If you are part of the Doug Ford cabal, you must certainly and ardently hope the above is true. If it isn't, you may intuit that you are in big trouble with the electorate, despite the crowing of some Tory insiders that the legislature does not resume until the end of September, long after an often somnolent public has gone back to its repose.
If letters to the editor are any indication, the public mood is sour over the Greenbelt corruption that is obvious to most. Here are a few of those letters:
We must hold our premier accountable
Ford’s sweetheart deal betrayed public trust, Aug. 10
Ontario Place, the Science Centre, Greenbelt, Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve … where will all of the corruption in the Ford government end? The auditor general’s report on the Greenbelt and land swaps notes a total lack of playing by the rules that the public expects from our elected leaders. An audit demands accountability and proof of integrity. This government needs to be held accountable and the first action should be to demand the resignation of the minister and staff accountable to us.
Jane Veit, Scarborough
Now that we have the auditor general’s report, perhaps the Trudeau government will at last stand up to Premier Doug Ford. How did Ford’s plans at Ontario Place get away without an environmental assessment or an impact assessment? The feds are responsible for federal areas of jurisdiction that Ford has encroached upon. Federal ministers could intervene but … crickets. The unholy alliance of Freeland and Ford is hopefully at an end as Ford digs a grave for himself. That is unless Ford is thrown a lifeline by the Liberals who may see advantages to propping up Ford rather than defending the environment.
Bruce Van Dieten, Toronto
When former mayor Rob Ford was coach of a high school football team, he genuinely thought that commandeering a municipal bus to get his players out of the rain was a perquisite of his other job as mayor of Toronto. Like his younger brother, Premier Doug Ford has trouble with the idea that the use of democratic power should be limited to projects that benefit citizens, along with the democratic concept that it is the duty of each elected representative to honour that restriction.
Don Reynolds, Toronto
Premier Doug Ford proposes to remove about 7,400 acres from the Greenbelt zone in order to have land for building houses. At the same time, he intends to put about 9,400 acres into the Greenbelt zone. Why not leave the 7,400 acres alone and build houses on the 9,400 acres elsewhere? This looks like a winwin solution, except for the developers who benefitted from the swap. That is a risk that persons speculating take.
Jacob Psutka, Toronto
I was thinking about the AG's report and remembered an interesting statement which is repeated in two or three identical or near identical forms in the report.
ReplyDeleteTypically, a Chief of Staff works under the
authority of a minister and the Premier’s Office.
Read in a bureaucratic way that is a damning statement about the Housing Minister and the Premier. I was a bureaucrat for a few years.
That the two culprits can attempt to evade their responsibility astounds me, Anon. I suspect they will hang the Chief of Staff out for scourging, but again, how incompetent are they admitting themselves to be, if we take their statements of ignorance at face value?
DeleteHere in BC our , now defunct, Liberal party gave away BC Rail an all it's lands to the developers? real estate "industry" !
ReplyDeleteAdd to that the huge swaths of crown lands that were taken from forestry reserve and sold at blow out prices to the same real estate ? developers.
The developer/real estate mob have the monies to sway elections in order to profit themselves, often at a cost to the taxpayer.
Whilst todays development may sound good, the downstream costs often outweigh the benefits.
Developments are completed to the "minimum" standards required and often the municipality has to start upgrades not long after the 'warranty' has expired!
The "smartest guys in the room" are always counting on the rest of us to be profoundly stupid, Anon. Sadly, they are sometimes right; it is therefore incumbent on people who fancy themselves to be good citizens to arm themselves with knowledge and facts. It is one of the reasons that I subscribe to newspapers. Without the press offering a counterbalance to their rapaciousness, developers and other so-called master of the universe would hold full sway.
DeleteDougie at his best. Why lie when anyone in the GTA can practically look out a window and see it's a lie?
ReplyDeleteBTY, what is a 'golf dome' (assuming I heard him correctly).
https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/internet-baffled-by-doug-fords-jiffy-lube-comments-during-greenbelt-press-conference/article_b73a703d-b978-5893-a8bf-550dd557ee74.html
In answer to your first question, Anon, it is likely that Doug lies so regularly and vehemently because he assumes most of us are stupid. Repeat a lie often enough, and it beomes the truth. Whether that happens in this case depends upon all of us, doesn't it?
DeleteAs to your second question, a golf dome is likely one of those inflated structures that allow for driving balls in all weather.
Ah, so that's what a golf dome is!
ReplyDeleteMinor Quibble re the photo. Could we not have a picture of Doc Kelly, King of the Medicine Men , our own home-grown con artist. He grew up a few kilometres from my childhood home.
Or perhaps I should have put a picture of someone from the Wizard of Oz, Anon. Both the Great and Mighty Oz himself and the cowardly lion come to mind. Or maybe Sgt Shultz from Hogan's Heroes?
Delete