The Cost Of Disengagement

I have reached a point in my life where I hold out little hope for our collective future. It is one of the reasons I post less frequently these days. Writing about the word's ills often seems futile.

But that is not to say that I have lost my capacity for outrage. And outrage is what I feel today.

While today's topic pertains to what is happening in Ontario, there is an issue here that has a much wider application: the cost of political disengagement.

It seems to me that Ontario serves as an object lesson for what happens when people either completely ignore politics and don't vote, or vote on the basis of ignorance, anger or the seductive nonsense offered by a demagogue. The typical result is what we see in the Doug Ford majority government, a government purportedly "for the people" that is systematically stripping away workers' rights, French language rights and environmental protections, to name but three, while operating in a way that is costing taxpayers billions of dollars in lost cap-and trade revenue and hundreds of millions owing to its ineptitude.

The occasion of my current outrage is the impending Bill 66, “Restoring Ontario’s Competitiveness Act” an omnibus bill that will do tremendous damage on a number of fronts, damage that the people Ford is 'for' will have to contend with. Writes The Star's Edward Keenan:

The omnibus bill quietly plans to amend dozens of pieces of existing legislation affecting 12 different ministries, all to “cut red tape that’s standing in the way” of “making Ontario competitive again.”

Sounds harmless enough.

Until you read about what is actually being cut: labour regulation, child protection, clean water safeguards, even the greenbelt legislation the provincial Progressive Conservatives promised on the campaign trail they would protect “in its entirety.”

And the damage it will inflict is extensive:

Child-care protections: Bill 66 changes the number of babies — children under the age of 2 — that can be cared for by a single adult in an unlicensed home-based daycare from two to three. The existing regulation came into effect in 2015, after children died in unlicensed daycares.

Environmental and planning protections: The bill would allow municipalities to pass bylaws under the Ford government’s beloved “Open For Business” slogan (literally, they would be called “open for business planning bylaws”) that would exempt developers of commercial or industrial uses such as factories from a whole slew of regulations. Among them are those contained in the Greenbelt Act and the Places to Grow Act, the environmental protection anti-sprawl legislation that Ford famously promised not to touch [after he was caught on video promising developers that he would open it up] during the election campaign.

Also at risk under this bill is our drinking water:

... it could exempt developers from are those that protect the Great Lakes and other sources of drinking water, including the Clean Water Act, which was brought into force after the Walkerton tragedy that killed seven people and sickened thousands of others through contaminated drinking water. The bill also repeals the Toxics Reduction Act meant to reduce pollution by preventing industrial uses of certain toxic chemicals.

Labour protections: Among other changes weakening employee protections, this bill would exempt municipalities, hospitals, universities and other big public institutions from rules requiring them to use unionized contractors for infrastructure projects. If the government wants to debate the merits of collective bargaining, it can do so, but it shouldn’t sneak big changes to worker protections through on the misleading premise that it is just clearing away red tape.

I could go on, but I think you get the emerging picture, one that immorally imperils the people Ford claims he is 'for', all in the service of uncontrolled development and deregulation that will serve the interests of the people he is really for.

And I don't think you need me to spell out who that is.