Those who live in Ontario and are of a certain age will remember the disaster that was the Mike Harris premiership. Yet despite all the damage he did to this province, (and continues to do as the Chair of Chartwell which, by the way, is rewarding its investors handsomely while presiding over a multitude of deaths in its homes), he has been awarded an Order of Ontario.
To say that this appointment has met with controversy is to understate the resulting outrage. For example, almost 68,000 have signed a Change.org petition to stop this betrayal of all who suffered under him.
And, as always, Toronto Star letter-writers have not held back. June Mewhort of Woodville, Ontario writes:
Mike Harris receiving the Order of Ontario is a slap in the face for Indigenous people in Ontario. It is also a slap in the face to all Ontario educators, all Ontario nurses, all Ontario single moms and all Ontario municipalities.
Municipalities are still struggling with the egregious downloads the Harris government burdened them with.
And now, we have the long-term-care debacle. It was Harris who opened up the LTC arena to private consortiums and he became a beneficiary of his own legislation by becoming chair of Chartwell.
This awarding of the Order of Ontario to this man is the Progressive Conservatives rewarding a man who has done nothing positive for this province.
Doug Ford is stroking his back for future favours.
Wasn’t Harris also the politician who sold Highway 407?
It is unconscionable that he be given this prestigious award.
Peter Voth of Ajax, Ontario reminds that some things are unforgivable:
The article about Mike Harris being appointed to the Order of Ontario dealt mostly with his connection with private long-term-care homes, but he should be denied the appointment simply based on his record as premier.
In a time when statues of Sir John MacDonald or Egerton Ryerson are questioned, why is Harris even considered for an appointment for anything?
Ask the citizens of Walkerton, or the First Nations of Ipperwash.
What about the stripping of the school curriculum, and the removal of the word “environment” from those documents? What about the hospital closures? What about the downloading of our secondary highways to the regions and the confusing renaming of roads across the province? What about the famous strategy to “create a crisis” in education (to use the words of John Snobelen, Harris’s education minister)?
Harris wasn’t called “Mike-the-knife” for nothing.
Perhaps we should build a statue of him so that we can rip it down the next day.
We live in a time when public morality seems to be but an increasingly quaint notion. Mike Harris's 'reward' is just another sad illustration of this.
