Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Apologies for appropriating the title of one of Carl Jung's works, but it just seems an appropriate label for this post.

I had a dream recently in which my daughter was just a young girl again going to elementary school. She was involved in some kind of basketball tournament, and my wife dispatched me there to find out what time it was likely to be over.

While sitting in the stands, I noticed a person behind me looking at his phone and getting quite agitated. A woman checked in on him, and she too became visibly upset. I asked what the problem was, and he said the venue was under a terrorist attack and the kids were being evacuated.

It turned out they were indeed evacuated, but there was no such attack. The aforementioned man had seen some kind of video simulating a terrorist operation and had taken it for real. I tried to reason with the other parents at the tournament, all in quite a state. I asked them if they had checked legitimate sources for verification, and if it was real, where were the police? 

They were unreceptive to what I had to say, so I angrily asked them, "Have you people no critical-thinking skills at all?"

The genesis of that dream was no mystery to me. Critical-thinking skills, or more precisely, the lack thereof, is a subject that has been weighing on me for quite some time. The fact that the June 2 Ontario election is fast-approaching has lately made that weight more acute.

With Doug Ford and his Conservatives currently leading in the polls, there is much to be concerned about. Egregiously evident are warning signs that a re-elected Tory majority will not be good for those who care more about the environmental, social and economic health of the province than they do about licence-sticker bribes and the like.

The following are two example of where we are head under Doug's 'stewardship.'

First there is the premier's insistence that the much-disputed Highway 413 go ahead. A boon to his developer friends, it bodes ecological disaster, especially vile given that viable alternatives exist, including better use of the tolled Highway 407. 

A Star editorial captures the essence of the incursion nicely:

It’s hard to believe the Ford government could find a way to make its proposal to build a 400-series highway across the northern part of the GTA, destroying farmland and parts of the Greenbelt along the way, any worse than it already is.

But it seems it’s managed to do exactly that.

Internal Ministry of Transportation documents reveal that at one of the most environmentally sensitive sections of the proposed Highway 413, the province ignored the advice of its own consultants.

It chose a route that avoids a planned subdivision development near Kleinburg. Instead, it chose a path that would cause what the consultants described as “maximum incursion” into the Greenbelt and destroy hundreds of hectares of conservation land.

By the way, this unnecessary road will cost between $6 and $10 billion.

The second example, as reported by the CBC, is the matter of adding up the cost of Ford's pre-election promises, with more likely to come in the late-April budget.  

With the start of Ontario's election campaign still two weeks away, Premier Doug Ford's government has announced more than $10 billion in spending, fee rebates and tax cuts since early March and could unveil even more in next week's provincial budget.

Ford and his ministers have rolled out the promises in a flurry of campaign-style announcements, many of them in ridings that are crucial to his Progressive Conservative Party's chances of winning a second straight majority in the June 2 election.

The promises total at least $10.9 billion, according to figures compiled by CBC News, based on information provided by the government in news releases and emails (The full list of financial commitments is in the chart at the end of this story.)

I won't include any further details here, as they are readily available by clicking on the above link. What especially bothers me here is that, to my knowledge, no one in the media is asking Ford how these promises will be paid for.

For those who believe that responsible citizenship is informed citizenship, the picture of what lies ahead is very troubling. For those who rely on social media for their information or make no effort to read at all, they are likely resting easy and having pleasant dreams.

To slightly paraphrase what I said at the beginning of this post, "Do people not have any critical-thinking skills at all?"