The media are accustomed to the whiff of corruption in government, but when the thuggish regime of Premier Doug Ford continues to take perverse, sadistic pleasure in dishing out injury and extracting revenge almost five years into its reign of error, the reaction from the Disenfranchised Majority in Ontario can only be visceral anger.

Leave it to Ford to concoct a $2.1 billion budget surplus and apply the money to a token, inconsequential reduction in long-term debt (from $382 billion to $380 billion, or 0.52% of the total), then decide the homeless, the mentally ill and the most desperate are no longer entitled to healthcare.

That Ford has the gall to act like he has a burr under his wazoo when he experiences delicate pushback for these outrages is an admission of guilt. It is projection, fake fruit for display purposes only, schoolboy deceptions from a 58-year-old premier suffering from an amoral imbalance. Would Doug approve a lead smelter on the Toronto waterfront for the price of a campaign contribution?

Throwing acid on how Ontario fundamentally governs itself at Queen’s Park, at city councils and in relations with the federal Liberals, Ford is a politician who makes his friends richer and retains power by ginning up populist appeal. It is one hell of a story arc that lacks an expiration date.

Not surprisingly, Ford and followers have earned the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party an “F” grade from Democracy Watch.

If only the watch dogs had any teeth.

Instead, the province’s institutions are missing in action: the Integrity Commissioner, the Ontario Provincial Police, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, various high court panels and a blatantly negligent if not collusive media have smoothed the way for Ford’s seemingly prima facie contraventions of two sections of Part IV of the Criminal Code applying to Offences Against the Administration of Law and Justice.

The OPP is a player on many stages in the Ford drama: policing public protests and fielding private prosecutions are two of them. As recently as mid-March, Ontario’s Court of Appeal halted a class action legal challenge to OPP’s strategy and tactics during FN blockades in Caledonia in 2020.

The action might have compelled an OPP inspector to sit down for questioning by an adversarial lawyer — horrors — to shed light on the troubled force’s actions during the stalemate. The testimony might have offered an explanation for the OPP’s monstrous failures during the Freedom Convoy debacle in Ottawa. Instead, score it another successful Ford evasion from accountability delivered by a court.

Democracy Watch gave the Ford PC government an “F” grade in 2022 because of 25 seriously unethical and undemocratic actions listed below. Ford and his minions, rejected by 58.2% of voters last time out, weren’t open, accountable, ethical, honest, efficient or representative, they said.

“Ford’s dozens of seriously unethical, secretive and undemocratic actions in the past four years, and a negligently bad election platform, show clearly that if the PC Party wins the election we’re in for another four years of wasteful, dishonest, unethical, secretive, unrepresentative government,” said a prescient Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch.

Ford is a self-described champion of landowners, developers (and their tradespeople), police/fire, motorists, fellow Conservatives and Donald Trump.

He and his 82 ethically challenged, blindly loyal MPPs are five cheesecakes deep into cronyism, hyperpartisanship, nepotism, graft and misappropriation. To say Bully Boy Ford and his CPC Party is comprised of horrible individuals who do not care about people is an understatement that would shock no rational, objective observer.

Nevertheless, consumers of news everywhere (but Twitter) see Doug as the untouchable Golden Boy of Aw-shucks Populism, doing his best to bring Ontario’s budget “back to balance” by squeezing public health and education workers.

PressProgress, Crier Media, the Twitter ClusterFord, advocacy groups such as Democracy Watch and Environmental Defence and a frustratingly short list of little-known news outlets have enumerated the long list of Ford’s blows against democracy and the rule of law. Below is a subjective Top 10:

• refusal to disclose Cabinet members’ mandate letters;
• the creation of fake news service Ontario News Now;
• attempting to appoint the Premier’s grossly unqualified friend, Ron Taverner, to head the OPP;
• abuse of Minister’s Zoning Orders;
• misappropriation of federal Covid funds;
• glaring support to builders in the form of revoked environmental regulation;
• shielding political chicanery from accountability through self-serving statutes;
• granting anti-democratic mayoral powers in Toronto and Ottawa;
• extending restrictions on third-party activism in pre-election periods;
• more “powerful paycheques” for the men in police and fire, but suppression of wages of women in the fields of health and education via resort to the notwithstanding clause.

The final bullet point is irrefutable proof the Ontario provincial government is run by a sociopath with mother issues, fixated on the wage suppression of the female-dominated professions of nursing and teaching.

In the case of OPP’s Taverner, Ford quickly fired the OPP deputy commissioner, Brad Blair, for questioning the appointment. “This is what abuse of power looks like in 2019,” said Blair’s lawyer at the time.

This is a politician who runs the jurisdiction like a fiefdom, as if a CEO accountable to a small board of unelected directors.

There are striking parallels elsewhere of misappropriation that exacts a price when revealed. Hall of Fame NFL quarterback Brett Favre is under investigation in connection with a Mississippi scandal involving the alleged diversion of about $77 million in welfare funds, some of which built an athletic centre that benefited the former thrower’s daughter. It is possibly sack time for Favre as a respected athlete.

But Ford’s misappropriation of an exponentially larger collection of funds in the billions earmarked for Covid, suspicious rezonings for developer pals and shady P3 collaborations with business cronies that fail to materialize barely rate a mention in the press of backwater Ford Nation.

Ontarians don’t even benefit from viewing the RICO premier captive in a chair, submitting to a prolonged, one-on-one interview. No one sees the eye drift of a Ford faced with explaining away his gaffes, lies and racketeering, not even on the provincial broadcaster, TVO.

Even though there’s enough breaking of convention by Ford to fill an entire season of public affairs documentaries, Global News is honing its journalistic chops on Beijing election interference hearsay that wouldn’t qualify for insertion in a courtroom exhibit book.

Global, Thomson’s Globe and Mail and the Trudeau-averse Andrew Coyne have decided there is a grand conspiracy of Chinese money and influence compromising the Canadian government and the broader political system.

It is reasonable to question whether private/corporate ownership of the media has become fundamentally incompatible with democracy. No matter your politics, nobody could have predicted the press would turn into lap dogs for the Racketeer of the Pink Palace.

But the press has worked out a new rationalization for Fordism: he’s cute in an inept way, an inspiration for pampered, white, middle-aged mediocrities everywhere, even if he needs cue cards at parties.

Then there is the slow-moving OPP. The December 2022 request for an OPP investigation into Ford’s sudden Greenbelt carve-out by advocacy groups Environmental Defence and Democracy Watch awaits a decision.

The advocacy groups claim that developers were tipped off on the province’s plans to accommodate the building of more homes by removing about 7,400 acres from 15 sites within the Greenbelt.

Consensus among experts and opposition politicians indicates there is sufficient serviceable land in the Greater Golden Horseshoe to provide hundreds of thousands, possibly a million homes, without subdividing the Greenbelt.

Perhaps advisers should have told Doug the “green” in Greenbelt means plants, not money. But then one gets the sense El Corrupto was confronted by an intelligent person at an early age and the shock has never subsided.

“It defies reason that the people doing these transactions didn’t know the land was going to be opened up. So it’s up to the OPP to find out how they knew,” said a spokesman for Environmental Defence.

The provincial police’s anti-rackets branch has been poking around the tawdry Greenbelt saga since mid-December. It has yet to determine if there is any evidence to support a full-blown investigation after almost four months.

One wonders whether the cops are able to conduct title searches and locate parcel registers. An outfit named Teranet has operated the Electronic Registration System for land in the Province of Ontario since, oh, 1991.

The irony is Canada ranks very highly among all nations of the world for the propriety of its laws. The OECD actually ranks Canada as at the top of one list: No other developed state in the world has better anti-corruption laws.

But Canada is also at the bottom of the OECD’s list for enforcement. Canada is exemplary in saying the right thing, and even committing those things to the law. But the country has a terrible track record in enforcing those laws.

The media under-reacts to Ford on everything he does. The media is under-reacting to his assault on healthcare. And the OPP is under-reacting to the Greenbelt deals. And the public reacts ineffectively, as if someone jabbed a needle full of tranquilizer into the province’s collective forearm.

Fact is, Ontario is presenting as 10.7 million registered voters stuck on an escalator, while Israelis revive Sixties-style protests by calling a general strike to counter RW interference in their own justice system.

Under “Corruption and Disobedience, Bribery of judicial officers, etc.”, the Canadian Criminal Code says this:

119 (1) Every one is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years who,

(a) being the holder of a judicial office, or being a member of Parliament or of the legislature of a province, directly or indirectly, corruptly accepts, obtains, agrees to accept or attempts to obtain, for themselves or another person, any money, valuable consideration, office, place or employment in respect of anything done or omitted or to be done or omitted by them in their official capacity, or

(b) directly or indirectly, corruptly gives or offers to a person mentioned in paragraph (a), or to anyone for the benefit of that person, any money, valuable consideration, office, place or employment in respect of anything done or omitted or to be done or omitted by that person in their official capacity.”

Evidently, the OPP can’t figure out how to apply this clearly written law to the facts. Perhaps a ClusterFord item offers some backstory. The Godfather of QP, only a few months in office, was in receipt of this offering from the OPP:

“An off-the-books, tricked-out van supplied to Ford via the OPP is equipped with 12 extra options valued at $50,000, including a mini-fridge, a 32-inch television with Blu-ray player, a leather power reclining sofa bench, four swivel chairs and desks.”

No wonder Ford can’t quite shake a reputation for populist corruption in office — it’s been the hallmark of vulture politicians in many a poor backwater on both sides of the border, welling up in both Alberta and Louisiana way back in the Dirty Thirties of the 20th Century.

Appeals to the Depression downtrodden by charismatic, truthy politicians who portrayed progressives as sinful elites and small-C conservatives as the salt of the earth could win elections back then (and do now, in 2023).

William “Bible Bill” Aberhart (eight years as Alberta premier) and Gov. Huey “The Kingfish” Long (seven years as Louisiana governor, later senator) were well-known practitioners of the populist arts who emerged from both regions to confound traditional centrist politicians. Those who saw politics as the “art of the possible” in the service of equality and fraternity frequently lost at the ballot box to charlatans who would divide, conquer, then later share the spoils with close friends only.

PM William Lyon Mackenzie King in Ottawa and US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Washington were both harassed by populists. As is Justin Trudeau by Doug Ford, Pierre Poilievre et al., of Canada.

The Albertan Aberhart died in office, but Long, a self-proclaimed “hick” who rose from nothing but then got carried away with power and ego, (reminiscent of the current Ontario demagogue known for Keeping Calm and Going Snowmobiling), was assassinated.

It was the inimitable conservative populist Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon who, in 1973, embroiled in the Watergate scandal that eventually ended his presidency, said this:

“People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook. I’ve earned everything I’ve got.”

Nobody bought it, except close friends and relatives, and he was out of office in 10 months.

Successors in the populist chain of command and control include Trump (four years in office) and AB Premier Ralph Klein (14 years). Both inevitably wore out their welcomes.

During a deadly pandemic, Premier Doug Ford is wreaking havoc on the province’s most critical institutions, all hinged on a fabricated deficit crisis that justifies a wage freeze in his narrow world view.

Said NDP MP Peter Tabuns on TVO: “I think that we have seen the government approach the Constitution, the Charter of Rights, as a guideline, as a suggestion, rather than something that needs to be respected.  We see a government that seems to be acting on behalf of very well-connected and influential developers, rather than looking out for the interests of people as a whole.”

Meanwhile, against the backdrop of a wide swath of Conservative premiers engaging in documented unethical practices, Pierre Poilievre sidekick Andrew Scheer, “flooding the zone with shit” on the advice of American compatriot Steve Bannon, repeated in the foyer of Parliament Hill March 20 that he thinks PM Trudeau is corrupt.

Scheer thereby confirms Mark Twain was right on the subject of the respective roles of fact and fiction in the public square: “The truth,” he said, “has no defense against a fool determined to believe a lie.”

He could have been speaking about the 40.2% of Ontario voters in the past election who backed the Muskoka Misanthrope and his Basket of 82 Deplorables.