Over the last week, Doug Ford has been in the news for demanding that the province pay for his new customized van. The opposition calls it a "man cave on wheels." What is truly disturbing, Martin Regg Cohn writes, is that Ford likes to customize lots of things -- like the OPP. Ford insisted that he get to pick the officers in his security detail:
“I’ve asked for my own detail of officers who I trust already,” Ford griped, according to an OPP officer who emailed the complaint to his superiors.
“It feels like I’m not being heard, like I’m getting f---ed around by the OPP and I’m getting more pissed off,” Ford was quoted as saying. “I’m going to call the commissioner and sort this out. This is the last straw.”
The target of his outburst was then-commissioner Vince Hawkes: “If I have to, I will drive up there to see him face-to-face so he can see how serious I am about this. If he can’t sort this out then maybe a new commissioner can make it happen.”
The complaints emerged in a recent court filing by Brad Blair, the deputy commissioner who took over from Hawkes temporarily last fall and applied for the permanent job, but lost out to a longtime friend of the Ford family, Ron Taverner. Like many others within the OPP and outside the force, Blair expressed incredulity that the government had hired someone who didn’t qualify for the original competition because he lacked the required managerial experience (the job specifications were downgraded days later, whereupon, mysteriously, the previously unqualified Taverner emerged as the most qualified). The integrity commissioner is now investigating.
There's a simple reason why this kind of thing can't be allowed:
Cronyism can’t contaminate the commissioner’s office at the OPP, which must maintain its independence. It may one day be called upon to investigate wrongdoing by the premier’s office (as happened under the Liberals), and the chief must speak truth to power, not be indebted to it.
The point is that Ford’s outburst last summer suggests a turning point in his thinking: “Maybe a new commissioner can make it happen.”
Customizing the law to suit one's purposes seems to be trending these days.
Image: The Globe And Mail
6 comments:
Well, a street thug like Ford thinks he hit the jackpot when he got elected premier. He figured everyone would just wilt and obey his every whim. His cabinet ministers appear to be as dishonourable as he is, judging by what some undereducated nitwit I heard was going on about regarding the centralization of the heath services executive in Ontario. Putting cronies in well-paid government positions and dissing his old enemies are just two more symptoms of his damaged mind. Honest attention to public service never entered into his calculations. I suppose he's just the 6th grade equivalent of the university-educated jokers running the federal government who should know better but obviously do not.
We have learned over the last six months or so that secretive but otherwise blatant corruption is the modus operandi of these overly self-confident feds. Ford can't be bothered to be secretive, he just publicly runs with his thoughts. The old joke about knowing a politician is lying when their lips move is in fact the naked truth. Canada is not the upright rule-of-law country we fooled ourselves into thinking it was. No wonder the Chinese bleated about our detention of the Huawei exec on US charges - they probably have a much better idea of what Canada is really like than we plebs do. Rule of law? Come again?
Then there's the truly nasty highly-placed "public" servants like Wernick who choose to lecture the plebeian masses on how to behave. I have zero respect for that man. Who in hell does he think he is?
BM
All this is now Standard Operating Procedure, BM. We're in deep trouble if we accept it as "normal."
Surrounding oneself with a cadre of acolytes and sycophants seems the order of the day. They maintain your bubble and rally to your defence when you come under scrutiny. Look at Team Trump and how they perpetuate through repetition outrageous lies that even they don't believe.
Really good leaders welcome opposing view from inside the tent, Mound. These days, you have to pass a loyalty test to stay inside the tent.
There are not too many layers,Owen, that you have to peel back to get to the essence of Fords character. He is a walking, talking street thug, who now has political power. He actually, absurdly, speaks of himself as a man of the people.
The sad part is that so many Ontarians believe he is so much more than he is, Unknown.
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