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Time for Doug Ford to step down

August 20, 2021   ·   0 Comments

CONSTANCE SCRAFIELD
WITH YOUR PERMISSION

I don’t know who else is saying, “It’s about time Doug Ford offered his resignation to the people of Ontario,” but I am.

There are so many reasons but let us stick to his track record with the environment. People talk about the current crises plaguing this earth right now. Overcrowded as it is, the problems facing humanity at the moment are monumental, the worst of our history; some of what is wrong makes the previous wrongs look a lot less than they felt at the time. However, the most important and desperate “what’s wrong,” the here and now is our precious home, our Mother Earth is in trouble and, if she is, we all are. We are the cause of the trouble and only we can heal it at all, if healing at all is possible.

Under the shadow of Covid, Doug Ford has pushed against environment issues, opening up the Golden Horseshoe and the Oak Ridges Moraine, just to mention two of the sensitive and “protected” lands that the Ford government is offering to developers. He has introduced and rescinded environmental laws without consulting or even notifying Ontarians, without allowing the standard 45 days for consultation and comment from the public.

In November 18, 2020 Ontario’s Auditor General released a series of reports that conclude the Ford government is “failing to adhere to environmental laws and often does not provide enough time for consultation on legislation or post environmentally-significant proposals publicly at all.”

This information comes from Ecojustice. Once called the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, now Ecojustice, was established and incorporated as a charity in 1990 in Vancouver by a group of “visionary lawyers,” concerned for the social issues which face us then and now so profoundly, including and especially the diminishment of our environment.

An early case was to represent the “Friends of Oldman River,” people in Alberta defending this historic river from a proposed mega-dam. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, bringing environmental awareness to Canada’s highest court, when the ground breaking decision stated “the protection of the environment has become one of the major challenges of our time.” Ecojustice explains the importance of this early case, writing, “The case established the precedent requiring environmental assessment for most major development projects across Canada.” In 1996, Ecojustice opened an office in Toronto.

They have been shining the light on Doug Ford and his policies of making significant changes to existent laws, such as Ontario’s Environmental Assessment Act, the Planning Act and more, launching an attack on Ontario’s once reasonable platform on environmental protection. Even more, with the government’s 2020 budget, brought in as an economic recovery package, part of it “is a mechanism to override the ability of Conservation Authorities to make science-based decisions regarding the protection of wetlands, woodlands, endangered species habitats and flood protection.” This means that the green light can be given for development in environmentally sensitive areas without the checks and balances Conservation Authorities provide.

Ecojustice tells us bluntly: “It is estimated that we’ve already lost approximately 68% of our original wetlands due mainly to development and agricultural intensification.” As they quite rightly point out, “We can’t afford to lose anymore.” Ford’s insistence that development matters most, his so-called cutting back the red tape and his determination that the environment must pay the price, in effect that our children’s future must pay the price, has put us on a road that is wrong-minded and perilous in the extreme.

By development, one means not only the wholesale ravaging of once-protected land but the push to develop highway 413, for which clear and full evidence has come in from many sources to show the extent of environmental damage building such a highway would entail. Doug Ford must be stopped in his tracks. To allow his assault on our environmental laws and on the land itself, not just land, of course but the ecosystems, the wildlife and fauna, wetlands, coming under his hammer must be stopped. What he has harmed by way of stripping Conservation Authorities of much of their power – which he did quietly, must be undone.

With two years yet to go to his mandate, left unfettered by a compliant electorate, it is terrifying to think of the additional damage he might do. Whistleblowers can signal the problems but it takes more and stronger voices to call on Ford to resign.

I know, it is all about money, the indefatigable pressure for the wealthy to be better off than they were. Developers want to be richer and real estate agents are getting used to those huge commissions; the whole economy is out of balance with the ridiculous numbers on house prices, oil companies playing games with the price of gas and we keep putting to one side what really matters: the massive fires, the terrible floods and storms, the deadly droughts, the grip on the world that new diseases are gaining.

Maybe it only matters if it is your house that is lost to fire or flood, Mr. Developer or Mr. Ford.

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