Ford skipped all 3 pre-election debates in April while Leaders Del Duca, Horwath and Schreiner were displaying the kind of perfect attendance that the truant premier, Master of the Teleprompter but unable to speak off-the-cuff under fire, has rarely if ever attained;
CBC.../2
...Radio's Metro Morning requested election interviews with all 4 major Ontario party leaders, but only Doug Ford, seeking to shield himself from questions and accountability, refuses to appear;
TV Ontario’s Steve Paikin hosts a virtual Covid summit, Jan 10, 2022. Liberals.../3
...NDP and Greens appear, while the Cons skip out like Ford in a late-afternoon Question Period;
Added Paikin on the election trail: “Ford is doing only one event per day, reading his announcements off a teleprompter, and taking only 10 minutes of questions from reporters.../4
It's a peek-a-boo campaign designed to provide as few opportunities to stumble as possible."
July 2018, his second month in office, Ford unilaterally terminates electric and hydrogen vehicle incentives, a clear breach of contract with Tesla et al.; the move would be described later as "unjustified targeting" and "egregious and unlawful" by an Ontario Superior Court.../2
...judge, who orders Ford to pay $125,000 in court costs to multi-billionaire Elon Musk;
Ford the Ideologue pulled E-car vehicle chargers from GO stations in Nov 2018. Ford now wants to build E-cars in Ontario
Ford campaigns as a champion of E-vehicles, hoping voters forget ../3
... that in 2018, the pro-car premier scrapped an existing, Liberal-developed incentive program that provided up to $14,000 for the purchase of an e-car. Such incentives exist in 8 provinces and territories, but not in Ford Nation;
Jan 11, 2022, Education minister Lecce emerges from month-long hibernation/vacation to announce to anxious parents of school-age children that, (a) a mere 2 surgical or cloth masks and 2 rapid antigen tests (RATs) to be supplied, per child; (b) 3,000 HEPA filter units added.../2
...to purported existing 70,000, or roughly one new unit for every 4 schools; (c) limited supply of N95 masks for teachers; (d) families to be notified by local public health units only when school absences hit 30%. Furious reaction to (d) sparks its retraction within hours; /3
Cloth masks supplied to students are ill-fitting and oversized, thin ply, cheaply made; teachers' N95s go out of stock Jan 27, 2022, a mere 16 days after Lecce's school opening presser touting the PPE delivery, even as stats show Ottawa had paid for 80% of spending on Covid../4
Education minister Lecce opts for a #JewHate hashtag in a stunningly offensive Feb 22, 2022 tweet intended to call out anti-Semitism that likely played well in certain area codes;
Ford was a staff pundit on Rebel TV, the Christofascist-friendly, Fox News clone that at the../2
...time employed Postmedia's Brian Lilley and Gavin McInnes, founder of the hate group, the "Proud Boys";
Heather Mallick cites "Lassitude, mendacity and honed incompetence," as hallmarks of the Ford government in a Jan 17/22 column for the Toronto Star;
Postmedia's Ottawa.../3
...Citizen breaks ranks with its libertarian media colleagues in an Apr 2, 2022 editorial, demanding Ford, Elliott and Moore resurrect Covid mandates and stop "harping on about living with Covid and returning to normal.";
The Toronto Star's Bruce Arthur joins in on Apr 4: /4
Ford expands use of Independent Health Facilities (IHFs), non-hospital sites performing surgical operations. Pointing out that 97% of current IHFs are for-profit entities, the Ontario Health Coalition described Ford's privatization push a "bombshell" during a pandemic. It .../2
...predicted IHFs would take only profitable patients, leaving difficult procedures to the public system;
The $10 daycare deal with Ottawa will require Ontario municipalities to promote for-profit operators, the sticking point Ford injected into the prolonged negotiations; .../3
...a condition to signing on to the $10.2 billion in federal funds for early learning and child care, the province demanded the share of for-profit providers grow from 25% to 30% of all licensed daycares. Ford promised subsidies would be flowing to parents by May; the Ontario../4
Toronto lawyer Caryma Sa'd, renowned for thoroughly documenting anti-vaccination protests and challenging whacked-out conspiracy theorist Chris Sky (real surname, Saccoccia), is denied entry to Ford Nation's "public" event May 4; (at a Del Duca event days later, the Liberal .../2
...leader shakes Ms Sa'd's hand and welcomes her attendance);
Hamilton police escalate the bully tactics at a subsequent demonstration at Hamilton airport May 26 at which the intrepid Sa'd appeared, was roughly restrained with wire ties, ticketed for trespassing and later.../3
...released;
May 24, Ford mocked Global's Sean O'Shea in an impromptu, confrontational interview where DoFo was being challenged on his donor invoicing scam from Aug 2021. Doug’s OPP henchmen then roughed up @ConsumerSOS on camera, the evasive premier clearly irked that.../5
Worn out by betting advertising? Thank Doug Ford. On the sly, Ford has made Ontario the largest legal online gaming market in North America;
Only Ontario, Pennsylvania, Michigan, West Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, and Connecticut permit online gaming;
The Criminal Code../2
..bans computer-based wagering, so Doug’s iGaming is walking a fine line. The iGO regime has not yet been tested or confirmed by the courts. The pressing question therefore is whether the iGO regime will face legal challenge and, if so, whether this new model would be found .../3
...to be compliant with the Code;
The base annual fee for commercial gaming websites is $100,000 per site, and for suppliers of gaming equipment and services the base annual fee is $3,000 per year;
iGaming Ontario currently estimates the online gaming market in Ontario to ...