He isn’t even sworn in but Ontario’s premier designate, Doug Ford, is off to a good start. Ford will officially become premier on June 29 but is already making waves.
It started last Friday with his announcement that he would pull Ontario out of Kathleen Wynne’s cap and trade system with California and Quebec. This is the program that saw hundreds of millions of dollars flow from Ontario to California. Somehow, this was supposed to help the environment.
Ford’s announcement of Ontario’s intention to withdraw annoyed all the right people. In Ottawa, Trudeau’s environment minister Catherine McKenna announced that Ontario would be faced with the federal carbon tax. California and Quebec acted in horror and immediately ordered all trading with Ontario based entities to stop.
Sending a message from the top.
Then on Tuesday Ford announced a hiring freeze, the cancelling of newspaper and magazine subscriptions paid for by government and an end to government paid meals for meetings.
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath called these moves nothing but an attempt to get headlines.
No, I’d call them setting the tone from the top down.
At their first caucus meeting, held at the Ford family compound in Toronto, Ford paid for a pizza lunch for the caucus out of his own pocket and told them in future they too would have to brown bag it like normal people do. No more catered meals for the PC MPPs.
These are the types of things that annoy the entitled class but that everyday Ontario voters appreciate. Most of us don’t get catered meals from our employers, we bring our own meals or go out and buy them.
Pay for your own fancy car.
From there Ford was on to cutting green subsidies to mostly wealthy people.
Imagine the horror of asking someone who is well off to pay for their own home renovation or electric car!
Yet that is what Ford has done much to the chagrin of the green lobby groups. The GreenOn program offered homeowners rebates if they did specific upgrades on their homes, upgrades many Canadians can’t afford. Yet they still had to pay for someone else to get their windows replaced.
Soon the subsidies for green cars will fall by the wayside. This should go for the same reason the reno program went. If you can afford to buy a Honda Clarity starting at $39,900 instead of the Civic at $16,790 or the Accord at $26,590 then you don’t need my help.
These were all programs that had come about at the behest of lobbyists, not a real need or call from citizens.
Ford’s critics are dismissive of all of these moves claiming they won’t fix Ontario’s finances. True, Ford will need to do more than this to deal with Ontario’s fiscal mess but consider this, he hasn’t even started.
If this is what Ford can accomplish before even taking office then Ontario is in good hands.
I have said before, that in this last election we held here in Ontario, if the PC Party did take take Power and to fix the mess that the liberals have flung on us, it would take 100 years of Non liberal governments to fix the mess they made of this Province.
I haven’t felt such joy since Trump was elected. Go, Doug!
He needs to cut all funding for travel to climate conferences. Flying around the world to exotic locales to discuss climate change is the ultimate hypocrisy.
Oh the left wing commie progressives will be blowing veins in their necks. LOL I love it.
BRAVO, Mr. Ford! Cut deep, cut fast, Cut where the Liberals hurt most… Then CUT deficits and then CUT TAXES!
Trouble is, it is the old cycle repeating. Liberals blow the piggy bank and Conservatives are called in to fix the problem and are thrown out for being harsh and mean by the enttled sector of the population.
Forewarned is forearmed. Yes. the Ontario Conservatives must repair the damage done by the radical left Wynne Liberals and their federal cousins. Yes, it will take time. During that time succession planning must occur because we know that Ford will be the lightning rod. Conservatives and former liberal voters have learned what lurks in the dark shadows of Liberalism and socialism. Once the new roof is on and the interior of the house is cleaned up, the Conservatives are very capable of showing their progressive side without breaking the furniture like the “animal house” liberals or socialist NDP.
GO DOUG GO….A GREAT START..Steve O
The man is the Donald Trump of Canada…… champion of the working ‘poor’ and enemy of the elite controllers………. Thank God we have him where it’s most needed, as a buffer to the lunatic running the Feds………
I’ve now read several articles by you in the past few weeks and they have all been excellent. (I’m in BC; found you through smalldeadanimals). Keep up the good work.
I hope Doug Ford doesn’t. doesn’t give in to the media hype against him, scaring him off into doing the wrong thing. The media are a bunch of hunger lions ready to eat any conservative alive with negativity since they were starved for decades from reporting the mess the liberals created.
Doug Ford has the upper hand now, over Wynne and the media and must demonstrate that he is the premiere and not the media.