You're Kidding

Randy Hillier's ouster underscores the fact that Doug Ford is a phony. Hillier has always been rough around the edges. But, like him or not, he represented his party's roots. Martin Regg Cohn writes:

Who is Randy Hillier, exactly? A populist to his boots, and the grassroots.

Not just Tory blue, but blue collar. A rural riding man, plain-spoken and gruff, always dressed in suspenders.

Hillier arrived at Queen’s Park as a disrupter — no less a rabble-rouser than Ford himself. A former head of the Ontario Landowners Association, a Liberal-hating libertarian fighting for farmers’ property rights, he defied at first the legislature’s rules of decorum.

Until he didn’t. Hillier had an epiphany, embracing the legislature’s traditions and parliamentarians’ privileges (not perquisites but rights). Recruited by former PC leader John Tory, Hillier ultimately renounced the landowners and embraced party politics.

Today, a Tibetan flag hangs in his office, a testament to his fight for freedoms. He famously teamed up with ex-NDP MPP Cheri diNovo against what they deemed arbitrary legislation banning pit bulls (a misguided dissent, but Hillier’s bark was worse than his bite).

In recent years he could be outspoken, but not out of line (unless one considers it disloyal to support parliamentary democracy across party lines — as Hillier did by reaching out to New Democrats and Liberals on MPPs’ rights). He privately warned his fellow Tories they were “walking on thin ice” when courting corporate donations while contemplating legislative concessions.

Those activities put him on the wrong side of Mr. Ford:

His undoing probably came last year, when he privately approached Ford’s trusted campaign chair (now chief of staff), Dean French, with criticisms of PC tactics as NDP support rose. Tensions erupted when French was seen blasting Hillier during a campaign stop in front of other candidates, prompting another eastern Ontario MPP, Steve Clark (now in Ford’s cabinet), to break up the shouting match before the media caught wind of it.

Matters came to a head last month, when Hillier made the mistake of heckling New Democrats during an exchange on autism, muttering, “Yada, yada, yada.” While there could be little doubt he was targeting the NDP, French and Ford seized on the opening to claim he must have been mocking the parents of autistic children — an improbable insult, but easily leveraged for the premier’s purposes.

In a heartbeat, Hillier was suspended — ostensibly by caucus, but in reality by French and Ford. A perfect pretext, a flawed context — and unpardonably cynical for the premier to be profiting from the anguish of autism.

“Mr. Hillier’s comments crossed the line and that is unacceptable,” Ford mewled, with mock empathy.

That would be the same Ford who in 2014, as a Toronto councillor, publicly opposed an Etobicoke home for teens with autism that had “ruined the community,” later telling an upset father to “go to hell.” The same Ford who was seen chuckling while a New Democrat MPP asked about sexual assault (the premier later claimed he hadn’t heard the question — fair enough, except that he demanded the benefit of the doubt he refused to give Hillier).

Behold our empathy premier, skilled in sensitivity training. Behold his political hardball, where autism is a useful ally in tarring and evicting an annoying dissenter, sending an unmistakable message to all Tories.

Ford, the man of the people? You're kidding, right?

Image: Twitter