Port Colborne Regional Councillor is Right to Demand Contents of a 2019 Ford government report on municipal governance and what it may have to say about our region’s future
A Commentary by Doug Draper, reporter/publisher, Niagara At Large
Posted November 30th, 2023
“What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
That often-quoted line from the 1967 Paul Newman film ‘Cool Hand Luke’ certainly applies to Ontario Premier Doug Ford and his Conservative government and all the many fast ones they have pulled on we, the people, going back to the first days they were sworn in to office in June of 2018.
The fast ones began with Ford and company taking a butcher’s axe to Toronto’s city council, literally cutting the number of council members in half.
They continued with gutting a “basic income” program launched by the previous provincial Liberal government for helping low-income people rise above poverty, the closing of Ontario’s Environmental Ombudsman’s Office and weakening of tools the NPCA and other Conservation Authorities can use to protect our natural resources, and tearing up dozens of contracts with private and public sector parties to move from sources of dirty, polluting energy to green, renewable energy sources.
After the Ford government was elected to a second term in 2022 by less than half the province’s eligible voters, we had more shockers coming our way, including plans to sell off parcels of our precious food-growing lands that were supposed to be preserved for future generations to Ford’s development industry friends.
Why won’t this guy – Premier Doug Ford and his Conservative government – be more open and transparent with Ontario citizens?
And that is just to name a few of the stink bombs Ford and his Conservatives have dropped on us, and almost always after an election lest they turn off too many of the all too few of us that bother to take a few minutes out of our day to vote.
Indeed, Ford runs a government that has taken the practice of hiding its true intentions from the public to new and disturbing heights.
Even one of his predecessors in the premier’s office – his old Conservative pal Mike Harris – was honest about what he wanted to do to our public services and programs by putting out a widely circulated “Common Sense” manifesto before he was elected to power in 1995.
Now we have no end of speculation about what Ford and his government might want to do around amalgamating municipal government in regions like Niagara, Waterloo, Halton and York.
Ford has so far failed to be open and transparent about informing municipal governments and their constituents about its plans in that very important area, to say the least, and that includes hiding the contents of a report put together following a study that included public input some of his special advisers put together and shared with his cabinet members some three years ago.
Port Colborne Regional Councillor Fred Davies
Port Colborne Regional Councillor Fred Davies recently presented his fellow councillors with a motion to demand from Ford and company the full contents of that study before a standing committee of the provincial legislature arrives in Niagara on January 10th to host a public meeting before Ford presumably makes a decision on how many municipal councils out of the 13 we now have will be left in the region.
“We need that information (in the study before this January’s public meeting)”, said Davies.” “We can’t go in (to that meeting) blind.”
What is disgusting is that Davies has to call out to the Ford government for that kind of important information at all. Any government with an ounce of integrity or respect for the public would have released this study a long time ago.
Davies’ fellow regional councillors and local mayors and councillors across Niagara should join him and demand to have the full contents of this study on governance now.
So should Niagara’s four provincial members of parliament, including Ford government MPP Sam Oosterhoff from the Niagara West Riding.
This would be a big chance for Oosterhoff to toss his partisan loyalty to his supreme leader aside and stand up for the interests of Niagara residents.
(Surprise, surprise. The location and time of that January 10th public meeting inNiagara has yet to be disclosed. Niagara At Large will post that information when it is available.)
– Doug Draper, Niagara At Large
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