Ontario Premier Doug Ford laughs as Finance Minister Vic Fedeli presents the 2019 budget at the legislature in Toronto in April 2019.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn
There’s an apparent emerging Doug Ford doctrine in Ontario of short-term gain for long-term pain. It threatens to embed long-term structural costs for the province and its taxpayers.
In a political dispute with Ottawa, Doug Ford’s Ontario government has stopped funding legal aid for refugee claimants. This 2017 photo shows a young asylum seeker being held by an RCMP officer and her father after crossing the border into Canada from the United States.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson
The recent decision by the Ontario government to drastically cut funds for legal aid will cause hardship for many low-income residents of Ontario and for refugees claimants.
From multiple points of view, the proposed tax-rebate child care plan does not add up.
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An economist who researched and recommended free preschool child care in Ontario says there are multiple reasons why the province’s anticipated child care plan, based on tax credits, is flawed.
Many provinces are focused on constraining the growth of teaching and staffing costs in education. Here, Ontario Premier Doug Ford with United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney, in Calgary, Oct. 5, 2018.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
Here are some key factors of success to consider for western government taking on large projects – following these will help prevent the routine fails we often see.
Early intervention could make a difference. Here, protestors gather at Queen’s Park in Toronto on March 7, 2019 to protest changes to Ontario’s autism program.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn
An inclusive education researcher says the government’s consolation plan to boost school funding for autism services with no investment in early childhood education flies in the face of evidence.
There are lots of losers in Doug Ford’s Ontario. Who are the winners?
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
The very short list of winners, and a growing list of losers, in Doug Ford’s Ontario does not bode well for the government’s political future – or the province.
In 2016, parents protested the previous Ontario Liberal government’s decision to cut therapy for autistic children aged five and older. Moves by Ontario’s Conservative government have also raised concerns.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
An autism policy researcher and the mother of an affected child weighs in on the recent changes announced to the Ontario Autism Program.
Wiarton Willie, pictured with Premier Doug Ford
on Groundhog Day, cannot yet predict what Ontario may do to full-day kindergarten.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Doug Ball
Nine years in from its start date, full-day kindergarten is doing its job laying foundational learning for the future of individual children and the province at large.
In 2017, Saskatchewan’s auditor general showed that a private pay MRI program actually increased wait times for scans rather than the promised reduction. Here, an MRI machine is prepared at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital on May 1, 2018.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
A two-tier, for-profit health-care system will not end “hallway medicine” in Ontario or elsewhere; evidence from around the world shows that private payment increases wait times for the majority.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford arrives to speak in Toronto on Dec. 12, 2018.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn
Ontario’s premier is drawing faulty parallels between Franco-Ontarians and Anglo-Quebecers when it comes to the services available to them in each province.
The Ontario government tabled legislation Dec.6 which would increase the number of young children who can be cared for at once by home child care providers. The proposed legislation is as part of larger reform measures introduced under the Restoring Ontario’s Competitiveness Act that the province says will cut red tape for businesses.
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Low-income, less-educated parents with non-standard work schedules rely most on home child-care providers whose rules would be relaxed under proposed legislation.
Steel mills, like this one in Hamilton, Ont. emit greenhouse gases. Ontario must reduce its emissions from 161 megatonnes to 143 megatonnes by 2030.
haglundc/flickr
Ontario’s new environment plan scores poorly on conservative ethos.
Ontario PC leadership candidate Tanya Granic Allen arrives to participate in a debate in Ottawa in February 2018. Granic Allen was supported by the Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), and the organization said it recruited more than 9,000 PC memberships in support of her campaign to became the premier of Ontario.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
Christian right groups in Canada may not have the same resources as their American counterparts. They are, nonetheless, attracting supporters by borrowing some U.S. tactics.
Québec Premier Francois Legault, left, exchanges hockey jerseys with Ontario Premier Doug Ford at Queens Park, in Toronto on Nov. 19, 2018. Ford’s recent cuts to francophone services in Ontario haven’t spawned nearly the media outrage that Québec language moves have.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young)
To read English-Canadian media, you would think that Québec’s anglophones are under greater threat than the rest of the country’s minority language communities. Why the selective outrage?
Ontario Environmental Commissioner Dianne Saxe released her annual environmental report on Nov. 13, 2018.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn)
Premier Doug Ford’s proposal to downgrade Ontario’s environmental watchdog is bad news for the environment, public health and safety, and evidence-based decision-making.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks at an anti-carbon-tax rally in Calgary, in October 2018.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh)
In order to address a warming planet over the medium and long-term, climate policy must be designed to be adaptable and indeed attractive to those across the political spectrum.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks to supporters at Ford Fest in Vaughan, Ont., in September 2018.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Conservative govenment is showing interventionist tendencies that undermine its free-market claims.
Doug Ford on the campaign trail in May 2018, promising to “open” Ontario for business. His Bill 47 does nothing of the sort.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tara Walton
Threats by two of Canada’s newest premiers to invoke the notwithstanding clause send a clear message to the federal Liberals: Ontario and Quebec do not play by the rules.