The Doug Ford Monologues are a firehose of half-truths that only his mother and a hyperpartisan Conservative could believe.

There’s the one that says the Greenbelt must be paved over to prepare for vast waves of immigration, a 10-karat gold-plated fake if there ever was one.

Another one from the mendacious crew boss of Ford Nation says Hwy. 413 is a godsend for family togetherness and that a small town named Bradford West Gwillimbury needs a highway bypass to relieve rush-hour gridlock.

The midway sideshow pitchman routine combined with Vegas maitre d’ got him elected twice.

But even the loyalists were doing spit-takes when Ontario’s bargain basement premier, in a total detachment from reality, uttered this Trumpian stunner from a groaning podium this week:

“We have done more for the environment than any other government in Ontario has.”

–– Doug Ford, chaos magnet.

Under Ford’s conspiracy to torpedo the alternative energy sector, Ontario shelved wind turbines and e-vehicle chargers. It then blew $30 million in a futile attempt to block Ottawa’s carbon levy, cracked open the Greenbelt to highways, houses, and gas stations, and brought the evils of Harperism to environmental policy on the UN-designated Niagara Escarpment.

That Doug had the brass to call the federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault “a real piece of work” confirms yet again that Ford’s schtick is closer to that of a corporation-raiding greed merchant of the 1980s than a 21st Century Man of the People; think of an overweight Gordon Gekko engineering a hostile takeover in the 1987 movie blockbuster, Wall Street.

But instead of buying out a business, Ford, in two elections, won himself vicarious ownership of a province of a million square kilometers in an area that he can break off into parts and redistribute to friends in the Ford Nation Network.

I suppose one of the defining issues of the era is the environment; in that case, the fact the Muskoka Climate Denier broke bread with Greenbelt land developer/promoters at his daughter’s wedding is prima facie evidence that he defaults to asphalt over agriculture eight days a week.

No doubt Doug’s boorish reaction to Trudeau’s eco-minister as a “piece” of something was a reflexive reaction to Guilbeault’s job title. “Climate” and “change” don’t comport with the politics of 21st Century Conservative Party fossil fools.

For the record, Ford’s imbecilic and often epic failures demonstrate that his new claim to Eco-Warrior status is standard PR bluster, as shown by this ClusterFord rewind.

Call it Thirty-Nine Red Flags Over Ontario, but without the amusement park allure:

🚩July 2018, his second month in office, Ford unilaterally terminated electric and hydrogen vehicle incentives, a clear breach of contract with Tesla and other e-vehicle makers; the move would be described later as “unjustified targeting” and “egregious and unlawful” by an Ontario Superior Court 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 had an option to mitigate the environmental impact of blasting the controversial four- to six-lane multi-billion dollar Hwy 413 through the Greenbelt, but instead stunned environmental groups by choosing a route across the headwaters of the Humber River and through the Nashville Conservation Reserve, the last contiguous Greenbelt forest in Vaughan.

🚩 Ford’s monstrously stupid dismantling of hundreds of renewable energy projects in 2018 looks worse in 2023. The inevitable shutdown of the 52-year-old Pickering nuclear reactor, which powers 14% of the province, means a considerable capacity gap will be met by resorting to dirty gas plants closed by the predecessor Liberals. The director of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance says the low-cost renewable power capacity Doug demolished will need to be replaced by a system powered by greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuels.

🚩Replacing a power gap in electricity generation once the aging Pickering nuclear plant closes has critics saying the province didn’t get the memo on the growing dangers of extreme climate; four of six thermal plants meant to make up the wattage shortfall will be fired by natural gas.

(In its recent budget, the government supports refurbishments at the Darlington and Bruce nuclear facilities and the “continued safe operation” of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station to 2026).

🚩 In April 2019, Ford paused all capital funding for a proposed high-speed train corridor connecting Toronto and Windsor, a move opposition critics said would derail the project. “We’re dealing with financial difficulty within this province,” said the transportation minister of the time. “We’re dealing with a deficit and huge debt, so we want to make sure we’re going to make the right investments going forward.”

The Liberals promised trains would travel up to 250 km per hour, cutting travel times between Toronto and Windsor from four hours to two. However, the deficit at $11.7B was cited as justification for the pull-out; in reality, the Wynne red ink was only $3.7B, an incredible $8B overstatement/lie.

🚩The belligerent Ford plans to bulldoze the 68.2-km, $7.5B to $10B Hwy 413/Bradford Bypass through the Greenbelt, contrary to expert advice and public opinion. Frank Graves’ EKOS firm showed 74% of 905’ers oppose Hwy 413 in a Dec 2021 poll; updated May 2022, 48% of Ontarians oppose the project, while only 23% support it. The Ontario Society of Professional Engineers condemned the project in a blog post on May 31, 2022.

The Toronto Star reported on April 18, 2022, that a less ecologically destructive alignment was rejected because it would have cut a 170-meter wide swath through a potential subdivision promoted by Fabio Mazzocco’s Argo Developments, a Ford-friendly home builder in a high-end community of Kleinburg.

Despite warnings the GTA West 400-series highway would lose local political support if it knifed through the hinterland, the premier continues to promote the project. Residents suspect the road is being built to accommodate Ford-connected business interests. “Nothing sits right with me on this whole thing,” said a Vaughan councilor. “How do you decide to go through a conservation reserve?”

🚩Conservation authorities have said Hwy 413 would raze 2,000 acres of farmland, cut across 85 waterways and pave nearly 400 acres of protected Greenbelt in Vaughan while disrupting 220 wetlands and the habitats of 10 at-risk species. The Bradford Bypass would bisect the Holland Marsh and cross 28 Lake Simcoe waterways yet is exempt from environmental review.

🚩 April 5, 2022, Minister of Greenbelt Highways Caroline Mulroney awards the first contracts for bridge construction along the controversial Bradford Bypass. The transport boss ludicrously contends that the artery will relieve congestion in the Town of Bradford West Gwillimbury, a little-known lower-tier municipality of only 38,100 ranked 29th by population in Ontario.

🚩Large developers, many of them prolific political donors, collectively own at least 3,100 acres of prime real estate near the proposed Bradford Bypass and stand to benefit if the highway is built.

Five developers have close ties to Ford’s government through insiders and former party officials now acting as lobbyists. One of those lobbyists was the chair of Transportation Minister Mulroney’s 2018 PC leadership campaign.

🚩 Ford’s contention that E-car rebates subsidized millionaires are yet another blustery belch from the bellowing buffoon; the discounts applied only to vehicles with a sticker price below $60,000, roughly the average price of a new car in Canada.

🚩Ontario Auditor Bonnie Lysyk issues five reports blaming environmental failures on MZOs issued without review. Ford gave 44 MZOs between March 2019 and March 2021 (the previous rate was one per year). 39% of MZOs went to seven select developers.

MZOs have been granted in 14 environmentally sensitive areas since 2018. Ford has issued 80-plus MZOs since taking power in 2018, approving six MZOs in January 2022 alone in Toronto, Richmond Hill, Brampton, and Innisfil.

🚩Ford violated the Mining Act, granting eight drilling permits on FN Grassy Narrows territory without consulting the Indigenous community.

🚩Over FN objections, Ontario introduces remote digital staking of mineral claims on Grassy Narrows territory.

🚩 Ford’s legendarily empty quest for those elusive “efficiencies” sees the creation of the Ontario Land Tribunal, merging four land panels: the Conservation Review Board, Environmental Review Tribunal, Local Planning Appeal Tribunal, and the Mining and Lands Tribunal, helping developers cronies with one-stop shopping for zoning variances.

🚩In Trump style, Ford appoints a Greenbelt opponent to the Greenbelt Council, Harris-era PC MPP Norm Sterling. Conservative David Crombie, former Toronto mayor, quits the Greenbelt Council over reckless Ford environmental policies.

🚩 October 31, 2018, Ford repudiates an existing cap and trade climate alliance with Quebec and California covering almost 63 million clean-energy consumers; the decision killed $100 million in school energy retrofits and will cause the province to forfeit $3 billion over three years and raised gas prices 4.4 cents/liter.

🚩 Ford’s Bill 197, the over-ambitiously titled COVID-19 Economic Recovery Act, used the premise of economic growth to tear up environmental protections and prevent Ontarians from having a say on significant projects.

It was terrible statute construction: first, it freed up an expansion in MZO use; second, the devious premier failed to post the changes for public comment until after his moves became law. Said the Court: “These are amendments that manifestly could have a significant impact on the environment, and there is nothing in the record to support the reasonableness of the decision not to post (a draft act for public input).”

🚩More than 800 solar power installations dismantled by Ford shortly after his June 2018 election triggered a minimum of $231 million in cost judgments against the province.

🚩 Ford’s disastrous March 2019 budget slashed 50% of flood management funds from conservation authorities in a mind-boggling move signaling the premier’s stance on the climate crisis; funding was cut from $7.4 million to $3.7 million annually, even as Toronto had suffered severe flooding only eight months earlier.

🚩Ford eliminated the independent environmental commissioner’s office, established in 1994, and moved it into the attorney general’s office in Mar 2019; the move means oversight will be monitored through a value-for-money lens.

🚩 “Ontario Proud,” the right-wing Facebook viral meme-maker, political advocacy group, and third-party advertiser formed by Jeff Ballingall, instrumental in Ford’s takedown of the Wynne Liberals in 2018, was aided by $460,000 in corporate donations from a group of housing developers. Suspected payback is opening up thousands of acres of Greenbelt along Hwy 413 and the Bradford Bypass to residential housing.

🚩The anti-teacher, pro-Ford “Vaughan Working Families” has ties to the DeGasperis family, billionaire developers, and well-connected Conservatives lobbying Ford to build Highway 413. Prominent lobby group members include Cortellucci, De Meneghi, Fieldgate, Mazzocco, Marotta, Guglietta, and Di Poce.

🚩Working for his developer friends, Ford used Covid legislation to ram through MZO riders. He was revoked when found “unreasonable and unlawful” by an Ontario Superior Court judge in Greenpeace v. Ontario (Min. of Environment) in Sept 2021.

🚩 In April 2019, Ford eliminated the Drive Clean auto emission testing program that annually kept 335 tonnes of pollutants out of the air.

🚩Greg Rickford, Ontario’s Minister of Northern Development and Indigenous Affairs, raised concerns that Canada’s approach to establishing Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs) has encroached upon Ontario jurisdiction and requested that Canada include the province at the “earliest stages of discussions.” A report in The Narwhal speculated the area is concerned IPCAs will affect its plans in Ontario’s Ring of Fire, a region the provincial government is seeking to turn into a mining hotspot.

🚩CBC reported Ford’s updated 2022 pre-election environmental plan at least acknowledged its targets contain zero impact from the greater uptake of electric vehicles. (The dim premier unplugged the E-vehicle sector in July 2018). The subsidies accounted for approx. 15% of projected cuts to carbon dioxide emissions in the government’s original smoke & mirrors plan released in 2018.

🚩Also missing from the new environmental forecast: is any mention of the $400 million Ontario Carbon Trust, touted by Ford in 2018 as a significant source of emissions reductions through clean tech development. The Trust never materialized and was likely another dog & pony show, never intended to be a viable operation.

🚩Ford campaigned in 2022 as a champion of E-vehicles, hoping voters forget that in 2018 the pro-car ideologue scrapped an existing, LPC-developed incentive program that provided up to $14,000 for the purchase of an e-car. Such incentives exist in eight provinces and territories but not in Ford Nation.

🚩Ford ended a $2.5 million incentive program that helped homeowners install car charging equipment.

🚩The Ford government deleted the Ontario Building Code’s electric vehicle charging station requirements.

🚩Mario Cortellucci, the influential player in right-wing Italian politics known to wield insider influence on Ford, is granted five MZOs; on March 4, 2022 order requested by Cortel Group authorizes the development of approximately three million square feet of industrial buildings on former agricultural land.

🚩As noted above, Ford squandered $30 million in legal fees in his futile Supreme Court challenge to Ottawa’s carbon levy. He also blew another $4 million attacking the carbon pricing system in a crass media campaign showing nickels spilling out of a gas pump. Mar 2021, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada rules Trudeau’s carbon pricing regime is constitutional.

🚩 June 3, 2021, Ford quietly announces a new Blue Box system, a back-of-the-envelope, made-in-Ontario mishmash that has waste management veterans and environmental consultants complaining about another Ford idea leveraging ideology, influence, and ignorance; the payoff is Ford plans to extricate the province and its cities from the $2.8 billion recycling collection industry and hand it over to the private sector within four years.

🚩May 2020, Ontario Superior Court overturns Ford’s cancellation of the Nation Rise wind energy project near Cornwall; the revocation was “unreasonable” and “procedurally unfair.”

🚩In Mar 2022. A 540-hectare (two sq. miles) strip along Lake Ontario was set aside for employment, housing, and preserving environmentally sensitive lands. The province abruptly terminated it, which said the land would instead be assessed by its newest program, the Centre of Realty Excellence (CORE), announced in the pre-election fake budget in late April 2022.

🚩Ford waits almost 46 months into his 48-month majority first term to pledge $75 million (over the next three years) to restore passenger train service on the existing Toronto/Timmins track, then blames former non-Tory regimes for the current bus-only access to the top of the province.

🚩Ford is embracing advanced recycling of plastic waste through melting the material; the technology is akin to incineration, said environmentalists in a March 2020 release. In typical Ford M.O., the province is crafting regulations for advanced recycling facilities that would exempt some projects from environmental assessments; critics say the process is experimental, potentially harmful, and requires more public oversight, not less.

🚩A local business association in Windsor-Essex said the city is losing out on a $2.5-billion plant from LG Chem, a Korean chemical company, because the region doesn’t have the electrical capacity needed to host the facility, in part due to Ford’s decision to rip out the alternative power installations.