In our fractured world, it is often hard to anything remotely resembling good news. However, occasionally a story comes along that reminds us that a better existence is possible. The following is one such story.
Despite all the bruiting about $10 daycare in Canada, something that is proving difficult to achieve, I cannot imagine a story like this here.
While it can be convincingly argued that Justin Trudeau has done many good things during his tenure as prime minister, it is usually the shortcomings of leaders that are remembered. The following letter attests to that fact:
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Current polling indicates Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is nosediving the Liberal party toward a devastating defeat in the coming election, possibly to third party status. Trudeau’s long record of loose promises — his admitted duplicity on proportional representation elections in 2015, his refusal to tax the financial and market assets of the wealthy the way Canadian homes are taxed, his refusal to redirect $18 billion per year in oil and gas subsidies into clean energy, his anemic energy transition support for ordinary Canadians, his willingness to see average Canadians crushed by dizzying interest rate hikes “to fight inflation” rather than regulate the price-gouging corporate executives whose record profits are actually driving the inflation — have all earned him a united front of enemies from across the political spectrum.
It’s telling that Trudeau still refuses the one thing in his power that would prevent a Conservative majority from sweeping in this coming election: enacting Proportional Representation elections (equal representation for every vote, with no vote splitting). Trudeau would rather let Poilievre win absolute control of government with only 40 per cent of the votes, than give up Liberal/Conservative disproportionate control of the political system . It is well past due for the Liberals to call an emergency leadership review and replace Trudeau and his luggage with a progressive team player, like MP Nathaniel Erskine Smith, for 2025. The coming months will tell where the Liberals’ real priorities lie — with the corporate aristocracy, or with the rest of us.
D’Arcy McLenaghen, Toronto
Anticipatory obedience is a term I was unfamiliar with until reading an article in The Guardian.
[I]n On Tyranny, Tim Snyder’s bestselling guide to authoritarianism. Snyder defines the term as “giving over your power to the aspiring authoritarian” before the authoritarian is in position to compel that handover.
It appears that is precisely what has happened at The Washington Post. The newspaper's editorial board had drafted its endorsement of Kamala Harris for U.S. president, but then its owner, Jeff Bezos, intervened and forbade it. It appears that Bezos, who also owns Amazon and Blue Origin, wants to make sure that if Don Trump wins the race, his businesseses, which compete for government contracts, will thrive.
Within hours of making that decision,
high-ranking officials of [Blue Origin] briefly met with Trump after a campaign speech in Austin, Texas, as the Republican nominee seeks a second presidency.
Trump met with Blue Origin chief executive officer David Limp and vice-president of government relations Megan Mitchell, the Associated Press reported.
Meanwhile, CNN reported that the Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy, had also recently reached out to speak with the former president by phone.
Those reported overtures were eviscerated by Washington Post editor-at-large and longtime columnist Robert Kagan, who resigned on Friday. On Saturday, he argued that the meeting Blue Origin executives had with Trump would not have taken place if the Post had endorsed the Democratic vice-president as it planned.
The was additional fallout.
In their criticism of the Post’s decision on Friday, former and current employees cite the dangers to democracy posed by Trump, who has openly expressed his admiration for authoritarian rule amid his appeals for voters to return him to office.
The former Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who broke the Watergate story, called the decision “disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process”.
The former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron said in a post on X, “This is cowardice with democracy as its casualty”.
The cartoon team at the paper published a dark formless image protesting against the non-endorsement decision, playing on the “democracy dies in darkness” slogan that the Post adopted in 2017, five years after its purchase by Bezos.
The Post was actually the second major paper to veto a presidential endorsement.
The Post’s non-endorsement came shortly after the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, refused to allow the editorial board publish an endorsement of Harris.
Unfettered and fearless journalism has always been crucial to stable, well-functioning democracies. With the craven, self-serving sycophancy of people like Bezos and Soon-Shiong, it is clear that America's drift toward authoritarianism is no longer limited to the unhinged MAGA crowd. As a consequence, all are diminished and endangered.
UPDATE: In today's (Oct.29) Star, Andrew Phillips writes:
The point is that by ordering their papers to stop short of endorsing Trump’s opponent the owners are showing weakness in the face of a candidate who has made clear he’s prepared to violate every norm of democracy. Make no mistake: Trump will take advantage. “If Trump sees a sign of weakness,” former Post editor Martin Baron told the New Yorker over the weekend, “he’s going to pounce even harder in the future.”
It has probably not escaped your attention that language, especially language coming from outside the arena of politics, has become debased. Every question is met with an anodyne, political answer that adeptly, if not transparently, evades anything resembling a truthful response. It is one that models what our politicians are eminently skilled at. The following is one such example.
The Durham police, already being investigated for corruption, finds itself embroiled in yet another instance of the law's subversion:
Chris Kirkpatrick, deputy chief of the Durham police, was allegedly driving his unmarked vehicle through a school zone in June when he was stopped for speeding.
The next day, Kirkpatrick was stopped again, this time for allegedly travelling more than 50 km/h over the speed limit — an offence that, according to the Highway Traffic Act, should lead to a charge of stunt driving, a license suspension and the immediate impounding of the driver’s vehicle.
Both times he was let off, according to an internal complaint made by a Durham cop and shared with the Star.
What is interesting about this case is the 'followup' after the Durham police chief referred this corruption to its police services board, which then had the Peel police investigate. The problem is that after Peel filed its report with the Durham board, there was no public report, just ....... silence, followed by the usual political use of language.
The mayor of Ajax, Shaun Collier, is the chair of the civilian board, but refused to answer any questions about the report.
Collier did not respond to followup questions sent earlier this month by email, including why the board, a civilian body intended to represent the public’s interests, had not made public the findings of the Peel police investigation.
In August, the police board sent the Star a general statement, attributed to Collier, that did not address the specific allegations against Kirkpatrick, but said all allegations against police are investigated “with the firm objective of ensuring accountability.” [All emphases mine]
The statement continues: “All members of the DRPS are expected to be exemplary in their behaviour, and this is especially true of leaders of the organization. If misconduct does occur, regardless of the member’s rank, appropriate action will be taken.”
Such obfuscation has not gone unnoticed:
The police board’s refusal to make public the investigation into Kirkpatrick illustrates the “significant gaps in our police accountability framework,” said Danardo Jones, a law professor at the University of Windsor.
One of the main purposes of a civilian police board is to promote accountability and transparency within the police service, Jones said, so a police board operating with “this veil of secrecy … is obviously problematic.”
Instances of contempt for the public, and concealment of wrongdoing amongst the guardians of public safety,, are never pretty to bear witness to. Equally troubling is the use of language that does nothing to illuminate the truth but instead betrays deep disdain for the people they, in theory, serve.
Okay I confess to being a bit obsessed about certain things:
Meanwhile, Star readers weigh in:
I could feel Heather Mallick’s frustration as I read her article and I agree with everything she said. We taxpayers mustn’t overlook where Ford’s $200 generosity is coming from. It is not coming out of his personal pocket. It is coming out of our tax dollars. So, in effect, he is giving us back our own money. This is an outrageous, insulting and self-centred waste of our tax dollars. We need and deserve to have our taxes spent on necessary services that are designed to help every person in Ontario.
Patricia Steward, East York
Premier Doug Ford’s blatant bribe for votes is disgusting, shameless and a very typical of his Progressive Conservative government. Our two-person household will be signing over our two cheques to the Ontario Alliance to End Homelessness. We feel the money will be of more use to those homeless folks Ford tells to “get off your a-s-s and start working like everyone else.” One wonders if homeless folks will even get a cheque, since they don’t have an address. Well done, premier. More than $3 billion spent on bribery, when that money could and should go to health care, education and ending homelessness [emphasis mine]. Priorities, folks!
Nancy Van Kessel, Mississauga
Some voters might be insulted by Ford's low opinion of their worth; others will simply take the money and ask no questions, content with his explanation that it is to "stimulate the economy. Thie Star's Martin Regg Cohn is not among the latter group. He writes:
Ford’s PCs want an early election, no matter the cost. Never mind the unnecessary $155-million election expense — that’s the least of it.
If they settle on the $200 figure for every adult and child in Ontario, that works out to as much as $1,000 for a family of five — and perhaps $3.2 billion out of the treasury in total. That money is badly needed to shore up our schools, our hospitals and our homeless, but the premier believes he needs it more desperately to soften up voters.
That is a pretty high tab to be putting blinders on people's eyes, but blinders are what Ford needs, given his' situation'.
The headlines have faded, but few have forgotten the $8.28-billion imbroglio over protected land made available to private developers on the premier’s watch (until he reversed course under pressure). That police probe could be released sometime next year, delivering potentially bad news and a political death sentence.
Rather than wait for the police to rain on their re-election parade — scheduled for June 2026 under Ontario’s fixed election law — the plan is to move the campaign up by more than a year to early 2025.
Regg Cohn calls it for what it is:
It’s an elegant, if expensive, election plan: a kickback for voters, gifted by a government accused of kickbacks from developers (despite those opposition allegations in the legislature, no criminality has been proven and the police aren’t talking).
But lest we forget, Ford is an old hand at pandering to the public.
Ahead of the 2022 election, Ford’s Tories cut cheques to rebate motorists for licence plate fees that the government cancelled, at a cost of more than $1 billion to the treasury. During the COVID pandemic, parents received as much as $250 per child. And the previous PC government of Mike Harris issued $200 “dividend” cheques.
How to justify such shameless pre-election (early election) vote-buying?
The unspoken reason is to satisfy the premier’s lust for power. The official rationale is to support people’s purchasing power.
Regg Cohn ends his piece with this query: ... does he have voters figured out?
Only you can answer that question.
While watching some of the recovery efforts going on in both Florida and North Carolina after climate-induced hurricanes wrought havoc, I was, to put it mildly, bemused to hear one victim of the destruction opine she wasn't sure about climate change, as "not all scientists agree on it." Similarly, many vow to rebuild, despite the obvious fact that wider and wider swaths of the U.S. are quickly becoming inhabitable.
I grow weary, astounded by the fact that in the U.S., a man who has proven his manifest unfitness for public office still has a good chance of being returned to the White House. Many complain that they don't know Kamala Harris's policies and can't vote for her. Apparently Trump's many articulations of his post-election vision of mayhem and revenge satisfy many on the policy front.
I grow weary, too, of the great unwashed in Canada that have taken over public discourse. Given their thick and untutored minds, a disdain for Trudeau translates into unqualified support for the repugnant and pugnacious PP. Seemingly, no other parties exist with which to park one's vote.
I grow weary here in Ontario. Doug Ford is being quite successful in his outreach to the benighted; like Pavlovian dogs, they salivate copiously at his decision to limit cities' ability to establish new bike lanes while raising the speed limit to as high as 120 kph on some highways, the consequential increase of greenhouse gases gaining nary a notice.
In today's Star, Bruce Arthur surveys some of the landscape being driven by those least fit to lead:
Two-and-a-half years later, and elements of the [convoy] movement are being embraced by politicians more than ever before. What if the convoy is succeeding at changing our governments for the worse?
Former Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall gave convoy leaders advice, and they met with CPC leader Andrew Scheer in Regina, and various MPs cheered. Then-Conservative leader Erin O’Toole took a half-hearted approach in meeting organizers, and was criticized for it. He was ejected for many reasons, after which interim CPC leader Candace Bergen saw an opportunity, and so did Pierre Poilievre. He glad-handed with convoy folks, and is now the leader of the Conservative party, and quite likely to be our next prime minister, at some point.
Poilievre has dutifully lined up with some of the most deluded members of the public: marching on the day before Canada Day in 2022 with anti-vaccine veteran James Topp, or his private member’s bill that would have banned vaccine mandates for travellers and federal employees, marketed in anti-vaccine code words that implied more than COVID vaccines.
But it’s worsening. In Alberta, Danielle Smith’s government fired Alberta’s then chief medical officer of health Deena Hinshaw, which Smith justified by saying of public health, “they shut down the economy, they put on masks, they put on restrictions, and I thought, we’re not going to let that happen.”
The Alberta Human Rights Act was updated to include the right to refuse a vaccine or to not wear a mask, and Smith plans to do the same with the Alberta Bill of Rights. Her new deputy chief of staff, by the way, owns a restaurant that in 2022 accepted puppy pictures instead of vaccination passports for entry.
And in B.C., Conservative Leader John Rustad crossed into a different place. He has not only told an anti-vaccine group that he regretted getting vaccinated, but in a video unearthed by the indefatigable PressProgress, he was asked about a concept that the most angry and deluded anti-vaccine activists use: Nuremberg 2.0.
“Are you for or against a Nuremberg 2.0?” asked anti-vaccine activist Jedediah Ferguson, making it sound like “Newemberg.”
“A do it bigger 2.0, sorry?” asked Rustad, confused.
“Nuremberg 2.0,” repeated Ferguson, smiling.
“Nuremberg 2.0,” said Rustad, a smile spreading across his face. “Ah, yes. That’s probably something that’s outside of my scope.”
I rest my case.
UPDATE: A new pandering initiative from Doug Ford that will likely will ensure his re-election:
Premier Doug Ford is poised to send cheques to 16 million Ontarians to offset rising costs as a possible early election looms, the Star has learned.
Sources say the premier’s gambit will be announced in Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy’s fall economic statement on Oct. 30.
While the precise amount of the rebate cheques is still being finalized, it should be at least $200 for every adult and child in the province.
That means it could cost the provincial treasury about $3.2 billion when the cash flows out the door in January or February.
Of course, few will wonder about the true expense of this initiative - less money for schools, medicine, social programs, etc. But hey, at least it proves Dougie is for "the little guy', doesn't it?
To new and long-term readers, the best of the season.
H/t Greg Perry
And this warning seems appropriate for the times in which we live:
We Canadians have always seen ourselves — rightly or wrongly — as smarter, kinder, more sensible, more progressive and more forward-thinking than our American neighbours. We watch with a mix of horror and bemusement the three-ring circus American politics has become. Then along came Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and suddenly we have to ask ourselves “What happened?” His insufferable sloganeering — if I hear “axe the tax” one more time, I think I’ll scream — his aspiration to climb down to the lowest common denominator, and his mean-spirited, schoolyard name calling have somehow appealed to a shockingly large portion of our population. He has increasingly been following the Donald Trump playbook, maybe even trying to “trump” Trump with his outrageous accusations.
Suddenly, we find ourselves not so different from Americans and the social and political mess in which they find themselves. Ironically, we still don’t see ourselves as “them.” We need to open our eyes and search our consciences because at this rate, if things don’t change, it won’t be long.
Michael Bines, Toronto
If one can say anything even remotely positive about Trump and his team, it is that they are very resourceful. Resourceful at separating their true MAGA believers from their money, they have a couple of new schemes (no, not the Trump Bible or Trump coins) that are almost guaranteed to replenish Mr. Trump's coffers.
I cannot reproduce the entire lurid display in each of the cons, but underneath each I place the web addresses where you can ponder the implications at leisure. P. T. Barnum would be proud.
And, for older kids, there is this:
Get 'em when they are coming and going. A strategy fit for a dictator.
UPDATE: This seems a fitting complement to the above:
The following video is the NDP's Chris Glover talking about how the deal Doug Ford has struck with Therme Spa is a bad one for taxpayers. Just before watching it, here is a little context for the rent from Therme that Glover talks about:
The amount the provincial government expects Therme to pay it in direct rent payments — estimated to be at least $1.1 billion — over the [95-year] course of its lease will be partially dependent on the business’ success. Its lease’s terms will require Therme to pay the province minimum rent at a rate of 3.5 per cent of the land’s value. Additional “performance rent” payments from Therme are also expected by the province, several years after its facility opens.
Under the lease, Therme’s annual payments to the province will be capped at eight per cent of the land value.
In 1999, Mike Harris’ Progressive Conservative party sold Ontarians down the river by signing away Highway 407 on a 99-year lease to a private consortium. In the quarter-century since, Ontarians have looked longingly at this asset, which has expanded and runs across an increasingly busy part of the province, as it makes money for foreign shareholders, and costs the people of Ontario dearly in access to transportation options, exorbitant tolls and gridlock.
Last Thursday, Premier Doug Ford’s Conservative government, having sold off Ontario Place for a private, foreign-owned spa on prime public land, watched as the urban forest of mature trees on the site was turned into wood chips to make way for the plans. Earlier this year, Ford paid off another private consortium (The Beer Store) to get out of a contract a year before it was to expire just to get beer into corner stores. Last year, instead of using taxes paid by Ontarians to improve public health care, Ford decided to promote private health care by encouraging use of for-profit clinics in the province.
Is it just me that feels that every time we give the Conservatives the keys to our province they insist on selling it off to private interests and stick it to the taxpayers who should have access to, control over and benefit from these assets?
Brigitte Nowak, Toronto
People of a certain age will remember Jackie Gleason and one of his famous taglines: "How sweet it is." Delivered with an insouciance only Gleason was capable of, it was a line that was applicable to many of his skits. Unfortunately, applying it to a real-life situation in Ontario means it must be spoken only in a bitter and cynical way, unless you are part of the Austrian group developing the Therme Spa on Toronto's waterfront.
The Doug Ford government recently released some of the details of its 95-year-lease with the company, but first, just a couple of details about group:
Therme Canada, the latest deep-pocketed firm with designs on a chunk of Toronto’s waterfront, is a far more opaque organization, privately held, with no publicly disclosed source of financing besides the entry fees and ancillary revenues generated by its spas.
The company, however, has deep local connections, overseen by executives who have worked in the office of Premier Doug Ford as well as lobbyists such as StrategyCorp’s John Perenack and Leslie Noble, and Amir Remtulla, Ford’s former EA from his days at City Hall. Its local architect is Diamond Schmitt, whose renderings have stirred controversy since they were made public in the summer.
Mmm. friends of Doug Ford do have a history of prospering. In any event, the details of the deal that we are thus far permitted to know seem to suggest a very sweet deal at the expense of the usual suspects: taxpaying citizens:
The lease shows Ontario has promised 1,600 dedicated parking spaces for Therme, and the government says it is proposing a total of 2,500 parking spaces for Ontario Place. Some of Therme’s parking spaces are set to be shared with Live Nation during concerts.
Bear in mind that these spaces care being paid by the taxpayer, but the pain doesn't necessarily stop there:
If the province fails to meet its parking obligations before the spa resort opens, or 2030, whichever comes first, the lease compels taxpayers to give Therme $5 per spot per day for a portion of the unbuilt spots, which Lindsay said could total $2.2 million per year.
Depending upon whether those parking spaces are underground, the public could be handing over hundreds of millions of dollars for their construction. This is in addition to Infrastructure Ontario's Michael Lindsay's admission "that provincial taxpayers have so far spent “hundreds of millions” of dollars on site servicing to get all of Ontario Place ready for redevelopment."
But, not to worry, the government insists, because the economic benefits will be astronomical.
Benefits of the redevelopment plan, Infrastructure Ontario said in briefing documents, “include, at a minimum, nearly $2 billion in estimated revenue contributions from Therme Canada to the province over the duration of the lease and $700 million in upfront capital investments from Therme Canada.
However, like many of the claims by the Ford coterie, these revenue projections are based, to put it politely, on wildly enthusiastic (i.e., wholly unrealistic) expectations.
The province says it expects the revitalized Ontario Place to attract more annual visitors than the CN Tower and Empire State Building combined, a estimation that some experts are questioning.
On Thursday, the province revealed it expects 6 million visitors annually at the site, which includes the waterpark and spa being developed by Therme Canada, a concert venue, the new science centre, a new marina and public park land. The estimation was made public when the province revealed its lease with Therme.
By comparison, the CN Tower sees about 1.8 million visitors a year and the Empire State Building 2.5 million. The six million visitor figure would put Ontario Place closer to Eiffel Tower-level tourism, which sees just under seven million visitors a year.
But Wayne Smith, a hospitality expert from Toronto Metropolitan University, is rightly dubious of this number:
"But you know when you take a look at that and, we did the numbers, six million guests a year would be almost 16,500 people a day. That's a lot of people."
However, there is one bright spot in the midst of this fiscal morass. The lease with Therme prohibits one of Ford's passion projects: a waterfront casino.
When you live in Doug Ford's Ontario, you look for victories, however minuscule, wherever you can find them.
I am convinced that, as a species, we have an innate aversion to uncertainty. Rather than admit to some very real facts of life, contingency and complexity, we prefer to cling to the illusion that all problems are solvable if only we have the right people leading us. Unfortunately, the 'right people' are seldom fit for the job.
Hence the appeal of demagogues like Donald Trump and PP, both of whom make life sound so easy. "Make America Great Again" and "Axe the Tax" and "Let's Bring It Home" readily come to mind as taglines by and for the simple-minded.
Lord knows that our world is beset with chaos from which we would like to hide. Raging conflict in the Middle East, intractable war between Ukraine and Russia, civil wars in Africa are but three examples. Unfortunately, and this is a profound failure of political leadership, we are urged to see such conflicts in binary terms, the "good guys" versus "the bad guys". I can't think of a better recipe for the prolongation of such chaos.
But one need not look to the world stage to see this aversion to uncertainty. Here in Ontario, our populist premier, Doug Ford, continues to ride high in the polls. To listen to Doug, so much of the domestic chaos we bear witness to on a daily basis is eminently solvable. Are you homeless? Then get off your ass and get a job. Traffic congestion got you down? Let's build a tunnel and stop building bike lanes.
Things are simple when you are simple. Unfortunately, our collective passion for certainty only encourages the reckless rhetoric and sophomoric solutions offered by people like Ford et al. One of the latest examples of this is the Ontario government's response to a very serious problem investigated by the Toronto Star: the plight of Ontario's most vulnerable children with complex needs in care.
Ontario is failing its most vulnerable children. A broken system is leaving kids with complex mental health and developmental needs unable to get medical help and supports — and pushing families to the brink.
The series includes details about how kids are being housed in office buildings, Airbnbs, etc., because Children's Aid Societies lack the resources, both in monetary and personnel terms, to adequately safeguard them. And they are getting little help from the province.
CAS leaders say the problems extend beyond the child welfare system and they’re demanding both an immediate emergency response and commitment to long-term systemic change. It’s far past time, they say, for the provincial government to confront the crisis.
“We’re yelling at the top of our lungs that we have a five-alarm fire and it feels like the intervention (from the government) is: here are some batteries for a smoke detector,” said Derrick Drouillard, executive director of Windsor-Essex Children’s Aid Society.
If you were to read the series, you would know that this is a complex problem to which the bromide of certainty is inapplicable, but that has not stopped Mr. Ford from trying his best to reduce it to its lowest common denominator.
Ford said his government has increased funding to children’s aid societies, but alleged some are abusing taxpayer money rather than properly spending those funds on kids.
“We’re hearing nightmare stories about the abuse of taxpayers’ money — I’ve heard stories of some of these agencies working in Taj Mahals. They’re paying rent — $100,000 for rent,” Ford said when asked about the issue at an unrelated announcement Wednesday morning in East York.
Not everyone is comforted by the premier's 'analysis'.
Irwin Elman, who served as Ontario’s child and youth advocate from 2008 to 2019, said he was angered by the Premier’s comments Wednesday.
“To think that this crisis across the sectors is in any way about the mismanagement of money — and will be solved by addressing the mismanagement, if it exists — is dangerous and puts children at risk. Pure and simple,” Elman said.
Unfortunately, "pure and simple," aided and abetted by an often complicit electorate, is exactly what Ford and his fellow travellers are offering. And until more people do the hard work of thinking, analyzing and voting responsibly, nothing will change.
I do believe Brittlestar has divined the mystery of why undesirables proliferate and prosper in public office:
