YABBA DABBA… REALLY DOUG?
Kathleen Wynne
We are midway through the Ontario election which Doug Ford called in order to avoid running a campaign in the shadow of an RCMP report on questionable Greenbelt development. Ford and his people also liked the optics of running an Ontario campaign with an unpopular Liberal government still in office avoiding the possibility of running with a new Conservative regime in Ottawa.
And then Donald Trump, newly elected to his second term did Ford the favour of launching an attack on Canada’s economy promising to impose 25% tariffs on goods across the board but particularly threatening Ontario’s auto and agricultural sectors. Ford, who has boasted that he was happy when Trump was elected, nonetheless seemed surprised when the President-elect turned on our trading relationship.
While the threat of the tariffs is on pause at this moment, Ford, who happened to be in the rotation as Chair of the Premiers’ Table (Council of the Federation) donned his Captain Canada hat (literally) and used the tariff threat as the most immediate cover for calling an unnecessary election a year and a half early instead of continuing to work for the next 18 months with the federal government and his peers across the country to ensure we make Ontario’s case as we support Canada in the face of the threat from this unpredictable President.
That’s why we are having an election. Ford saw political opportunity and went for it.
That’s his prerogative. He has done nothing illegal. It’s political strategy which is what Ford and his team care about day in and day out.
But here’s the funny thing about an election. People have issues. They have questions. They want to know what you are going to do about all the things in their lives and their communities that need attention. And every now and then in an election campaign when the teleprompter is off, there is the opportunity for voters to get a glimpse into the man or woman behind the speaking notes.
That happened when Ford was caught on a hot mic making that boast about how chuffed he was that Trump had been elected. We would be right to have questions about why the Premier of Ontario would ever want to see a President of the United States who is so hostile to its closest neighbour and trading partner, not to mention one who is so hostile to decency, compassion and honesty.
But on February 8th, Ford showed us, as he has in the past that his style of politics is cut from the same cloth as that of Donald Trump’s.
Asked about whether he would support the Liberal Leader, Bonnie Crombie’s proposal to double the ODSP monthly payment, Ford showed us his contempt, his lack of compassion and his disregard for the truth once again.
Let me step back. ODSP is the Ontario Disability Support Program. It provides a maximum benefit of $1,169 monthly to people in Ontario who have applied and demonstrated that their disability is such that they cannot work or can only work minimally and therefore cannot support themselves. As of April 2024 just under 500,000 people in Ontario receive ODSP.
Many of these, in another generation would have been confined to institutions, isolated from the community. Over the decades our society made a collective decision to close those institutions and support a more dignified life in community.
Ontario Works (OW) is designed as a transitional benefit for people who have worked or will work again but need support in the interim. The monthly benefit for OW is about $733 depending on family circumstance. In 2022-2023 there were 37,000 more people receiving OW than the year before for a total of 384,000.
It is well-researched that welfare fraud rates are about 3% of the total budget for social assistance.
Back to Ford and the election. Bonnie Crombie has rightly identified that people living on ODSP cannot live on the current benefit. She is proposing a doubling of the rate. She is talking about ODSP and that is what Ford was asked about.
Here’s what he said:
Healthy young people that are sitting on the couch watching the Flintstones, they should be out there. They should be working. There are still 200,000 jobs available in Ontario. We can’t afford that. Everyone should be out there when they have a chance. Apply. Now if they go through rough times for a little bit, I get that. Not a problem but there’s people that have been on Ontario Works Welfare, healthy people for their whole lives while these hardworking [points to workers in hardhats behind him] people are paying for them to sit on the couch and watch the Flintstones or the soap operas or whatever they’re watching.
Doug Ford has been the Premier of this province for nearly seven years. This answer demonstrates that he doesn’t know the difference between the social assistance programs in Ontario or if he does, he would rather make this argument than have the honest conversation about rates for ODSP. It also demonstrates that even if he does understand the difference between the programs, he holds the entire population of OW recipients in disdain.
He showed us this in June of 2023 when he said: What drives me crazy is people on Ontario Works—probably three, 400,000 that are healthy.
Why is this so important? And why am I being so long-winded about a one-off answer in one media scrum during an election?
Because this is not a one-off.
This is a Premier who plays fast and loose with the truth. We know perfectly well that there are people in real distress trying to live on OW and get their lives together. We should be able to expect that Ford would have a grasp of the social assistance file and would be able to come up with a coherent answer on either ODSP or OW. We know he cancelled the Basic Income Pilot because people living in deep poverty are not his priority but after seven years we should expect more.
It's also important because it says so much about the other complex issues confronting us that have no answers from this Premier.
What does he have to tell families of children with Autism who have seen the waitlist for services double to over 50,000 children since he has been in office?
What is Ford saying to the families of frail elderly people living in long term care still waiting for investments in staff and service after the lessons of COVID?
And to college and university students who are watching their schools lose programs because of underfunding while they struggle to work one or two jobs to pay for tuition because grants were cut in 2018?
And to K-12 schools that have seen per pupil funding cut which means fewer teachers and support staff in their schools?
And to renters who saw rent control cancelled on new buildings in 2018?
And to anyone who cares about clean water and clean air as we watch shenanigans around the development of the Greenbelt as well as the undermining of Conservation Authorities across the province?
There is a long list of issues that should have strong public policy responses from this government and do not.
Bonnie Crombie and Marit Stiles and Mike Schreiner are right to focus on just a few of those in their campaigns. But the rest of us are not running campaigns. We know what is going on in our communities. We do not have to give Doug Ford a pass because his brand of populist, substance-free politics has carried him this far. Our job in every conversation with every candidate is to hold their feet to the fire on what they have done, and what they will do going forward.
Doug Ford is about the same age as my baby sister. When she was in grade school she would come home at lunch and Mom would let her watch Flintstone re-runs. That was 50 years ago. Fred and Barney are a thing of the past.
Read the briefing note on ODSP, Doug.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kathleen Wynne - Kathleen Wynne was first elected to the Ontario legislature in 2003 as the MPP for Don Valley West. She was Ontario’s 25th Premier and leader of the Ontario Liberal Party from January 2013 to June 2018. Kathleen has dedicated her professional life to building a better province for the people of Ontario. She is guided by the values and principles that knit the province of Ontario together: fairness, diversity, collaboration and creativity.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Air Quotes Media. Read more opinion contributions via QUOTES from Air Quotes Media.