It’s not a wholesale audit of the bloated and overpaid provincial government, but it’s a start...
I detailed the reason for Doug Ford’s victory in my article here(1).
The mainstream internet still seems to have him confused with his brother.
Now there’s an obvious resemblance, but come on...Rob Ford, the crack piping, football coaching, pussy eating former mayor of Toronto died in 2016, not in 2006, and Doug is very much alive today.
Just a month into his tenure as the Premier of Ontario and big Duggy Ford is making progress.
The Better Local Government Act being proposed intends to cut Toronto City council down to size from its current 44 to a more manageable 25 members(2).
This would save the city around $25 million.
Toronto currently has 44 city councillors.
New York City has 51. New York City has three times as many people as Toronto and a metropolitan area twice as expansive.
San Francisco, a city of similar size, has 11 plus six additional elected officials and one mayor.
Vancouver has just ten.
The Better Local Government Act is being opposed by mayor John Tory(3). Who in politics wants fewer sycophants?
The Toronto Daily Worker, I mean the Toronto Star(4), wades into the fray in the typical wishy-washy way they usually approach arguments.
‘No one wants to see the council grow in size, and people are tired of the status quo, but that doesn’t mean Doug Ford should actually do something about it!’
It’s much easier to govern a fat, lazy and ignorant populace than a capable and informed one, as George Carlin put perfectly around four minutes into this not-safe-for-work rant.
Why does Toronto need four times as many public officials to ‘run the city’ than a similar sized city on the west coast does? It absolutely doesn’t.
He also scrapped Kathleen Wynne’s highly controversial 2015 sex ed program(5).
The original plan was authored by a convicted child sex offender(6). Which alone should have squashed it in its infancy.
I mean, it doesn’t read too poorly(7)...Until you break it down a little(8).
In grade 2 kids learn about consent? Okay sure, but ‘yes’ doesn’t always mean ‘yes’ and ‘no’ doesn’t always mean ‘no’, for example ‘, yes if’ and ‘no, but’ and I don't think that a bunch of six and seven year olds will be able to grasp the subtleties of that.
Grade 3, gender identity?
Grade 4...so the kids learn about consent and gender identity before the changes they’ll all be going through in puberty? Okay then.
Grade 7, anal sex, oral sex...and contraception? Again, years after learning about consent and gender identity?
Many parents were displeased with the new sex-ed curriculum(9), but it got pushed through anyways, because the essence of politics is 'we're in power and we can, so fuck you'.
I’m not saying these things aren’t important, but that when I had my sex education in school, the gist was basically ‘we know you’re going to be doing it soon and we can’t stop you from doing it, but we can at least inform you about the risks and tell you how to keep safe...’
The rest was covered at home, because sex is a personal thing, something that your family, and not the state, should do their best to inform you of.
The ubiquity of the internet has all but ensured that ‘We don’t want our kids learning about sex from the internet!’ is the same as the ‘We don’t want our kids learning about sex from the TV!’ line my generation heard twenty years ago.
I heard ‘Mommy’s tired, go and watch some TV’, kids today get ‘Mommy’s tired, play with your iPad’. The parallels are striking and I will be writing about them in the future.
Whether it’s pornography, alcohol, cigarettes or whatever, kids will always find a way to get it; don't think my take on the issue is a surrender, 'they're gonna do it anyway so why try to stop them?', but good parenting shouldn’t be trying to prevent children from getting these things, but instead informing them on why they should avoid them.
Children aren’t stupid, they just lack the organization, patience and regard for consequences that most adults have developed.
In spite of opposition from all sides, Doug Ford is doing a fine job so far.
Links:
1: A day that will... https://steemit.com/politics/@redbeardcrypto/a-date-that-will-live-in-infamy
2: Can Doug Ford cut Toronto... https://globalnews.ca/news/4363704/doug-ford-toronto-city-council-slash/
3: Tory opposed council cuts... https://nationalpost.com/news/toronto/mayor-john-tory-slams-doug-fords-plan-to-cut-toronto-city-council-in-half
4: should Ford cut council?... https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/thebigdebate/2018/07/31/should-doug-ford-cut-city-council-in-half-right-now-no.html
5: to cut 2015 liberal sex Ed program... https://www.blogto.com/city/2018/07/ontario-sex-ed-curriculum/
6: child sex offender Ben Levin said himself... https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/child-sex-offender-ben-levin-said-himself-that-he-was-in-charge-of-crafting
7: Ontario 2015 curriculum... https://www.ontario.ca/page/sex-education-ontario
8: what’s in Ontario’s new sex ed bill... https://toronto.citynews.ca/2015/05/04/5-things-to-know-about-ontarios-controversial-new-sex-ed-curriculum/
9: Parents displeased with sex-ed curriculum... https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/one-in-six-ontario-parents-considered-pulling-kids-from-school-over-new-sex-ed-curriculum-poll
"The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author’s employer, organization, committee or other group or individual."
