It took Opposition pressure at Queen’s Park, it took outspoken professional staff at libraries across the province, and it took members of a book club staging a read-in at the constituency office of MPP Sam Oosterhoff (Niagara West), but it appears as if some saner thinking has prevailed inside Doug Ford’s PC caucus. A clearly re-educated minister of tourism, culture and sport, has backed down on his planned 50 per cent cuts to Ontario Library Service-North.
“OLS-N will be reinstating their interlibrary loan program as of June 1, 2019,” Michael Tibollo said late last week.
Librarians, library patrons and media commentators (perhaps in part, my Barris Beat May 2, 2019) can take some of the credit for reversing the provincial government’s short-sighted plans to balance its budget at the expense of library users across Ontario. For many years, both the OLS-N and the Southern Ontario Library Service have delivered book sharing, cataloguing and tech support systems to patrons seamlessly. That was suddenly slashed early this month when the Ford administration decided to cut $1.5 million from public library budgets.
“Cut interlibrary?” one of my friends declared. “They just don’t understand.”
I’ve long thought the problem with too many governments is that they just don’t take the time to understand. Take Ford’s plan to cut public education. With much discomfort, I watched the Toronto district school board’s director of education, taking questions about $42.1 million in cuts.
Dr. John Malloy explained the TDSB would likely have to cancel busing for French immersion, the hiring of learning coaches from kindergarten to Grade 12. And, oh yes, they’re going to increase class sizes to produce “resilient” students. I asked a couple of high school teacher friends of mine about that idea; they work with special needs students.
“Increasing class numbers from 22 to 28 in a regular class is one thing,” one said. “But with special needs kids, that (25 per cent) increase will mean chaos.”
By the way, neither of those teachers has ever seen a provincial politician of any stripecome into their classrooms to watch teaching and learning at that level. Another illustration, I believe, of a government that doesn’t understand. And it’s one thing for MPPs not to be able to relate to a French immersion student, a learning coach, or a special needs teacher. But to then brag about such frivolous achievements as “buck a beer” for Ontarians in time for the May-24 weekend?
That’s not just misunderstanding; it’s misadministration. Worse, I see a government so blinded by ideology – intent on undoing anything with either a Liberal or Wynne label attached it – that it will do so at the expense of shooting itself in the foot (or shooting off at the mouth).
Take, for example, the Ford administration’s rants about the federal carbon tax. The premier is so fanatically opposed to the Liberal plan to tax the country’s major polluters that he’s prepared to drag the province (as well as New Brunswick, Manitoba and Saskatchewan) into endless and costly court battles against Bill C-342. Some speculate it could cost us in the millions just to get the case heard in upper level courts.
In addition, they’re prepared to use taxpayers’ money to produce advertisements attacking the Feds too. Add to that, the revelation, on Thursday, that a majority of Conservative voters in Canada are actually in favour of policies to fight climate change, including a price on pollution. The Abacus Data survey revealed that 59 per cent of self-identified Conservatives support measures to curb carbon emissions.
Another apparent lack of vision among provincial government representatives, I sense, is that they don’t even believe there’s a climate crisis at all. How many more images of environmental upheaval – twice this spring the flooding of properties and homes along the Ottawa River and Muskoka watersheds – do they need to see? Yes, I saw the premier visiting residents of Bracebridge during the flooding; I didn’t say the premier doesn’t care. I just wonder: Does he not understand the science, or does he just not care to understand the science? The image of Emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burns comes to mind.
Perhaps most disheartening of all, was the government’s attitude during question periods in last week’s Legislature debate. Not only did members of the Ford cabinet not bother responding to specific questions from Opposition MPPs, but they also stonewalled.
Rather than address cogent questions about autism programs, social assistance, interlibrary, public health and education, each cabinet minister – and especially the premier – simply read from a list of “accomplishments,” from his $106,000 open-for-business signs at the border to his anti-carbon tax litigation to his cheap beer. Is it any wonder Premier Ford was booed at the opening of the Invitational Youth Games in Toronto last Wednesday?
I think Special Olympians have recognized publicly what the rest of us have been too afraid to say out loud since June 7, 2018. The premier just doesn’t get it.