I doubt that Doug Ford reads much. I doubt that he's read George Orwell's novel, 1984. Maybe somebody's read it to him. He's certainly sounding like the man who coined the term doublespeak. Consider the government's spin on its cut to Toronto's public health budget. The province had previously funded 75% of the city's public health costs. But, Edward Keenan writes:
That funding is going down to a 50 per cent share by 2021. The immediate cut applying to this year’s budget is $64 million. It will be down by $102 million per year. $1 billion over 10 years. Mayor John Tory is using the same numbers as he also decries the cuts.
And they seem, on the surface, to align with the gist of what Premier Doug Ford said when he phoned in to a show on Global News Radio 640 on Tuesday and said the province was moving from funding 75 per cent of the department to 50 per cent of the department, which he dismissed as being the “folks who go around and go into restaurants and put the little stickers on saying it’s safe to eat.” The premier contrasted that with “the things that matter to people,” where he’d invest more money.
Travis Kann, the spokesman for health minister Christine Elliott, says that" these aren’t cuts at all! They’re merely “modernizing” by implementing a “shift to the cost-sharing funding model.” Kann said the province expects, given how big a priority the city says things like school nutrition programs and vaccinations and preventing epidemics of communicable diseases are, they expect these programs will not be cut at all."
Ford was in Bracebridge yesterday speaking to citizens there about the flooding they're currently experiencing. He pledged his "full support," even as he cuts flood relief funding by 50%. Ford may not know the definition of doublespeak. But he knows how to talk the talk. He's been doing it his entire life.
Image: Twitter
