Doug “DoFo” Ford has declared war on Toronto. Loud and clear. He is attempting to dismantle our municipal democracy under the guise of making it “more efficient”. But in reality it is an attack on the city that chose to elect John Tory instead of him.
This one time city councilor (with an abysmal attendance record) is attempting to gerry-mander the upcoming election (mid-election I might add!) by reducing the number of councilors from 47 to 25. He’s pretending to be finding efficiencies that are not there, not unlike his late brother’s “gravy train”.
He’s also stated that he will take over the Toronto Transit Commission which would be an unprecedented disaster. He doesn’t give a shit about the citizens of Toronto or public transit, he just wants to screw it to Toronto. Don’t forget the Ford’s consider public transit a war on cars.
In his short time as premier, he has closed safe injection sites, shut down universal basic income, stopped the minimum wage increase.
Simply put, DoFo has decided to go after the those on the fringe, those least likely to hit back. The divisive “wedge” politics so popular to the South is the modus operandi of the day.
He know most people are too busy trying to make ends meet and survive to spend time and energy to fight for a few people on an experimental social benefit program. Or to ensure addicts have a safe place to inject, or to lend their voices to those in the hated “center of the universe” trying to keep their councilors.
But it reminds me of that old Martin Niemöller saying “First they came for the socialists…”
Doug Ford has declared war on Toronto, I hope we declare war back.