By Jessica Bell
On November 24, the auditor general released her annual report on the environment. It reads as a dry and horrifying account of Premier Doug Ford’s assault on our natural environment, health and future. Here are the lowlights.
Frustration. Nonsense. Chaos.
These are just a few words that are used to describe the situation for Ontario businesses following the release of the province’s plan to lift all Covid restrictions for businesses. You’d think there would be more celebration, but it’s hard, given the fact that small businesses are being impacted extra hard by policy that seems designed to hurt them.
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SEE MORE BY BRETT LAMB:
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Doug Ford emerged this week after weeks of summer slumber to announce a “vaccine certificate system” which is both late and lame. He then prorogued the legislature, lest he be answerable to it, and headed back into seclusion.
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Doug Ford has become the first Ontario premier to invoke Section 33 of the Constitution, the so-called notwithstanding clause. This allows him to ignore an Ontario court ruling that quashed Ontario’s new law limiting third-party advertising ahead of the provincial election. It is a tantrum by a premier who will do anything to silence his critics including violating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
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And this month in Ontario politics: Premier Doug Ford, yet again summons the experts for their advice, and pledges to follow their lead. And yet again, once advice is received, promptly goes off in a wildly different direction. This month, the experts told Ford it was safe to re-open schools for the month of June. They told him schools need to be opened not just for the sake of education, but for the sake of mental health. Yet here we are, with schools closed until September.
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Ontario Premier Doug Ford has just announced three days of paid sick leave while on day nine of his 14-day PAID leave. He is self-isolating after a colleague in his office tested positive for COVID-19. The hypocrisy does not cause Mr. Ford to flinch, though he claims to be following the advice of “the brightest minds in the world.”
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By Jessica Bell
The Ford government released its 2021-2022 Budget on March 24. The government will spend $186 billion next year, a cut of $4.8 billion from the previous year.
COVID-19 case counts are way down from the peaks seen in January, and in response the economy is opening up in many places. However, Toronto’s Chief Medical Officer of Health (MOH) Dr. Eileen de Villa, and Peel’s MOH Dr. Lawrence Loh, have asked the province to continue lockdowns, stating their fear that the worst is yet to come. They also each advocate for mandatory paid sick days to encourage the symptomatic to stay home and stop the spread.
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READ MORE ON COVID-19
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New projections warn that the new and more contagious variant of the coronavirus could result in Ontario seeing 40,000 new infections per day in February. Meanwhile, the province has announced a state of emergency allowing the government, with the support of cabinet, to introduce new public health orders more quickly. This could be a good thing, depending on how the powers are used. It’s hard to be hopeful, though, when the province is led by a premier who seems so determined to deliver mixed messages and sweeping regulations riddled with enormous loopholes.
As the federal government adopts a bold plan to surpass its 2030 climate plan targets by dramatically hiking carbon taxes, spending billions to help Canadians retrofit homes, and provide massive incentives to carbon heavy industries to change their ways, the Ontario premier appears to be headed in the opposite direction. According to the auditor general’s recent update, this province is not even going to meet its miserly 2030 goal of reducing carbon emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels.
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By Jessica Bell
Queen’s Park closed for the year on December 8. Here are the legislative highlights from the final few weeks:
The Ford government continued trampling on Ontario’s natural environment. Government Bill 229 stripped the power of local conservation authorities to protect water quality and floodplains from development.