The Editor,
On April 23, Doug Ford’s government passed a law, buried inside the provincial budget bill, permanently shielding the Premier, his cabinet, and their staff from freedom of information requests.
Every PC MPP voted for it, including our own Nolan Quinn.
This is not housekeeping.
This law was passed to hide cell phone records that journalists are seeking, records from the exact month Ford’s government quietly removed 7,400 acres of protected Greenbelt land for developers, who stood to gain $8.3 billion.
The RCMP’s criminal investigation into that scandal is still ongoing. A court had ordered Ford to release the records. Rather than comply, he retroactively rewrote the law. Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner put it plainly: “If oversight bodies get in the way, just change the rules.”
If Doug Ford is willing to rewrite the province’s laws just to keep one set of phone records out of public hands, Ontarians have every right to ask what else is on that phone, and what else is being hidden from us that we don’t even know to look for?
Meanwhile, the real costs of this government fall on the rest of us. Over 2.5 million Ontarians now lack a family doctor, nearly double the number from when Ford took office. Emergency rooms have closed over a thousand times in a single year. Ontario’s public schools are receiving $1,500 less per student than in 2018, a shortfall totalling $3.2 billion. And the provincial debt has ballooned from $337 billion to $485 billion, and annual interest payments now exceed what the province spends on all of post-secondary education.
Nolan Quinn has voted with Ford at every turn.
The good news is that Ontarians are pushing back. Thousands have already taken to the streets in communities across the province.
There will be another province-wide Fight Ford protest on May 30 and I urge you to attend. Check protestdougford.com for your nearest location. Democracy requires more than a vote every four years. These days it requires showing up and demanding accountability.
Mélanie Ayotte, Cornwall
L’article What else is Doug Ford trying to hide? est apparu en premier sur Cornwall Seaway News.
