Well, Well, Well

For someone who is 'for the people," Doug Ford has a strange way of showing his fealty to them. Buried in last week's budget bill is a nugget that will further disenfranchise a large number of people.

Premier Doug Ford's Progressive Conservatives are moving to make it harder to sue the Ontario government.

The PCs plan to repeal and replace the long-standing Ontario Proceedings Against the Crown Act — legislation that, among other things, outlines government liability in cases of misfeasance and negligence.

The new law would increase the legal threshold necessary to proceed with civil litigation, including class action lawsuits, against the government. Further, it would considerably limit the instances in which the government could be on the hook for financial compensation to plaintiffs.

A spokesperson for Attorney General and chief Ford cheerleader Caroline Mulroney says there is nothing to worry about, asserting

the legislation will update "outdated procedures and codifies the common law to clarify and simplify the process for lawsuits brought by or against the government."

Others are not so sanguine about the legislation's implications:

"What the government is trying to do is place itself beyond the reach of the courts and make it difficult, and in many cases impossible, to sue the government — even when it acts in bad faith or breaches the duties of office," said Amir Attaran, a law professor at the University of Ottawa.

Perhaps the most significant element of the new legislation, according to Toronto human rights and refugee lawyer Kevin Wiener, is that it eliminates any potential financial liability in most cases where someone is harmed by government policy or regulatory decisions made in "good faith."

"What it means is that the people who exercise power over you can exercise that power negligently and cause you damage and no one will have to pay," said Wiener.

Similarly, the province will not be liable for instances in which a person says there were harmed by the government exercising its authority.

Making this legislation even more dastardly is the fact that it will be applied retroactively, meaning that existing cases, such as the $200-million class-action lawsuit against the government launched by Lindsay Ontario residents over the early cancellation of the basic income project (one that Ford vowed to protect before gaining office) could very well be derailed.

"This a way to wipe the decks clean. And even if the government did something wrong, even if people have sued it already, they're going to shut those lawsuits down," Attaran said.

It is said that we get the government we deserve. Try as I may, I cannot discern the karma that has yielded the worst provincial government I have seen in my lifetime.