PV Ontario Bureau
The Ontario government’s recent wave of attacks on democratic rights is part of Doug Ford’s ongoing efforts to enrich developers and corporations by cutting workers’ wages and benefits while pushing back advances won by working people.
To carry out their pro-corporate program, Ford’s Conservatives are increasingly using a two-pronged approach: legislative and ministerial blitzes, while undermining parliamentary procedure and regulatory protections; and direct attacks on working-class rights in an attempt to snuff out dissent.
Despite being temporarily overwhelming, the wide-ranging nature of these attacks also serves as a firm foundation upon which labour and the people’s movements can build a broad basis of unity and fightback.
Following their govern-by-decree style of political rule, the Conservatives used the long winter break to prepare a barrage of legislation and ministerial orders which were introduced in late March when the provincial legislature resumed.
This blitz included changes to the rules governing freedom of information (FOI) requests, cuts to post-secondary funding and OSAP, weakening local councils and expanding the role of appointed regional chairs, attacking school board democracy through the imposition of trustee caps and corporate-style executive control, and the implementation of the first Special Economic Zone at Billy Bishop Airport in Toronto.
In addition to shielding his scandal-prone government from further scrutiny and accountability, Ford’s purpose in taking these steps is also to enrich his developer friends by accelerating the drive to privatization while overriding local democratic input.
The Communist Party’s Ontario provincial organizer Jack Copple told PV that Ford has levelled a slew of similar attacks on democratic norms over the years. “These attacks include changing municipal council sizes and ward boundaries, implementing strong mayor powers, taking over democratically elected school boards, and backroom selloffs and preferential rezoning of provincial land.” Copple added that while this blitz tactic has long been a part of Ford’s overall pro-corporate strategy, “this most recent assault marks a qualitative escalation, in an attempt to insulate corporate profits from the growing capitalist crisis.”
Perhaps the centrepiece of Ford’s recent blitz is the provincial takeover of several school boards. Since 2018, Queen’s Park has cut education spending to the tune of billions, continuing to deepen a crisis in public education that was caused and exacerbated by successive governments. Having manufactured that crisis, the government cynically tapped into the justifiable anger it has caused to take over public school boards across the province, overturning democratic input and resistance at the local level. Ford is now taking steps to “solve” the crisis he created, by setting up his appointed Board supervisors to sell millions of dollars of Board owned public lands to his private developer friends.
The second important component of Ford’s strategy is the attack on democratic norms directly, which he carries out to eliminate channels for opposition. In addition to the attacks on local decision making, Ford has waged a war on labour, student, environmental and Indigenous organizations, all to clear the path for corporate profiteering.
“Cutting city councils, use of the notwithstanding clause to attack CUPE education workers on strike in 2022, using Bill 33 to attack and weaken student organizations – these are all done in an attempt to weaken the fightback against his pro-corporate agenda,” says Copple. “Ford even tried to pre-emptively block a Palestine Solidarity rally happening on Al-Quds day in Toronto, a major escalation, in an attempt to weaken and intimidate anti-war voices protesting the Canadian state’s complicity in and profiteering from the US war machine.”
It’s a strategy Ford has used time and again: overwhelming resistance by moving on multiple fronts at once, while also attacking democratic channels for opposition. The idea is to scatter and marginalize the labour and people’s movements, but the breadth of the attacks nonetheless build the basis for broad unity between different struggles, and create opportunities for a mass movement working together toward a people’s agenda.
Copple notes that building the fightback against these anti-democratic attacks means the labour and people’s movements must resist being drawn into disparate, disorienting struggles that pull them different directions.
“The fightback must be built now by linking these struggles together through coordinated, escalating action in workplaces and on the streets. There are recent broad mobilizations that can be built on by labour-community coalitions, including mass demonstrations against Ford’s attacks on OSAP, which must be built on by the labour movement and the OFL. This coordination is even more urgent in light of the looming education sector bargaining happening this fall, with all signs pointing to a strike.
“While Ford’s approach is temporarily overwhelming, it is not insurmountable. In fact, when the resistance has been able to coordinate itself into a genuine mass movement, Ford has been forced to back down, and the working class has been able to defend itself and even make gains. The Communist Party will continue to fight to defend democratic rights, and fight alongside labour and the people’s movements to expand democracy and build workers’ power in Ontario.”
Support working-class media!
If you found this article useful, please consider donating to People’s Voice or purchasing a subscription so that you get every issue of Canada’s leading socialist publication delivered to your door or inbox!
For over 100 years, we have been 100% reader-supported, with no corporate or government funding.
