Mr. Ford Went To Washington

Last week, Doug Ford went to Washington, where he proclaimed that economics is simple. Emma Teitel writes:

Last week, Ford sat down for an interview with the Canadian American Business Council in Washington (a non-profit business organization), where he regaled that organization’s CEO, Maryscott Greenwood, with tales of a booming Ontario open for business.

“Economics is very simple,” he told Greenwood. “You cut red tape, you cut regulations, you lower business taxes and taxes for the people, and new revenue will come up to the coffers, as we say. And with that you can reinvest it into other areas, into health care, into education. Our economy right now is absolutely on fire.”

The trouble is that back home things are not as good as Ford says they are:

What the Premier didn’t tell his foreign hosts is that those “other areas” are not reaping the reward of his “simple” economic proposal; they are hurting as a result of it. Teachers are protesting major cuts to education, and the provincial government and the unions are at an impasse. Kids are missing school and their parents are not putting the blame squarely on teachers, as Education Minister Stephen Lecce might have hoped. According to a new internal poll commissioned by the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, a little more than half of residents polled in PC ridings strongly disagree with the government’s championing of larger class sizes.

As for that other “other area” (health care) — it’s hard to believe Ontarians are comforted by the notion that trickle-down economics will fill the holes carved out by cuts made to their health care system, when the world is frantically trying to stall coronavirus.

And, while he was there, Ford also waded into the upcoming Amercan election:

“I loved listening to the president on the State of the Union address the other night,” he told Greenwood. “I was disappointed when I saw Nancy Pelosi get up there and start tearing the speech up. That’s uncalled for. But let’s move forward. Let’s see what happens in the (U.S.) election. The economy is booming (in the States), it’s booming in Ontario. We hope the (U.S.) election is going to turn out the right way, literally the right way.”

One can only conclude that Mr. Ford's ego is bigger than his brain.

Image: Twitter

We, The People, Are In Trouble

It's about more than the not withstanding clause. As The Ford government meets in a rare Saturday session today, Martin Regg Cohn writes that this is all about our democratic norms:

Going forward, there’s a bigger question: What has the premier done to our democratic norms?

The Constitution is merely a piece of parchment. But our democracy is an unwritten code of conduct.

To understand the risk to Ontario’s democratic institutions, mind the premier’s public musings. Never mind a columnist’s calumny or lawyers’ disputatiousness.

Pay attention to Ford. Notwithstanding what the premier did with that contentious constitutional clause, it’s the why he did it that is so unforgiveable.

Ford believes that, in a democracy, the only thing that matters is elections. And, once elected, the winners can do whatever they want:

Consider his most frequent, yet fearful, refrain: “We were elected by 2.3 million people to move forward and make changes in this province.”

Is he not now premier of all 13 million Ontarians — not merely those who cast ballots from his besotted base, or voters who held their noses? Is he merely leader of Ford Nation, or premier of our province?

Defending the notwithstanding clause — often dubbed the “nuclear option” by legal experts — Ford demonstrated his newfound command of the law: It’s part of his toolbox, and “if it wasn’t there to be used, it would not be there.”

A novel argument, unless an American president ever used that logic for his own (non-constitutional) nuclear arsenal: If it’s there, surely it’s there to be used, so why not press the nuclear button to break a deadlock? Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Whatever one thinks of Ford’s invocation of the notwithstanding clause, never before used in Ontario, it is his demonization of the judiciary that is unprecedented in this country’s recent history. That not a single member of his cabinet or caucus dissented from his rhetoric is to their enduring discredit.

When all the members of a government follow a fat headed fool over a cliff, we the people are in trouble.

Image: NPR

Our Own Fool

It didn't take long. As soon as Doug Ford got into office, he sank Ontario's Green Energy Program. And, over the weekend, Heath Minister Christine Elliott nixed the OHIP+ program, which covered prescription costs for all of Ontario's children under 24. Martin Regg Cohn writes:

In future, young people will have to turn first to their parents’ workplace plan — if they have one — that covers some or all of their expenses. Only if they have no coverage, or face additional costs, will they be able to turn to the government as a last resort, months later, for reimbursement that remains indeterminate.

On the campaign trail, Ford spoke often about his plans to cut billions in government waste because “the party with taxpayers’ dollars was over.” But he vowed to protect health-care spending, and young people had every reason to believe that a program supplying essential prescription medicines would survive Ford’s axe.

If anyone is amazed, they shouldn't be. We've seen this movie before. It's part of Ford's pitch that Ontario is "open for business." But Ford's decision simply isn't good business:

You don’t have to love pharmacare, medicare, socialized medicine, or socialism to appreciate the benefits of universal health care with comprehensive coverage. It’s not necessarily a matter of empathy or ideology, but efficiency — something Tories can surely support as much as Liberals or New Democrats.

By analogy, business think tanks have come to embrace pharmacare as a cost-effective way to benefit from a single-payer system that eliminates the waste of private insurance companies duplicating overhead and services (both administrative and diagnostic), while ramping up the scale of government purchasing power to save money on bulk buying, and also selecting the most cost-effective drugs (notably generics) to treat patients. Oh, and pharmacare doesn’t force people with strep throat to first cough up the money at a pharmacy, or check their parents’ benefits plan and wait for (possibly partial) reimbursement, and then hope the government will backstop them later.

South of the border, they have their Great Orange Fool. In Ontario, we now have our own Great Fool.

Image: Huffington Post Canada