Ontario Politics

 

February 3, 2023

Letter sent to Toronto Star:

Opposition parties ask auditor general to probe Ontario Greenbelt moves, January 12, 2023

As the auditor general conducts a value-for-money assessment of the government’s decision to remove 7,400 acres from the protected Greenbelt while adding land elsewhere, she would be wise to question the need for 1.5 million homes in the next ten years. The Narwhal recently published an article which clearly demonstrates how this number was arrived at and how the actual need is closer to 60,000 homes and not the 150,000 put forward  by the Ford government and furthermore that this figure is actually lower than the 79,000 housing starts Ontario averaged per year between 2016 and 2021.

The article also states “What’s more, Ontario’spopulation grew by 10.7 per cent from 2011 to 2021, while the number of occupied dwellings grew by 12.5 per cent. This means that the number of dwellings has actually been growing faster than the population. Here is a link to the article: https://thenarwhal.ca/ontarios-housing-plan-evidence/

Perhaps the Toronto Star should do a similar investigation of housing needs in Ontario.

 

January 18, 2023

​Martin Cohn and Rosie Dimanno recently wrote columns in the Toronto Star, more or less justifying Ford's privatization of health care.

Martin Regg Cohn and Rosie Dimanno make some good arguments in favour of Doug Ford's plans concerning health care. However, I believe they are missing a key factor in the debate. That is that the establishment of specialized clinics can be accomplished perfectly well within the public health care system without the need for privatization. Ford and his Health Minister, Sylvia Jones have gone to great lengths to literally destroy the public health care system. They have driven health care workers, especially nurses, out of the system and into the arms of private for profit agencies. To believe that this will save money is ludicrous. They have underfunded health care and not even used funds allocated to health care. This is the oldest trick in the conservative playbook. Starve the public system to enable private for profit takeover. If Martin and Rosie believe that Ford has the best interests of Ontario in mind and not the enrichment of the business class, well, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell them.

December 23, 2022

Here is a letter sent by me to the Ontario PC Caucus (all Ontario Progressive Conservative members of the provincial legislature):

The COP15  United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity  just took place in Montreal. The culminating agreement called the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework  was a critical step in preventing the world from catastrophic destruction of biodiversity. I am very proud of the leading role that Canada played in achieving the Agreement. You however, should be very ashamed of not only the Government of Ontario's complete disregard, but its wanton destruction of biodiversity.

As members of this government, have you no shame in cowtowing to Doug Ford and Steve Clark? Their opening up of the Greenbelt will lead to further destruction of biodiversity. Do you really believe that opening up the Greenbelt is necessary to provide enough housing for our province? Or, will you admit that this is a thank you for developers for their financial support for your Conservative Party? Do the math. Fifty thousand homes (those that Ford and Clark say are needed in the Greenbelt) out of 1.5 million is 3.3 percent.

 

Aug 10 2022

Privatization of Health Care

If Doug Ford was serious about fixing the hospital situation in Ontario, he would have started to address the problem months ago. Nay, years ago. We are witnessing the dismantling of our public health care system. It's the oldest Conservative ploy in the book. Starve the public system so you can convince people that the public system does not work and start introducing private sector replacements. It worked very well with the long term care (LTC) sector which lacked public funding for years so that private LTC could then become the norm. And now Ford and his ilk are applying these techniques to the whole health care system. Doug Ford has not hidden his want of private health care, even proposing private hospitalization last year. New diagnostic and treatment clinics are opening up in Ontario. Privatization!  Nurses are being hired from agencies to fill gaps in the public system These are the same nurses who left the profession because of the terrible working conditions and abysmal pay. Now they are being hired through agencies and getting twice the pay as regular hospital nurses. Meanwhile agencies running the show are making millions of dollars. Another sign of privatization of our health care system.  To be sure it is not just Doug Ford and the Ontario Conservatives. Premieres across the country (most being Conservative or leaning conservative) have been using the same play book for years. We must be very wary of losing Canada's public health care.

August 7, 2022

Housing:

So all political parties are now talking about taking steps to try to cool the housing market. All have foreign buyers in their sites. All are talking about ways to cool the market. But no one is talking about one of the major factors affecting housing costs: builders and developers! We have seen new housing prices rise significantly almost from month to month. Go to any new subdivision and check out the pricing. Then go back three or four months later. I have done that on several occasions over the last few years. I have seen prices rise from the mid 300 thousands to the high 400s in a few months. Then a few months later high 500 thousands. These houses, now, a couple of years later, are selling for well over a million dollars. Costs have not increased nearly dramatically as prices. This of course has an immediate effect on the prices of resale homes and consequently on rental prices. A rising tide lifts all ships. I have yet to see any politician of any stripe, be it municipal, regional, provincial or federal, even approach this subject. Why not?

 

 

 

Here are old postings from 2019

 

August 31, 2019

Doug Ford's new policy on university funding: Funding for each university will depend on its graduation rates and its employment rates after graduation. At the same time he's cutting grants and loans to make it harder for students to go to school and those that do go have to work longer hours to pay for their tuition and living expenses, making it more difficult to get good grades to pass. So your graduation rates will go down and the university will get less money. To make matters even worse, high school students will have larger class sizes and fewer teachers so they will be less prepared for university. Again lowering graduation rates.

Seems like, since Doug Ford never made it through university, he thinks no one else should.

 

August 30, 2019

You should care about the canelled Transition Child Benefit

Doug Ford's government just cancelled the Transition Child Benefit (TCB). When the Government of Ontario started the Ontario Child Benefit (OCB) in 2007, they removed the allowance for food, clothing and other basic necessities from social asistance. The OCB is a refundable tax credit for low and modest income families in Ontario. But some families are not eligible for the OCB, such as families waiting for their tax based credits, families breaking up and refugees. These families no longer recieve the allowance for basic necessities. This is where the TCB comes in. Cancelling this Benefit leaves some of the most vulnerable families in Ontario loosing up to 20% of their already poverty level income. The cost is less than 1% of the total social assistance budget for the province. The effect on vulnerable children will lead to much more costs in the future for housing and health costs and leave children scarred for life. Doug Ford for the people. Just not the poorest, most vulnerable.

August 26,2019

So Doug Ford has decided that maybe he should not cut class sizes. About a week before school starts!!!! After teachers have been  fired and classes have been planned! Ford's knack of producing chaos is rivaled only by that of his hero, Donald Trump.

And did you know that last week he changed the Ontario Appointment Rules so he could fast track the appoinment of Marie Hubbard to sit on the board of the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT). LPAT was formed under the previous Liberal Government to replace the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB). Hubbard was a member of the OMB for many years.

 

August 9, 2019

Just started to read the news for today. How discouraging!

First item I saw: From Narcity: "Ontario Might Be Breaking Up With The Blue Box - And Ditching Recycling Altogether"

Someone told Doug Ford that 30% of the contents from the Blue Box collections are going to landfill. His solution - Scrap the program. Let industry take care of recycling. SUUUURE they wil!!! Talk about thowing out the baby with the bath water!

Second item I saw: From The Toronto Star, front page: "Province pulls funding for community centre - Lawrence Heights plan in doubt after losing $14M pledge for area dealing with gun crime"

Part of this reads "Experts have long emphasized the importance of providing young people with safe spaces specifically for them as well as access to recreation as part of addressing the root causes of violence."

Another step backward from the premier who is "For the People".

The main reason that Ford cancelled the funding is that it was initiated by the previous Liberal Government. Ford cancels anything that was started by the Liberals, just as Trump has undone anything that the Obama Administration started.

In his statement Ford has the audacity to say that the Liberals' promises have no credibility and that they "committed to give everyone a new car, too." This is probably in reference to the Liberal's rebate for electric vehicules. This was immediately cancelled by Ford when he gained office. One of the many really stupid things Ford has done.

 

Doug Ford and his Hero, Donald Trump