Conservative MPP Peter Shurman (Thornhill) said it proves McGuinty “will stop at absolutely nothing to make sure he brings this back into what he perceives is balance, which is a majority government for him.
You can read the full details of this crime against the will of the Ontario electorate here.
I feel just a tad guilty writing this post today, given that world events are of their usual dire nature, the slaughter of protesting Syrian students by a brutal and repressive regime not the least of them. Nonetheless, I will deal briefly with a more parochial issue, the brutal and repressive regime operating out of the Toronto mayor's office.
As I am sure the details of the confrontation between Rob Ford and Star reporter Daniel Dale are now well-known, I won't rehash them here. The mentality of the mayor, however, got me thinking about my 30-year teaching career, and I realized that Ford reminds me very much of some of the students I encountered during that career.
While the vast majority were good kids, there were always those who believed the rules weren't made for them, that the normal standards of decorum didn't apply, and that respect for institutional traditions was for others to follow; they laboured under the delusion of having a special dispensation from them. Needless to say, these tended to be kids for whom academic success was elusive.
The problem these students posed for the classroom dynamic were significant. Their presence tended to contribute to a lowering of the tone of discussion and in the behaviour of their fellow students. Oftentimes, their parents were enablers, attempting to bully teachers into accepting their rather warped view of reality. In short, they were the kind of people who attempted to exert a disproportionate influence over the classroom which is, among other things, a microcosm of society.
So in many ways, Rob Ford is like those errant students of yesteryear - he defines reality and the rules by his own worldview; like a wanton child, he is having a tantrum as he threatens to end the public's right to information about the goings-on at City Hall unless a reporter he takes exception to isn't removed from the City Hall beat; he is enabled by a family member, brother Doug; to conclude, the mayor is a disruptive influence on the rest of the citizenry.
It is sad that today when I opened The Star I was confronted on the front page by what should be a trivial matter, while important issues such as Dalton McGuinty's political machinations and Harper's move to limit democratic debate on the omnibus budget bill are pushed to the inner pages. Like those pesky students of my earlier life, Rob Ford is disrupting our larger classroom once again.
Entitled Ontario’s taxing march to socialism, (evokes rather inflammatory imagery, doesn't it?) Reynold's article laments this 'consumption of wealth' implying that it will soon continue voraciously, resulting in a decline in everyone's savings. He predicts that nothing good can come from any move that seeks to redress inequality, dismissing it as simply a manifestation of 'hatred of the rich.'
The vacuous screed continues as he suggests the following: As a matter of statistical fact, high-income earners are poorer, in many cases, than average-income earners (with, say, $100,000 in taxable income). He ends it by conjuring up a parade of taxpayers, the least-burdened ones standing erect while the high earners carry Sisyphean boulders equal to 60 per cent of their incomes.
It is a burden, I suspect, that many in our society would be more than happy to bear.
The Associated Press ... filed requests for information on terrorism charges and convictions in 105 countries that have freedom of information laws. Turkey supplied the information in a week, India in a month, Mexico in two months. Canada asked for a 200-day extension.
Canada was also ranked 40th out of 89 countries in world’s first Global Right to Information Rating, published last year by Access Info Europe and the Halifax-based Centre for Law and Democracy.
One cannot help but wonder what further enhancements to democracy Harper Inc. has planned for the coming years.
POSTSCRIPT: It took a freedom of information request by Canada's real 'newspaper of record', the Toronto Star, to uncover this inconvenient truth about how the public responded to Harper's decision to raise the age of entitlement for Old Age Security benefits. One imagines the bureaucratic that opened the lid has been severely disciplined by his/her political master.
In responding to The Toronto Star's series, Police Who Lie, Mike McCormack, president of the Toronto Police Association, complains that the investigative project is a gross misrepresentation of police practices, and condemns it for using a presentation style disturbingly similar to the covers of tabloid magazines that grab your attention while you’re standing in the checkout line at the grocery store.
The sad truth is that the police have no one but themselves to blame when their behaviour is held up to public scrutiny and found wanting. And what McCormack fails to acknowledge is that the public has every right to know about misconduct which, in the case of the Toronto Police, has taken many forms, lying in court being only one of them.
Who, for example, can forget the wiretapping and surveillance conducted upon former Police Services Board Chair Susan Eng, done when Mike's father, William, was the Toronto Police Chief? Eng attributed this illegal activity to the fact that prior to becoming chair of the board, she had been a vocal critic of the police.
Then, as just another example, there was Craig Bromell, former head of the police union now being led by Mike McCormack. In cases of involving investigation by the SIU, Bromell told his members not to co-operate with its inquiries and threatened lawsuits against police critics. Such directives and threats hardly fostered an environment conducive to the public trust that the constabulary seems to believe is its due.
The infamous G20 misconduct, in which Toronto police played a key role, is well-knowned, attested to even by voices as credible as Steve Paikin's.
So I'm sorry that public scrutiny so-much disheartens Mike McCormack and his troops, but he is going to have to learn that because police wield so much power, they must be held to the highest standards, and if they want to avoid criticism, they are going to have to govern themselves by those standards.
