Doug Ford isn’t “for the little guy” – he’s a mercenary for the   
   millionaire class   
      
      
   A surging NDP can defeat Canada’s Trump – whose folksy act is a front for   
   an assault on working people and the environment   
      
   A recent episode perfectly captures the appeal of Ontario Tory leader Doug   
   Ford. Asked about a delayed mining plan in the province’s north, this is how   
   he answered: “If I have to hop on a bulldozer myself, we’re going to start   
   building roads..it    
   will benefit local people but it is also going to benefit everyone in   
   Ontario.”  The statement quickly went viral.   
      
   In a single gesture, witness the dizzying acrobatics of right-wing populism.   
   There’s the posture of an unflinching maverick, spitting on his hands and   
   getting the job done.  There’s the plain-spoken concern for the common man   
   and woman.  And then    
   there’s the actual result: a resource scheme that would enrich multinational   
   corporations – who’d help themselves to a 10-year tax holiday – while   
   trampling Indigenous rights and razing one of the last intact wild areas in   
   Canada.   
      
   The spectacle has nevertheless dazzled most of the media. The result has been   
   the frequent amplification of Doug Ford’s claim to be an outsider, in   
   alliance with the “little guy,” crusading against the elite – the ones   
   he says “drink champagne    
   with their pinkies in the air.”   
      
   Never mind that he inherited a multi-million dollar business from his father,   
   a conservative politician. Never mind that he has coasted on the political   
   machinery of his brother, former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. Never mind that he   
   spent years as a city    
   counsellor trying to dismantle public services, has surrounded himself with   
   Stephen Harper’s closest advisors, and is now advancing policies that would   
   be a Trump-like giveaway to the wealthiest. Half-baked denunciations of the   
   elite are apparently    
   enough to eclipse an entire career of fealty to them.   
      
   The clucking by the pundit and political class about Ford “being unfit for   
   office” has only fed his image as an anti-elite populist. Lying, griping   
   about rigged elections, lurching through gross lapses of knowledge: each time   
   Ford has acted out, the    
   shrieks have grown louder. But his swaggering defiance of the conventions of   
   the political establishment – of civility, proper procedure, and   
   credentialed authority – isn’t mere buffoonery. Getting attacked for it   
   confirms – just as did for    
   Donald Trump – his supposedly down-to-earth, rebellious status.   
      
   In case the pundits missed it: this is a pissed-off political moment. People   
   want to vote for rebels – and care less and less how politicians are   
   supposed to talk and behave.   
      
   They have good reason to be pissed.  Over 15 years of Liberal rule in Ontario,   
   corporate profits have hit record highs while the majority’s standard of   
   living has bottomed out. Energy bills thanks to Hydro privatization are   
   higher, hospital waits are    
   longer, public transit is over-crowded, wages have stagnated, and many   
   struggle to make rent, never mind the distant prospect of owning a home.   
      
   Ontario has the lowest government spending of any province: this is something   
   Premier Wynne dared to boast about. The Liberals have gone through some   
   death-bed conversions, raising the minimum wage in the face of pressure from   
   social movements like the    
   Fight for $15 and Fairness. But it’s too little to alter the slide into   
   deepening economic and racial inequality, or the perception of an aloof,   
   indifferent government.   
      
   So it’s no surprise that when Ford thumbs his nose at the norms of status   
   quo-politics and takes pot-shots at the elite, it resonates. Except he’s   
   chaneling all that anger and discontent not into shaking down the elite, but   
   into shovelling our    
   collective wealth into their hands.   
      
   When it comes to Ford’s stated policies, the bubble of fake populism only   
   grows larger.  A tax-break for low-income earners?  Alongside his roll-back of   
   the new minimum wage, it actually leaves them poorer.  The tax-break for the   
   middle class?  That    
   would in fact benefit the most wealthy.  And those corporations that whinged   
   about a slight increase in worker’s wages?  They’re getting a $1.3 billion   
   giveaway.     
      
   Welcome aboard – you’re being taken for a ride on the corporate gravy   
   train.   
      
   Meanwhile, Ford has offered abundant signs – as Rinaldo Walcott and Naomi   
   Klein detail – that he will scapegoat the most vulnerable.     
      
   He’d restrict abortion access and replace the sex-ed curriculum, scrap a   
   cap-and-trade climate program, and boost a mushrooming police budget.    
   Canada’s white supremacists are cheering him on.  And he’s already been   
   caught conducting backroom talks    
   with real-estate tycoons to open Ontario’s unique green-belt to a fire-sale   
   of reckless development.  So what was that about Ford’s folksiness? Nothing   
   but a front for an assault on working people and the environment.   
      
   The way to win against Ford’s fake populism isn’t to hem and haw about his   
   antics. The way to win is with a real agenda of social justice and   
   redistribution.   
      
   The good news is that Andrea Horwath and the NDP are offering the beginnings   
   of that alternative – and Ontarians are starting to pay attention.   
      
   The party is pledging slightly higher taxes on corporations and the richest to   
   pay for drug and dental coverage, more affordable housing and childcare, and   
   debt relief for students; taking back Hydro into public control; making   
   Ontario a Sanctuary    
   province that provides access to services regardless of immigration status;   
   and ending racist carding by police while destroying the collected data.   
      
   Their program is far from perfect – and comes after years of a rightward   
   slide – but it represents a crucial opportunity to concretely improve the   
   lives of an overwhelming majority of Ontarians, and move the province in the   
   right direction.   
      
   As the NDP surges in the polls, the fear-mongering has already started. The   
   Tories and Liberals are smearing the party as “extremist,” absurdly   
   predicting labour unions will march in “indefinite strikes,” and stoking   
   racist fears about migrants    
   and refugees.     
      
   Expect the warnings about a potential NDP government to reach an apocalyptic   
   pitch: businesses fleeing, the credit rate dropping, a province beset by   
   economic chaos.  It’s just a taste of the corporate pressure that will be   
   applied to the NDP if they    
   win – against which the only counterweight will be organized and assertive   
   social movements.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)