aside from the fact that my stupid fucking fellow Ontarians would happily re-elect this corrupt piece of shit again in a heartbeat (despite the fact that this Greenbelt thing has now progressed to the criminal investigation stage)? It's sort of related to that faith my neighbours have in the governing party. It's this - media have been playing this policy reversal as a good thing - as proof that Doug Ford listens to the people. When quite clearly and obviously - it is the opposite that is true. Again, let me note that this is not the first time Doug has tried to open up the Greenbelt - and when caught, he said that he listened to people and then promised to leave the Greenbelt alone. He didn't.
Ford's government has backtracked on a lot of things. During the pandemic, he was going to empower police to just lock people up for shits and giggles. Then the police forces across the province simply said that this law was bullshit and they simply weren't going to enforce it. Doug reversed on that. Doug redesigned our license plates and launched new ones basically on a whim. Turns out that the plates were not legible after sundown as they reflected so much light that they simply could not be read if there were headlights on them. He reversed on that. There are plenty of other items too. The main thing seems to be that Doug is full of ideas - mostly stupid pig-ignorant moronic ideas. Ideas that everyone he talks to about them tell him he's a fucking idiot for having. Well, he now has the power to make those ideas a reality and he keeps learning that the meanies who told him he was a fucking idiot are 100% right.
So this is the thing about it all which pisses me off most. If Doug "listened" or "learned" from these fiascoes, you might expect a bit of humility when having to reverse his position - and in this case for the third time in six years on one very specific issue. But no - all of this is actually examples of how he's great and his critics, who were right, are bad people.
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