Doug Ford is running a campaign based on trust to be premier of Ontario.
Trust him to bring in a “responsible government.”
Trust him to kill the carbon tax, even though he shouldn’t.
Trust him to “respect the taxpayer and stand up for the little guy.”
Ford asks for a lot of trust by voters, but yet he has failed to deliver a reason why. Despite running to lead the province, he consistently refuses to cost out his expensive campaign promises of tax cuts, while improving health care and transit. Trust him, in other words.
Certainly we should be able to trust our politicians. Ford, however, has shown that we just can’t trust him or his party and he just doesn’t have the experience to back his record.
The data breach of the confidential information of 60,000 users of Highway 407 by one of Ford’s candidates is a massive betrayal of trust that can’t be just swept away by Ford accepting the candidate’s withdrawal from the election.
Radio station 1010 quoted sources saying that two dozen candidates paid for access to the breached data, which they used to create fake identities for students that they then paid to attend nomination meetings to vote for them.
The National Post also reported on the 1010 findings, and the Globe and Mail reported on a Hamilton nomination meeting where “a printer was secretly churning out fake identity papers.”
Think about all that.
There’s a data breach, a printer making fake IDs right at nomination meeting, which are then used to elect a candidate who may have paid for the votes.
Put another way: data theft, identity theft, and ballot box stuffing. In what world are we supposed to trust a party where this happens, or the leader of that party?
Ford can claim he didn’t know about any of this, despite months of him and his predecessor Vic Fedeli talking about rot in their own party and questionable nominations, but the fact is that Ford leads a party in which candidates apparently thought this sort of thing was okay.
To be honest, I can’t really blame them for thinking that. When Ford was a city councilor in Toronto, when his brother Rob was mayor, Ford denied his brother’s drug use, and is now claiming he had no idea at the time.
Ford has also said that he and his brother saved Toronto taxpayers $1 billion, but it’s not true. You can only get to that number by claiming the elimination of a fee as a savings (when it’s actually lost revenue), and by simply making up numbers (such as claiming that wage increases would have been higher at city hall if it weren’t for the Fords).
The fact is, when you look at the city of Toronto’s actual budget, spending went up $219 million per year under the Fords.
When anyone challenged the brothers on their actions, Doug Ford came out swinging. He called one reporter “a little bitch.” He told the father of an autistic child to “go to hell.”
Rob Ford’s own chief of staff, Mark Towhey, wrote in his book Mayor Rob Ford: Uncontrollable that “Doug is a physical bully. He can be quick to anger, and, when opposed, puffs himself up and attempts direct intimidation—threatening physical violence, or some form of retribution or retaliation.”
Given that track record of lying and bullying, it’s hardly surprising that his slate of candidates would think they could get away with anything under his leadership. Under Ford’s leadership it is clear that the rules don’t matter and the truth is irrelevant. But this is no way to govern the province of Ontario. In fact, it is no way to govern at all. Ford’s actions are a reflection that he is not fit for the job and lacks real experience in not only governance, financial decision making but upholding the public good.
One of his candidates even thought it was okay to pay actors to pretend to be Doug Ford supporters outside a leaders’ debate in Toronto.
In late April, Ford broke basic election rules by attending a fundraising dinner. Under the new rules, supported by the Conservative Party, leaders can’t attend such fundraisers, to avoid allegations of buying access to the leader.
Ford claimed he didn’t know it was a fundraiser, and threw the organizers of the dinner under the bus by blaming them for not telling him. Cowardice.
With just days to go before Ontario voters can begin casting their ballot at the advance polls, there are just too many ethical questions hanging over Doug Ford and his Conservative party to trust any of them with leading the provincial government, let alone this province.
They simply can’t be trusted.