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Doug Ford is off to a bad start as PC leader
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/ ... start-as-pc-leader/
Exhibit A was a radio interview with the CBC he gave on Tuesday. Some of his fans have already pronounced it a brilliant success, because they like that Mr. Ford takes the gloves off with reporters. But from where we sit, it exhibited many of Mr. Ford’s worst tendencies.
Take his approach with the interviewer. She asked Mr. Ford straightforward questions about his plans for running the province. Instead of providing details, Mr. Ford tried to focus attention on his questioner, asking her how she would cut spending and then pronouncing her “unable” to answer. He also nonsensically boasted of having knocked on thousands more doors than her.
This is a common tactic of populists and no doubt played well with Mr. Ford’s base. It’s also ridiculous and beneath a serious politician. Mr. Ford is the one running for office. He shouldn’t taunt journalists because they ask questions that make him uncomfortable. It’s just a form of passing the buck.
Then again, you can see why he wanted nothing to do with the buck. The most unsettling aspect of the interview was his refusal to provide details about how he would govern.
Asked about his pledge to balance the budget without cutting any public-service jobs, Mr. Ford vowed to find unnamed “efficiencies,” said it would be “simple” to do, and repeated his empty slogan, “Just watch me.”
Pressed to give examples of where he would find billions in efficiencies, Mr. Ford offered foolscap paper and pencils. Yes, his point was that a PC government would look for savings everywhere, not that he would literally save billions on stationery. But the fact remains that Mr. Ford has refused to say where he will find the “efficiencies” that necessarily make up a key part of his balanced-budget promise.
Likewise, he could not say what part of Ontario’s sex-ed curriculum he disagrees with, other than dismissing it as “Liberal ideology” and promising to repeal it. Given how complex this issue is, he needs to be more specific.
In the rare moments when Mr. Ford sounded authoritative on a subject, he was often simply wrong. He said 60,000 people have been laid off in Ontario since the increase in the province’s minimum wage that took effect on Jan. 1 – a claim for which there is no evidence.
The Bank of Canada estimated in January that there could be 60,000 fewer jobs across the entire country as a result of minimum-wage increases in various provinces – by 2019.
Meanwhile, Ontario lost 51,000 jobs in January, but analysts don’t believe the minimum wage was responsible. Many of the jobs were in high-paying sectors, while the biggest minimum-wage sector, accommodation and food services, actually created jobs.
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