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
