How
things
changed! The Conservative government that was
re-elected 2 June 2022 looks
very different from that first elected in
2018. Premier Ford has shifted in style
since his last campaign. That 2018 election
and its aftermath involved cronyism,
cutting candidates in the Toronto Council
election as that election was getting
underway, the calls for stickers on pumps to
kill the federal tax on gasoline (a
tax subsequently deemed constitutional by the
Supreme Court), 1$ a can for beer,
the cancelling of contracts for building wind
power farms to produce
electricity, which cost public money
unnecessarily – and more! As the Globe and
Mail said in a 3 June editorial “The Doug Ford of 2018
could never have won an election in
2022. But he changed.” Ford’s
early
actions after 2018 caused his government to
drop badly in the polls by 2019.
Then the Covid pandemic hit in late February
2020 and was followed by confusion.
The failure of Ford’s government to act before
March Break 2020 was a mistake. Allowing
people to travel as usual increased the spread
of Covid and it allowed people
to bring back more cases from other countries.
Then the schools didn’t re-open
and after a confused delay schooling went
online. The communication around all of
that was poor and the impact on parents and
teachers was considerable. Students
lost much in the remainder of the school year. Then
an
endless series of terrible stories about many
retirement homes kept coming to
light. A large percentage of such homes are
‘for profit’ rather than not-for-profit
in Ontario. Staff shortages, lack of adequate
training, lack of procedures for
a pandemic and appalling treatment of old
people filled the news – on top of
the huge numbers of elderly people who died of
Covid in these homes. Attempts
to stop the spread of Covid by isolation meant
old people were denied family
visits, leading to more hardship all round.
That added to the negative media
reports. However
things
stabilized somewhat when Ford began giving
weekly briefings on the Covid
situation – largely repeating and following
the advice of the public health
officials. That made a change. He showed he
could listen-- if under pressure --
as he took centre stage with key cabinet
colleagues; he showed decisions were being
made in line with health officials and that
there was a government. But he appeared
to find ways to delay in response to calls for
action until medical and other professionals
had been given enough media time to make clear
what should be done and why. At
least he acted as if there was a government
and it was making hard decisions.
And they were hard. He closed restaurants,
small stores, sports, cinemas,
theatres, and gyms, restricted the size of all
gatherings of people, required face
masks and distancing outside the home and for
essential shopping. Case numbers
fell in late Spring and Summer 2020 but rose
again in the Fall. Ford
called family Christmas gatherings off
for Christmas 2020. Only
in
March 2021 did vaccinations start to get
underway, beginning with the oldest
people. Then the focus was on getting people
vaccinated. Ford’s Ontario, and the
City of Toronto performed well to get a very
high percentage of people
vaccinated with the two spaced shots. True,
there were delays in needed decisions
and some confusion but the government held. Ford
went
along with hospitals and some companies on the
matter of calling for people
to be vaccinated if they held positions where
they could put others at risk of
Covid. He went along with the federal
government when it mandated vaccination
and masking for train and air travel. Ford was
forthright in his support for healthcare
workers in Toronto hospitals when protests
developed by those opposed to
vaccination. Here he became visibly a
“progressive conservative”. In this area
he showed he could take advice and take some
actions for the wider public good.
Those
protesting were a wilder right
wing fraction of the Conservative party. And
as a new fall 2021variant brought
a new rise in cases he introduced a third
vaccination. With some pre-testing of
family members, some spacing and some masking
we were able to hold a family
Christmas gathering and dinner in 2021. As
Spring
2022 neared and the 2022 election loomed, the
government felt able to join
other provinces in making a formal shift
towards a post-Covid society and announced
that. The Ford government stopped case
reporting and announced a coming end to
masking requirements. Although case numbers
had been falling, public health
officials continued to encourage masking and
so did Toronto and so did its
public transit. In
late
February 2021 there had been a sickening
demonstration of Americanization
of Canadian society by a trucker convoy which
began in Alberta. The
convoy blockaded and occupied the city of
Ottawa for several weeks. The Ford government
remained inconspicuous and took
no action to condemn or remove this serious
problem for a major Ontario city. The
Federal government used the Emergencies Act to
galvanize some action to end the
Ottawa truck blockage. On the other hand, Ford
had fired several members of his
government who had publicly opposed masking or
vaccinations. Also he had publicly
called those protesting outside Ontario
Hospitals in Toronto “Yahoos”. In the
end, the Conservatives made their work during
the Covid crises part of their 2022
election campaign. The lead Conservative TV ad
in the election pictured Ford in
a mask receiving a shot, with the slogan
“Ontario we’ve come so far together.
We rolled up our sleeves for each other”.
Clearly Ford was aiming beyond the
Conservative right wing. While
the
election was a little way off, the
Conservatives began a series of major
announcements around sizeable distractions
guaranteed to attract car-loving
suburban and rural voters. Car registration
fees were retroactively cancelled so
that Ontarians, including this writer, got
cheques of around $300 each. Nobody
was lobbying for this. It was a substantial
income for a province needing
revenue for healthcare. And it will be hard
for any government to put it back. In
addition, a new freeway was announced to cut
through protected green lands. In
addition to the environmental problems, this
would open up development of more
farmland and bring more urban sprawl, all in
order to save a very modest amount
of travel time for motorists cutting corners
around Toronto’s existing
freeways. Protests against the new highway
tended not to come from people
voting Conservative. There were to be no new
toll roads. Needed provincial money
will be spent on more roads and more road
maintenance when user tolls could
finance at least the maintenance. Several
of
his parade of announcements saw Premier Ford
standing alongside Prime
Minister Trudeau at various electric car and
related construction plants in parts
of Ontario beginning late Fall 2021. This
displayed the provincial and federal
governments working together to help
businesses that promised to create jobs in
suburban areas. Those jobs are heavily
subsidized. Our taxes pay for that
employment. It is the only way car makers can
rationally make cars in Canada which
compete in profitability with those made in
Mexico under labour costs there. From
the
beginning Ford made clear he was working to
help Ontario businesses, and he
visibly has. He’s spending tax dollars on
roads and auto makers with a hint of
green cars. The arrangements to cut greenhouse
gas that were established before
his regime have gone. Windmill power contracts
were cancelled and now gas
burning plants will top up Ontario’s
electricity, leaving it to Northeastern US
states to buy low-cost Quebec hydroelectric
power which is green. Ontario could
do that. Yet – wait a minute – he’s spending
on public transportation too –
more visibility with Trudeau in announcements
about that. The
Ford
government’s weak performance in healthcare
and the many Covid deaths didn’t
really become an issue in the 2022 election
and the Globe Editorial 2 June
quoted a Brampton resident complaining that
the Liberals and NDP had done a
poor job of reminding voters of those facts.
But the need for affordable
housing and for improving healthcare were
issues at the leaders’ debates. Ford
and the others promised more money for
healthcare and needed housing as well. But
Ford also promised one or two new hospitals in
his series of public
announcements made in strategic locations
where they were needed, and that would
also help push Conservative candidates over
the top. There
were
also some overtures to workers’ rights by the
new Ford. He offered a slightly
higher (but inadequate) minimum wage and made
some small moves towards a social
safety net for “gig workers”. Ford’s
appearances and announcements – some repeats
of the budget his government tabled before the
election was called but not
passed – made him look bustling and active and
was capped by his election slogan
“Get it done”! The
NDP
opposition stayed in opposition mode. They
reminded potential voters of some
of Ford’s past positions, but it didn’t really
catch. The NDP also stood behind
important positions in the two key
jurisdictions of a Canadian province: health
care and education. Healthcare is a known
major concern of the electorate. Yes,
getting some form of rational dental care
program and pharmacare program is
long overdue. Canadian healthcare has been
called inefficient rather than
underfunded, so improvement could actually be
do-able too. Andrea Horvath, the
NDP leader, said she wanted to be Premier of
Ontario under her plausible and believable
slogan “Working for you”. The NDP
traditionally spoke for those who work and
the NDP proposals for minimum wage and gig
workers were far more solid than
Ford’s. Somehow Horvath didn’t manage to make
her healthcare program seem as widely
needed and exciting, whereas Ford managed to
be somewhat different and new with
his electric car plants and new roads. Sadly,
the NDP never managed to generate
public energy. Of course Ford’s announcements
and promises were strategic ploys
to pick up voters in areas around Toronto
where he needed to hold and grow
support. And the low voter turnout shows that
Ontarians were happy to let the
new Ford just carry on, or at least that they
didn’t see an alternative worth
coming out to vote for. The
Liberals
did not present any convincing alternative
vision. Their support typically
drew on Ontario school teachers and voters in
and around downtown Toronto – all
constituents somewhat shared with the NDP.
There are federal Liberal ridings
around Toronto, but there was little to woo
those areas. On election night I was
surprised that the Liberals did as poorly as
they did. But on reflection, that
lack of alternative vision and means to speak
so as to attract interest in
those ridings around Toronto just left the
action to Ford and his cars and
roads. Very
close
to the election Ford managed to relatively
discreetly negotiate an
agreement with the federal government to
provide daycare for modest rates, helping
women to remain active in the workforce. And
the negotiation of this agreement
had been in the works for many months.
It seemed that it might have
purposefully been delayed until it could
seem a Ford “give away” just before the
election. Perhaps the lesson is “bribery
works”. But I suspect it was also a clever
campaign that put Ford into a number
of areas that sounded Conservative but also
sounded creative – like his
electric car building. He also promised no
cuts on education and health and his
announcements distracted from his problem
areas. So, for this old election
watcher it wasn’t good - but it wasn’t all
bad. The area around Toronto responded
to Ford’s “Get it Done” routine with 7 more
seats, all taken from the NDP. However,
the NDP held onto northern Ontario and its
downtown Toronto holdings. All this
represented an amazing comeback from neverland
for the Ford government. Sadly,
things
will be different for Ford now and painful for
those of us in Ontario. Balancing
the books seems problematic to this observer
and some others. A budget was
tabled in spring 2022, but not passed before
the election. It claimed to handle
education and health care without cuts on the
horizon. Yet health care in
Ontario is day by day becoming more visibly a
mess. There is a shortage of
doctors. There are huge delays for attention
at hospital emergency wards. There
are long delays for getting diagnostic tests,
surgery and treatments. Nurses
have been leaving the system because of
exhaustion, and because they haven’t
received appropriate pay recognition under
Ford. And Covid is not over. We are
supposed to be learning to live with it. Covid
bailouts can’t go on for ever.
The teachers need a new contract and there is
a high inflation rate. Hard
decisions in a slew of key areas are Ford’s
challenge now.