Suppose you asked a group of teachers why they entered the profession. What types of answers are you likely to get?
Most of them will talk about their love of teaching students. Some wanted to be teachers from a young age while others decided to enter the profession later in life. Either way, teachers are united by a common desire to be a force for good in the lives of children.
What you will not hear is that their main motivation was to become foot soldiers in the broader labour movement. Standing in front of a classroom is a lot more rewarding than standing on a picket line. For teachers in government-run schools where union membership is mandatory, they have no choice but to become union members. In other words, they joined the union because they wanted to teach, not the other way around.
Someone needs to remind Ontario union leaders of this basic fact.
Because there’s a real risk of a major teacher strike in Ontario this fall. Three out of the four teacher unions covering government-run schools plan to hold strike votes. If these votes pass, teachers could soon be on the picket line while students sit at home once again.
Fortunately, one union, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF), has chosen a different path. The province’s public high school teachers recently voted in favour of a deal with the province and their union to avoid a strike and keep students in class.
Sadly, instead of following the OSSTF’s example, the other three unions issued have flatly rejected binding arbitration. Instead, they’re continuing with their strike votes. It’s unlikely, however, they’ll get a better deal by striking. If the province was willing to legislate education support workers back to work last year, it will almost certainly do the same to teachers if necessary.
But consider this. Many of the arguments against binding arbitration focus on what’s best for the broader labour movement rather than on the day-to-day realities of the classroom. Insisting that teachers must be prepared to walk off the job even when they can get a better deal through binding arbitration shows what can happen when teachers put union activism ahead of their teaching responsibilities.
Ironically, some union activists openly acknowledge that binding arbitration would likely get teachers a better financial deal, yet still insist that teachers should go on strike to show solidarity with the broader labour movement. It’s bad enough when teachers put politics ahead of their students; it’s downright foolish if they strike just to show solidarity with other unions.
Keep in mind that not all teachers across the country currently have the right to strike. In Manitoba, for example, bargaining impasses are settled through binding arbitration. This arrangement has worked well for Manitoba teachers since their average salaries are higher than those of teachers in most other provinces. In addition, Manitoba teachers receive similar benefits compared to teachers in other provinces.
I’m now in my 24th year as a Manitoba public school teacher. Not having to worry about the possibility of a strike means I can focus on my work as a teacher and not on union activism. I’ve never had to walk a picket line, nor have I faced a loss of pay from a lengthy strike. Except for the last few years of unusually high inflation, annual salary increases throughout my career have generally kept pace with the cost of living.
Ontario teachers would do well to accept the provincial government’s offer of binding arbitration. Not only will it likely get them a better deal, it will also give students and parents peace of mind knowing that schools will remain open. This option is much better than a prolonged strike. Teachers belong in the classroom, not on the picket line.
Michael Zwaagstra is a public high school teacher and a senior fellow with the Fraser Institute.
A shocking new report reveals that hundreds of underaged Canadian girls have had their breasts surgically removed as part of so-called “gender affirming care” to accommodate their preferred gender identities.
The numbers were crunched by the Canadian Institute for Health Information and first reported by the National Post.
As of 2018, healthcare statistics show that 602 patients under the age of 18 were recorded as receiving a double-mastectomy. Nearly half, (303) were kids under the age of 17 with the lowest recorded age being 14-years-old.
The actual number of minors who have undergone life-changing surgeries to accommodate their gender identities is likely larger as private clinics that cater to transgender clients were not included. Additionally, Quebec hospital data were unavailable.
A doctor familiar who chose to remain anonymous to protect their professional reputation told the National Post that it’s concerning that the full data is unavailable.
“The fact that you can’t get the numbers from private clinics…. It’s very cloak-and-dagger,” said the physician.
“They’re still billing OHIP. That’s tax dollars. That should be publicly accessible information. We need to see these numbers and ask questions.”
The involvement of public funds and medical practice should concern the general public, the doctor added.
“If this was just about the schools, and just about kids being allowed to wear what they want and say what they want and be called whatever name they want and it stopped there, who would care? But medicine got involved,” the doctor told National Post.
To perform a double mastectomy, a surgeon cuts underneath the breast and reaches under the skin to remove the breast tissue, additional work is also done on the position of the nipples.
Despite concerns about the permanent effects such surgeries could have on minors who might change their gender identity at a later time, professional organizations are maintaining that this form of “gender affirming care” is critical to prevent suicide.
“(Denying care) can have negative consequences for some youth,” a SickKids Toronto spokesperson told the outlet.
“Decisions for care should be made by youth, their families and their health-care providers, who are best-positioned to support them.”
Food Banks Canada has published its first ever national report card on poverty and it’s not looking good for all levels of government.
According to the organization’s poverty index, Canada scored a D+ overall when it comes to the elimination of poverty and food insecurity.
“All governments in Canada are proving quite frankly inadequate in their approach to poverty reduction across the board,” Food Banks Canada CEO Kristin Beardsley told CTV News.
“We need to see more action everywhere.”
To achieve its score, the organization relied on data and surveys that gauged Canadians’ experiences, poverty measurements, standard of living and levels of progress on eliminating poverty.
Overall Canada’s poor score stood out when it came to how many people said they were paying over 30% of their income on housing and Canadians expressing that they experience an inadequate standard of living.
“Housing has been among the top issues in Canada for several years. As the cost of housing skyrocketed through the pandemic, the situation went from bad to worse. Average rent prices in Canada are now over $2000 a month, representing an increase of more than 20% in the last two years,” wrote Food Banks Canada.
Out of the provinces, Quebec had the best score, coming in with a B- due to the province’s poverty reduction strategy, which was first introduced in 2002.
Quebec had the best score with regard to its poverty rate, social assistance as a percentage of the poverty line and a low food insecurity rate. However, it did score poorly in areas like percentage of income spent on housing and standard of living.
“When people living in Quebec were asked if they feel financially worse off than they did a year ago, they responded more positively than people anywhere else in the country, with 34% stating that they feel worse off,” reads the report.
Nova Scotia received the worst score in all of Canada with a grade of F due to high unemployment and a stagnant minimum wage, among other contributing factors.
“It has not only one of the highest unemployment rates in the country but also one of the highest food insecurity and poverty rates,” wrote Food Banks Canada.
“As fewer people work, more rely on social assistance programs and a fragile social safety net. In Nova Scotia, 12% of the population receives EI, which is double the national average.”
When Parliament unanimously passed its motion declaring that residential schools were genocide, it was probably inevitable that municipal and provincial elected bodies would follow.
City councillors in Brandon, Man. are currently debating the following motion:
“The City of Brandon council recognizes that what happened in Canada’s Indian Residential School system, including Brandon Indian Residential School, describes genocide. This had the effect of creating long-lasting, traumatic repercussions for the Indigenous people of southwestern Manitoba, including Brandon urban Indigenous people who call Brandon home.”
The parliamentary motion that was introduced by MP Leah Gazan followed the Kamloops announcement in May, 2021, claiming that 215 graves containing the remains of former students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS) had been found.
No evidence had yet been presented to support these claims. In fact, some evidence to the contrary has emerged.
So, why is Brandon seemingly willing to convict former Brandonites of the awful crime of genocide by passing a motion that is almost certainly beyond city council’s authority?
Quite simply, it is all being done with the best of intentions. The Brandon mayor and councillors are urged to decide that a motion declaring their ancestors guilty of genocide is necessary to achieve “reconciliation”.
Principal Thompson Ferrier taking children to school, 1904
Here is some information to consider:
Look at the above picture. It shows Principal Thompson Ferrier and another teacher bringing indigenous children to Brandon Indian Residential School (BIRS) in 1904.
BIRS was built by Methodists with the intention of serving the northern indigenous communities up and beyond Lake Winnipeg, an enormous and remote area. In the early days, canoes would have to travel up the Assiniboine River, portage to Lake Winnipeg, then proceed up the formidable lake. It would be impossible to find those remote settlements without the assistance of the indigenous parents, who had applied to have their children attend the school.
Those indigenous parents would be Methodists who wanted their children educated by Methodists. There was no compulsory school attendance in 1904. Compulsory attendance laws weren’t introduced in Manitoba for the general population until 1916.
Compulsory attendance for status Indians didn’t become law until 1920, when indigenous parents were offered a choice between sending their children to a day school, or a residential school.
In 1904, most northern indigenous children didn’t attend any school at all.
The first principal of BIRS, John Semmens, had to work hard at convincing reluctant parents to send their children. He spent much of his time in a canoe travelling to remote communities to make his “sales pitch.” He wasn’t very successful at first, and the first year BIRS operated there were only 38 students. However, more parents became convinced that residential schooling was the only way that their children would learn to speak, read, and write English, and learn the other skills that would give them a chance to succeed in the modernizing world. Semmens, by the way, had mastered the Cree language, and published books in Cree.
It should be noted at this point that only a small fraction of indigenous children attended residential schools during the 100 plus years of their operation. In peak years of enrolment, approximately one-third of status Indians (i.e. approximately one-sixth of the total indigenous population, which includes Métis and non-status).
Simply put, residential schools were never intended to educate more than an indigenous elite. They were very expensive for a young agricultural economy vastly smaller than today, and were intended mainly to produce the educated indigenous leaders and bureaucrats the country needed.
For their part, the churches operating the schools wanted indigenous priests, nuns, and ministers. To a large extent, that goal was attained. Most of the indigenous leaders of the last several generations were educated at residential schools. Many of the indigenous students educated at residential schools went on to work at the schools in various capacities.
But, back to the children in that canoe. Their parents obviously wanted them to attend BIRS. No law required them to send their children to BIRS, or any other school. As Methodists themselves, they wanted their children to receive a Methodist education. They could withdraw their children from the school at any time. Indigenous parents were every bit as involved in the raising and education of their children as any other.
So, if it is true that Principals Ferrier and Semmens were guilty of some kind of genocide in picking up these children and teaching them English and other subjects, then so were the parents.
For that matter, so were the many indigenous leaders, such as Chief Joseph Brant of Brantford, Ont., and Chief Louis Clexlixqen, of Kamloops, B.C. who had advocated for the building of the residential schools. So were the Alberta Catholic chiefs, who in 1957 demanded that more residential schools be built, or the indigenous leaders who opposed the closing of the Marieval and Blue Quills residential schools.
So were the many indigenous priests, nuns, ministers, teachers, dormitory workers, maintenance workers and others who worked at residential schools for those 100 plus years. And so were the Sioux Valley parents who made the decision to send their children to BIRS after 1961 when it became a hostel, to have their children educated at Brandon public schools. And so was every resident of Brandon who funded those schools.
Does any of this make sense?
The 1904 snapshot of the people in the canoe obviously tells only a small part of a very complicated residential school story. The 1920 compulsory attendance laws meant, for example, that status Indian parents with access to a day school had to choose between sending their children to a day school or a residential school. Slightly more parents chose day schools (150,000 attended residential schools, 200,000 attended day schools).
But the real tragedy was that so many indigenous children attended either no school at all or received a very rudimentary and inadequate education at a day school.
That tragedy of poor educational achievement still haunts the indigenous community today. It is said, for instance, that even those students who graduate from grade 12 from a First Nations school only have the equivalent of a grade 8 or 9 education at a good city school.
And that is why residential schools were thought necessary in the first place. The day schools were not working. Very obviously, huge mistakes were made. Perhaps the biggest single mistake was the federal government decision to use residential schools as child welfare placements for children apprehended from inadequate homes.
Brandon’s leaders want to demonstrate solidarity with both the urban the Indigenous community and the surrounding First Nations. This is commendable and necessary. There are probably many worthy projects Brandon could choose to demonstrate this good faith.
There is also no question that Canada’s Indigenous people have been badly treated for generations, and that many abuses occurred at residential schools. There were undoubtedly some bad people who worked there over the years. However, convicting in absentia the overwhelming majority of good people who worked at the schools – and by necessary implication all of our ancestors – who will have no opportunity to defend themselves against the terrible charge is simply wrong.
Internationally respected human rights lawyer, Irwin Cotler, famously said: “If everything is genocide, then nothing is genocide.”
The people in the canoe, setting out on an admittedly flawed attempt at education, is not.
Waterloo Region councillors voted unanimously to approve an amended bylaw that bans any communication that makes people “feel harassed” on regional properties, after hearing from nearly 20 delegations at a tense meeting Wednesday night.
The bylaw, which purports to protect people from harassment based on protected grounds such as race, religion, gender identity and sexual orientation, was opposed by some residents who claimed it would violate their freedom of speech.
One of the key concerns was that the way the bylaw was written was open to subjective interpretation as to what constituted “being harassed.”
As originally written, the bylaw amendment added “communicating, causing or permitting communication, with any person in a way that causes the person, reasonably in all the circumstances, to feel harassed” to a list of “prohibited activites.”
It defined being “harassed” as “feeling tormented, troubled, worried, plagued or badgered.” Upon the final vote, the bylaw was amended to remove the above definition of harassment and a provision was added to insist that the amendment would not “prevent or limit a lawful protest.”
Muslim woman and One Million March for Children advocate Marium Ali spoke as a delegate and denounced the need for a bylaw to “protect people’s feelings.”
“I wonder why we need this amendment and what could be the unintended consequences of prioritizing hurt feelings over the charter rights for all of us to speak,” said Ali.
The meeting was filled with high emotions and occasional disruptions, as some delegates who oppose identity politics in schools confronted others who support inclusive education policies.
The councillors considered the delegations for nearly four hours before passing an amended version of the bylaw.
A sentence affirming a commitment to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was also added to the final bylaw.
“How can we have any confidence that such a bylaw will be enforced uniformly and without inequitable prejudice when a violation is inherently a matter of personal opinion on the part of the officer?” said transgender delegate Julia Malott.
“Placing restrictive covenants on the speech of others, even when done with the best of intentions, causes resentment and animosity toward marginalized identities to grow. Those individuals won’t blame you. They will blame me.”
A Leger poll has revealed that almost half of Canadians aren’t planning on doing anything to recognize Truth and Reconciliation Day, which takes place on Saturday Sept. 30.
This is the third year that the national holiday will be recognized since it was first announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2020.
The polling found that 48% of respondents said that they wouldn’t be doing anything to recognize the holiday.
A minority of respondents, only 23%, said they would wear an orange shirt in honour of First Nations communities and 15% said they planned to “actively listen to Indigenous people.”
Respondents who said they planned to have a conversation about Indigenous issues with their family was 12%, additionally 10% of parents said they planned to speak with their children about them.
Despite this, 63% of respondents said that they feel more aware now of Indigenous issues than they did five years ago. The same amount responded that they felt “moderate” progress had been made, regarding the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
“They’re being more informed and sort of becoming more aware of some of the issues around truth and reconciliation,” Leger’s executive vice president Andrew Enns told the National Post.
Provincially, 30% of Manitobans and Saskatchewans planned to recognize the day by wearing an orange shirt, with British Columbia just behind at 29%.
Ontarians and those in Atlantic Canada came in at 27%, similarly, Albertans polled at 25%.
Respondents in Quebec were least likely to show support, with only 10% saying they planned to wear orange on Saturday.
Respondents appeared divided on the issue of Truth and Reconciliation at large, 43% of Canadians say they are frustrated by the lack of progress on this front, while 57% believe there are more pressing issues to deal with, like drug addiction and housing.
“If that number keeps going up, that’s a bit of a concern for those who are really championing truth and reconciliation because maybe, you know, their specific arguments are starting to lose the traction that they maybe had earlier,” said Enns.
Enns also believes that there may be a disconnect between the opposing views on the matter, saying, “I think they want to see progress on reconciliation, they want to see, like, some real positive change so we can move on to some of these other big challenges.”
Of those aged 18 to 34, 54% said they felt that results on government promises regarding reconciliation have been relatively stagnant and 38% of respondents aged 35 to 54 agreed with that sentiment.
Less respondents over the age of 55 agreed, with only 39% saying that reconciliation is moving at pace that is disappointing.
The belief that Canadians are facing much bigger issues than reconciliation is mostly commonly held in the prairies, with 70% of respondents in Saskatchewan and Manitoba in agreement. Alberta is not far behind with 68% saying that is the case.
B.C. and Quebec matched at 56% with Atlantic Canada and Ontario coming in at 55% and 54% respectively.
There was a slight difference regarding the age of respondents who felt this way, with 54% being aged 18 to 34 and 57% being aged 35 to 54.
The cohort over the age of 55 felt the most strongly, at 60%.
The survey was conducted online and therefore no margin of error can be applied. A total of 1,652 Canadians responded.
Last year, the Liberal government billed $275,000 for a three-day cabinet retreat on inflation, with tens of thousands being spent on catering. Canadian Taxpayers Federation Alberta director Kris Sims joined True North’s Andrew Lawton to discuss the concerning allocation of taxpayers’ money, and the need for transparency in government spending.
With the Manitoba provincial election only days away and Premier Heather Stefanson’s Progressive Conservative party polling well behind the main opposition NDP, the stink of garbage dump politics has been in the air.
In a full-page advertisement in Saturday’s Winnipeg Free Press, the PCs highlighted Stefanson’s lack of support for the search of the Prairie Green landfill for the remains of two murdered indigenous women, 39-year-old Morgan Harris and 26-year Marcedes Myran.
“Stand firm,” reads the ad, next to a photo of Stefanson bearing the caption, “For health and safety reasons, the answer on the landfill dig just has to be no.”
Stefanson’s political enemies quickly reacted.
Chief Kyra Wilson of Long Plain Indian Reserve, the home community of both Harris and Myran,described the aggressive PC strategy as extremely hurtful to the families dealing with the loss of their loved ones.
“The fact that Heather Stefanson and the PCs are using a family’s pain to motivate their campaign messaging, I think that is disgusting. I think that it’s sick,” she said in an interview.
Cambria Harris, the daughter of Morgan Harris, accused Stefanson in a Facebook post of launching “a smear campaign” against her family’s desire for the landfill search.
Nahanni Fontaine, an NDP incumbent candidate, said, “It’s one of many dog whistles that we’re seeing in this election.”
In all fairness to Stefanson, more than dog whistle innuendo has marked her unwavering decision not to support a landfill search.
The politicization of this issue began with a December 6, 2022 remark from the same Cambria Harris – “Is human life not feasible?” – in an Ottawa news conference in response to the decision by the Winnipeg police that it was not feasible to excavate a rural garbage dump to search for the remains of her mother.
That decision followed the latest murder charges against Jeremy Skibicki who was first arrested on May 18, 2022 and charged with the first-degree murder of a different indigenous woman.
Winnipeg Police Service chief Danny Smyth said it would be nearly impossible to find the remains of these women given the passage of time, safety concerns, and the overwhelming amount of material recently deposited at the site, including 1,500 tonnes of animal remains. The garbage was later compacted with 9,000 tonnes of wet, heavy construction clay.
The search could also be dangerous, due to factors like potentially poisonous gases released at the landfill by decomposing waste and asbestos.
None of this prevented the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs (AMC) and other indigenous organizations from asking the federal government for money to conduct its own feasibility study.
On February 8, 2023, Marc Miller, the then minister of Crown-Indigenous relations, allocated $500,000 to support an effort totally controlled by the AMC. As expected, the AMC, which has supported a landfill search from the get go, appointed a Landfill Search Feasibility Study Committee whose nine-member Landfill Search Feasibility Study Oversight Committee was composed solely of indigenous politicians, representatives of the two affected families, Indigenous activists, and elders. Hardly a disinterested body of people.
The objectivity of the study’s technical subcommittee can also be questioned. Though it employed two forensic experts, less than two pages of the report reviewed previous forensic searches of landfills.
The important and well known 2019 Paulsen and Moran study was given short shrift and saw its warning “A search should not be initiated if more than 60 days had passed between the body entering the landfill and the search being initiated,” arbitrarily softened to read “Paulsen and Moran (2019) caution initiating a search when more than 60 days has passed between the body entering the landfill and the search being initiated.”
If a search “should not be initiated” after 60 days, how could an 11-fold post-600-day “caution-initiating” search ever be remotely practical?
In a July 6 statement Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson, citing the feasibility study, expressed concern that a search with such low prospects of success would jeopardize the safety of the searchers while possibly adversely affecting the court case against Skibicki.
A week later, Marc Miller, then Minister of Crown-Indigenous relations, said the Manitoba government’s decision not to support a search was “heartless” and callous.
Still, “Heartless Heather” signs have been on full display ever since along with spurious charges of anti-indigenous racism.
That Heather Stefanson has now started fighting back hard on this issue should come as no surprise even though it is a very risky strategy: home to over 100,000 Indigenous people, the largest number of any Canadian city, and with the second largest proportion of Indigenous Canadians at 12%, the city of Winnipeg is the main battleground in this highly polarized election.
Though few public issues smell worse than an election campaign, whatever this one’s outcome, the demand to undertake a search, notwithstanding feasibility and other key constraints, will not easily or peacefully blow away.
Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report and a retired professor of anthropology, the University of Manitoba.
The Trudeau government may slash $1 billion from Canada’s annual military budget as part of its spending reduction plan, making its “enduring commitment” to meeting the country’s NATO targets impossible.
On Thursday, Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre and deputy defence minister Bill Matthews testified at the House of Commons defence committee to warn against the repercussions of such cuts to their department.
“There’s no way that you can take almost a billion dollars out of the defence budget and not have an impact,” said Eyre on Thursday. “This is something that we’re wrestling with now.”
Eyre and Matthews warned DND staff in an internal statement that the department would be expected to participate in the government’s spending reduction plan. The military’s budget for 2023-24 is projected to be $26.5 billion.
The Trudeau government recently reiterated its pledge to meet its NATO commitment, which is to spend two per cent the country’s GDP on defence. To meet that, the government, would have to substantially increase its funding to the DND, not reduce it.
Last year, Canada only spent around 1.3% of its GDP on the military, according to NATO’s latest annual report.
The underachievement was picked up by the press at the NATO alliance summit in Vilnius, Lithuania and put increased pressure on the government to adhere to its financial commitment from other NATO members.
Canada is not the only country to fail to meet its NATO spending target, Germany also backed out of its 2% GDP contribution recently, according to CBC News.
While speaking with the defence committee, Matthews said that he estimated a spending reduction of “nearly, I think … $900 million and change, [which will] ramp up over four years.”
Matthews believes that the spending cuts can be managed so that “they have the least amount of impact possible,” however he said that “there will be impact.”
Conservative defence critic James Bezan remains skeptical that these cuts can be made without diminishing confidence in the DND’s readiness.
“What’s going to give here on a billion dollars this year?” asked Bezan. “And how are we going to deal with the threat environment that we’re in if we’re going to continue to cut rather than invest in our Canadian Armed Forces?”
Defence Minister Bill Blair also testified at the committee Thursday, saying, “The fiscal environment in Canada right now requires that when we are spending Canadian taxpayers dollars, that we do it carefully and thoughtfully. I’ve always looked upon the expenditure of tax dollars as an investment in creating public value for Canadians.”
In August, Treasury Board President Anita Anand, who previously served as defence minister, said that at least $15.4 billion in government spending needed to be reduced, telling her other federal cabinet ministers that they had until Oct. 2 to come up with areas that would be best suited for the cuts.
Blair claimed that savings could be made by postponing the upcoming equipment spending planned by the DND.
“We do know that we have to look very carefully at the expenditures,” Balir told the defence committee. “It may actually require some of the investments that we know we have to make, [that] we may have to make over a longer period of time in response to the current fiscal situation.”
Conservative MP James Bezan raises concerns over the government’s decision to cut an additional $1 billion from the Canadian Armed Forces budget. pic.twitter.com/HNP7eSX0a2
Readers who aren’t fixated on Ontario politics (bless your hearts) may only be passingly familiar with the recent debacle at Queen’s Park over “The Greenbelt.”
This is a broad swath of undeveloped land surrounding the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area. The Greenbelt was created – or rather, designated – by the former Liberal government in 2005 under Dalton McGuinty. McGuinty was always keen to brandish his wonkish environmentalist credentials – so much so that, to his government’s credit, Ontario’s coal-fired power plants were gradually shut down, resulting in the virtual elimination of “smog days” which constituted a genuine threat to public health, especially in urban centres like Toronto.
On the downside, the McGuinty government simultaneously embarked on a program of immensely costly subsidies for wind and solar to compensate for taking coal “offline,” which to this day don’t deliver (ask Germany), resulting in a crash scheme to build gas-fired plants, two of which led to a NIMBY-political firestorm which ultimately triggered his resignation. But that’s a story for another day.
Meanwhile, back on the Greenbelt: Doug Ford campaigned and won election in 2018 in part on a pledge not to develop the region for housing or commercial use. This was prompted by long-running suspicions that he was too cozy with developers, many of whom, not surprisingly, are donors to the premier’s Progressive Conservative party.
Then, lo and behold, last fall, his Housing Minister Steve Clark announced a plan to hive off 7,400 acres out of the Greenbelt total of two million for housing development – this has been estimated at 0.3 percent – while compensating with 9,400 acres elsewhere.
A perfect storm ensued, fueled by (in no particular order): the aforementioned concerns about Ford’s connections to big-league developers; heightened environmental awareness generally, spurred on by the usual placard-waving suspects – “Hands off our Greenbelt!”; a hostile news media; investigations by the provincial Auditor General and Integrity Commissioner; and subsequent disclosures that the housing minister’s chief of staff was playing freelance footsie with developers over which parcels of the Greenbelt to slice off, with the prospect of huge profits and few or no environmental or financial impact analyses.
The fallout: Two ministerial resignations and the departure of a senior Premier’s Office advisor and ministerial aide. Oh, and this: a public statement from the premier that yes, the whole thing was a mistake, that no, it’s now hands off the Greenbelt entirely, and that he was “very, very, sorry” for the whole debacle.
There then followed the usual gerbil-wheel dynamic of most reporters: Doug Ford is castigated for plowing ahead on his plan, only to be ridiculed as a “flip-flopper” when he changes course.
When he was first elected, Doug Ford was called “a populist” – usually in the most pejorative sense – and in some cases he earned it. Remember “Buck a Beer”? But in the years since, he and his government seem to have evolved into a centrist operation which in some ways is indistinguishable from its Liberal predecessors. Especially when it comes to spending.
All the same, it means that governments like Ford’s eventually settle into “muddling-through” mode. And that can bring its own improvisational hazards. As a case in point, at the onset of the Great Depression, FDR instructed his cabinet and staff to “Try something! And if it doesn’t work, try something else!”
None of this is to say that I’m likening Doug Ford to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Or that the Greenbelt fiasco doesn’t smell fishy. We’ll all know soon enough, owing to ongoing or possible investigations.
The thing to bear in mind, though, is that gambits like these are also driven by the stark reality that absurd immigrant quotas announced by the Trudeau government will put immense pressure on Ontario’s housing supply (a plurality settle in the GTA, after all) at a time when we obviously can’t house our own. Never mind the intolerable pressure those newcomer flows will put on health care and other public services.
All, apparently, the result of the feds’ peculiar logic on this file, which essentially says: “We need more immigrants to build housing for more immigrants.”
So, as always, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. What a business.
ACTRA winner Peter Varley is a veteran communicator, having served three Premiers, among others.
