Unabated Fury

If the people of Hamilton are any indication, the citizen fury against Doug Ford's brazen and corrupt theft of Greenbelt lands continues unabated.

In a meeting ostensibly called to get input into the kinds of benefits the city should negotiate with provincial minions, compromise and collaboration were the last things on people's minds.

The feisty crowd booed when Premier Doug Ford’s name was mentioned and cheered when city planners said council has formally called for all affected lands, including parcels in Ancaster, Winona and Mount Hope, to be returned to the Greenbelt.

...many residents — dozens wielding signs condemning the Progressive Conservative government or calling to protect the Greenbelt — showed up urging council to abandon any negotiations related to potential development.

Michelle Silverton earned applause from the feisty crowd in urging the city to pay attention to “people power” on display Wednesday and refuse to participate in any development talks. “This is what democracy looks like,” she said.

An inflamed electorate can be a dangerous thing for those in power, especially those not easily taken in by the strange and essentially truculent tone taken by the new housing minister, Paul Calandra, who just the other day suggested that more lands may be removed, owing to a housing crisis that he clams has changed since the last government report, led by some Tory diehards like Tim Hudak, said such Greenbelt appropriation was not needed.

And the outrage is hardly limited to Hamiltonians, if letters to The Star are any indication:


Doug Ford’s fatally flawed Greenbelt plan must be stopped in its tracks, Sept. 6

I strongly agree with your editorial, but the core problem goes beyond the GTHA and it threatens human existence. Simply put, developing open space accelerates deadly global warming and pollution and shrinks food supplies. Approving such costly-to-taxpayers-to-service projects, including with expanded and new highways, will ultimately result in more suffering. That is far more criminal than backroom deals between developers and politicians. You can build new homes elsewhere, but you can’t create more oxygen, water, and arable land.


We’ve arrived at the cusp of climate disaster because we’ve ignored or deliberately buried the science. Will officials show the courage to stop the Greenbelt plan and similar ones across the country and turn toward brownfield development or will they continue to drive us to oblivion?

Brendan Read, Nanaimo, BC

There is a line in William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” that may well sum up Premier Doug Ford’s handling of his Greenbelt fiasco: “False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”

Scott Kennedy, Toronto


At a time where valuable farmland is shrinking all over the world due to climate change and overdevelopment, I’m surprised that the Ontario government would allow useful arable land to be wasted on private development. I understand that there is a desperate need for housing in Canada and elsewhere in the world, but wouldn’t it be more logical to develop areas of Ontario with less arable land? Fertile soil is a terrible thing to waste. Luxurious homes/condos just won’t put food on the table for Canadians.

Michael Pravica, Henderson, Nevada


The Star should start to fact check Premier Doug Ford’s comments about the Greenbelt as it did for former U.S. President Donald Trump, especially the egregious lie that “the people have spoken — we won’t touch the Greenbelt.” I counted at least 10 lies and mistruths in the last two weeks alone.

James Wigmore, Toronto

At the very least, this entire sordid escapade shows that voter apathy, at least in this case, is not something the Ford thieves should be counting on.

Rearranging The Deck Chairs On The Titanic

The title of this post is likely known to most. It means taking actions that will do nothing to avert disaster. And that is precisely what Doug Ford is doing as his response to the Greenbelt theft, the scandal that has a tenacious grip on his government and just won't let go.

Yesterday's resignation of Steven Clark was the second step (the first being the defenestration of Clark's chief of staff, Ryan Amato) followed by a cabinet shuffle ("See folks, an entirely new government!"), all of which I imagine will fool only the most catastrophically cognitively challenged. But it is all of a piece, part of Ford's belief in bluff salesmanship honed from the decal business he has run for years after inheriting it from his father. Such a blunt instrument will not carry the day this time, however, no matter how much he hopes against hope that we are collectively stupid.

Compounding the ineptitude of this maneuver is his choice of Paul Calandra to replace Clark as Housing Minister. Undeservedly regarded as a fixer who honed his chops at the federal level serving as the parliamentary secretary to Stephen Harper, his capacity for rambling, off-question answers to House questions is legendary.

And, like so many others in Ford's cabinet, he is of dubious moral character:

In 2005, Calandra was involved in a family dispute. In the early 2000s, he had power of attorney to manage his mother's affairs. In a lawsuit filed by his sisters, it was claimed the power of attorney had been revoked by his mother months before her death in August 2005, but Calandra had invoked it for personal gain.^[3] Calandra's sisters alleged that he had charged $8,000 to his mother's credit card without her knowledge. They further alleged that, when confronted about the charges by his sister Concetta, Calandra suggested that he should kill Concetta. In his statement of defence, Calandra said that the charges had been authorized.^[6] The sisters also alleged that Calandra took $25,000 from his mother to pay taxes, but instead wrote the cheque to himself and left the taxes unpaid. Calandra claimed in his statement of defense that the money was given to him by his mother "freely, without pretext, and of her own volition." A document filed on September 8, 2008, the first full day of the 2008 federal election campaign, said that the parties had settled the case out of court.^[6]

There are many who say that only the full restoration of the Greenbelt lands will bring resolution. I, however, am of the view that it will take much more, and the only hope of that lies in 2026, when the next election is due and a complete housecleaning can take place.

Three years seems like an interminable wait though, doesn't it?

Only A Good Start

 

What can be said about the overdue resignation of Housing Minister Steve Clark, other than that it is only a good start? His departure from cabinet (which I am sure is only temporary) is either a measure of Doug Ford's increasing desperation over the ongoing fallout of the Greenbelt theft or yet another indication of the contempt in which he holds the Ontario electorate. If he really thinks this will placate us, he is badly underestimating our fury.

Should I be reading the mood of citizens correctly, there is only one action that has any any chance of dissipating the pungent stench of corruption that envelopes the Ford government: restoration of the plundered lands. I suspect, owing to his deep ties with the developers in question, he will not do so. 

What does it say about his judgement, his moral compass and his competence that he places the profit priorities of special interests above the needs and wishes of the province? The deep betrayal of his earlier promise not to touch the Greenbelt and his consequent violation of our collective sense of democratic fairness seem not to be a part of his calculus. This tells us all we need to know about him and his government.

Happy Labour Day, everyone.

Word Without Thoughts

 

Just another short post today. There is a scene in my favourite Shakespearean play, Hamlet, in which King Claudius, who killed his brother and stole his crown, is suddenly overcome with guilt. He prays ardently in his chapel, hoping for God's forgiveness. There is but one catch: he is unwilling to give up the crown and pay the price for his treason. The prayer ends this way:

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

I couldn't help but think of that speech while watching Ford and Steve Clark try yet again to 'apologize' and admit the process was flawed, while keeping all the benefits of the crime - the selloff of Greenbelt lands to the tune set by wealthy developers like De Gasperis and Michael Rice.

While the electorate may not be God, I have a pretty good suspicion that the public display of contrition by Mr. Ford and Mr. Clark will not move voters at the next election to grant absolution.

That's all for today, another busy one.

UPDATED: Spinning, Spinning, Spinning

 Regrettably, I don't have too much time these days to post, and today is another busy day, so I shall leave you with the following editorial cartoon from Greg Perry, and links to some stories that are damning indictments of the Doug Ford cabal. 

Oh, and one more thing: Premier Ford is going to be making another attempt at damage control with another news conference this morning. I assume it will not have its intended effect.

Why is Ford protecting Clark? can be accessed here.

Doug Ford stands by Clark can be accessed here.

And soon, the spinning begins:

UPDATE: It was a pathetic performance, to be followed shortly by a news conference with Minister Steve Clark.

A Crime Against Everyone

 

The Enclosure Movement was a push in the 18th and 19th centuries to take land that had formerly been owned in common by all members of a village, or at least available to the public for grazing animals and growing food, and change it to privately owned land, usually with walls, fences or hedges around it.

The public noose of scrutiny continues to tighten around Doug Ford's neck as people refuse to be the dupes he and his cabal obviously take us for. His insistence that the housing crisis is the the sole reason for stealing much-needed Greenbelt lands rings increasingly hollow, especially in light of what it ultimately represents: criminal behaviour, insider trading that warrants an exhaustive investigation, including scrutiny of the developers themselves who are being so richly rewarded. The fact that the RCMP is now pondering whether to start a probe (what there is to ponder is beyond me) only increases the stench of corruption that envelopes the entire cabal.

It occurs to me that there is another dimension to all of this that recalls the Enclosure Movement of Great Britain. Because of human greed, land that had benefited the many became restricted to the moneyed class. Like that era, the removal of Greenbelt lands is an offence against the collective. All of us will suffer so that the few can be richly rewarded.

Although for the most part the Greenbelt is privately owned, the fact that it is vital to all of us, especially in these fraught times of climate crisis, deepens the perversion of these sell-outs. Much needed farmland, wetlands, etc. being sacrificed on the altar of obscene profits mean we will all suffer. We will have less food that can be grown; we will have less absorptive capacity for increasing amounts of rainfall supercharged by climate change. We will have less greenspace which, as David Suzuki has phrased it, is part of our much needed natural capital. And of the trees that will be destroyed in the development of McMansions, not affordable housing, I will not speak.

All of this makes me very sad, not so much for myself but for current and future generations, all of whom, long after I am gone, will be paying a heavy price for the greed and the enrichment of the few; their names are now part of the public record, prolific prevaricators who insist that there is nothing to see here, all the timing of purchases being mere 'coincidences'.

Greed is obviously not a new phenomenon, so I shall end this post with a quote from my favourite American author, John Steinbeck, who, in The Grapes of Wrath, wrote the following in relation to fruit being destroyed amidst mass poverty and starvation:

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation.
There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize.
There is a failure here that topples all our success. The
fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and
the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die
because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And
coroners must fill in the certificates-died of malnutrition-
because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.

Apply that to our rapidly deteriorating world, and I think you will get his drift.

Pictures, Not Words

While a flurry of columns, articles and editorials continue to rail against the Doug Ford cabal theft of Greenbelt lands, I thought that a couple of editorial cartoons might be sufficient for today, images that effectively encapsulate the corruption and resulting pungent odour we in Ontario are contending with: