All it does is add 6 months. A blessed six months.
Premier Doug Ford used a tool that no other premier in Ontario’s history has ever used to override Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And he did it for no other reason than to help himself in the upcoming provincial election.
If it weren’t such a violation of our fundamental rights, it would be just pathetic.
And that amounts to saying: “I know I’m trampling on your rights — but I don’t care.”
The government is trying to paint this as “legislation to protect the individual rights of Ontario voters” and protect elections from “big-money political influence.”
But Ontarians won’t fall for that any more than Superior Court Justice Ed Morgan did when he struck down the law,
noting that “skepticism of (the) government’s motives is not misplaced where new election procedures are concerned.”
Ford is clearly curtailing how much Working Families can spend trashing him and his PCs in the lead-up to next June’s election.
But it will almost certainly have far wider ramifications and curtail what charities, environmental groups, businesses and others can spend on public information campaigns in the year before a vote.
Ford showed how little he cares about the rights of others or the consequences of his dictatorial tendencies in 2018 when he rushed to the notwithstanding clause as soon as a judge said he couldn’t slash Toronto council in the middle of an election campaign. A higher court overturned that decision so he didn’t have to follow through.
“Invoking the notwithstanding clause, though, means that everyone’s rights are now in danger.
Ford stated plainly that he ‘won’t be shy’ about going there again if his will is thwarted. His theory of democracy is simple: I got elected, so I get my way. Full stop.
“Who will be the next group to be brushed aside, their charter rights disrespected and disregarded? Presumably it will be whoever gets in Ford’s way, especially any group that manages to persuade a court that their rights have been infringed.”
To make things worse, this is just one of the ways he’s tried to manipulate the system in his party’s favour.
His government revived the discredited cash-for-access system and offers up ministers to those who can afford to pay $1,000-a-person for dinner or, lately, a Zoom sign-in. That works in the PCs’ favour so it’s presumably an acceptable form of “big-money political influence,” while unions running ads criticizing the government somehow is not.
The government also doubled individual maximum political donations to $3,300 a year and the PC party found ways to double what well-heeled donors can donate.