Maybe Doug Ford won't be so bad.

[CanSocDem]

I've just been listening to his first press conference and like a good populist reformer, he's saying all the right things. I do confess to being skeptical, if not outright hostile to the idea of him becoming a premier. He led a historically conservative political party, he was the brother of the last great political poseur of Ontario, and for some reason I jumped on the "He's a drug dealer..." bandwagon. Having thought about it, and mentally reviewed all the 'drug dealers' I've known over the years, I'm beginning to think that being a former drug dealer is a good thing. Ninety-nine percent of them are People Persons; they just want to help people to feel good.

And they see the scam of 'Modern Medicine' and the reality of an unjust economy. They don't go out starting fights.

Out here in the heartland, we've had it worse. We handed over a well functioning social democracy to a bunch of Free Market ideologues 2 decades ago and they all think the wealth of the province is because of them.....you know, the 'born on third base' analogy.

We're waiting for them to fail...

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[True Dough]

1. Wishful thinking

We can revisit this thread in a year's time. I'm sure you'll be shaking your head for even suggesting Ford might not be so bad.

Wynne was a disaster in many ways, but similar to the U.S. where people were fed up with the status quo, handing over the reins to a populist yahoo promising to shake things up isn't the solution. It just gets worse in many ways.

[Saviolo]

2. Doug Ford isn't the disaster that, say, Trump is.

But he's still going to be a disaster, long-term.

And a lot of people won't notice the disaster because it won't affect them directly, but his conservative party is going to roll back sex ed in classrooms to pre-1995, just to keep references to homosexuality and trans identities out, leaving more kids confused, scared, and deeper in the closet. That's dangerous. Also, you can expect cuts to health care and education to fund his tax cuts. He's going to follow his brother's example of "Let's find efficiencies!" and when he discovers that those "efficiencies" add up to next to nothing, he's going to start cutting.

We can probably expect something similar to Mike Harries/Ernie Eaves.

[CanSocDem]

3. And Andrea Horvath is no Hillary...

...so at least you'll have a few sensible voices in government- unlike the USA.


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[Nitram]

4. "99% of drug dealers are people persons who just want to help people feel good?" Right!

I've known pot dealers who might fit that category, but most drug pushers I've come into contact with are pure and simple salesmen and business people. If they are selling meth, heroin, or cocaine, they count on the addictive properties of the drug to provide a reliable market. They are interested in only one thing: profit. If good salesmen are people persons, than they are that, too, but they aren't in it to make people feel good. If they were, they'd be taking a far smaller cut.

[Saviolo]

5. Well, that didn't take long:

Doug Ford wants Toronto Pride to include police in parade before he attends.

Link to tweet

A parade that he and his brother never attended (always up at their cottage) even when the police WERE marching.