Week 123.
Elder Advice has been holding his tongue.
He thought readers would be impressed with the restraint he has shown these past two months, in the face of spiralling violence in the West Bank, global heat waves and wildfires, continued attacks on civilians in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the Nigerien coup d’etat. And with his silence in the face of the latest criminal charges against Trump, the inanity of Justin’s cabinet re-shuffle, the shooting of two Subway employees in Atlanta for putting too much mayonnaise in a sandwich (really), the failure of the Nova Scotia Small Claims Court to resolve the dispute between two groups of grown men both calling themselves “The Pirates of Halifax”(also, really) the threatened UFC-style Musk/Zuckerberg fight and untold other provocations. All crying out for adult intervention. And Elder Advice.
But you all knew something would eventually require a tongue-lashing.
A favourite client of mine is a hopelessly paranoid nuclear physicist. “I have discovered atomic particles are completely untrustworthy” he once confided to me, “they make up everything.”
I thought of that client and that confidence over the past several days as news of yet another political scandal dominates the Ontario news cycle.
The Greenbelt is a two million acre buffer around the Greater Toronto/Hamilton area. It is hardly a novel concept. Many forward-thinking jurisdictions have instituted similar plans to limit urban sprawl, protect environmentally sensitive areas and dwindling farmland, and promote a reimagining of what is “reasonable” living space. So we might move away from the North American notion of entitlement to housing with multiple stories and garages and toward the modest European model of housing with multiple units and families.
“We won’t touch the Greenbelt” Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford promised during the last provincial election campaign. “Promises made, promises kept.” he was also wont to say. Had Ford been both truthful and clever he would have said: “The Greenbelt was a Liberal government initiative. And we intend to build on it.”
“Truthful” and “clever” both called Elder Advice today to complain that it is grammatically incorrect to use them in a sentence containing “Ford”.
This past week we were told, in a nutshell, that:
Ontario’s Auditor-General has reported that developers with close ties to the Conservative Party/the chief of staff of the Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister were advised and consulted ahead of the public announcement last year that the government would remove 7400 acres of land from the Greenbelt so that 50 thousand homes can be built.
In the blatantly politicized process, 92 per cent of that acreage was, in fact, identified by those developers who, as owners of land, could see as much as an 8 billion dollar increase in its value.
The Auditor General charitably described these activities as “lacking in transparency” while also “failing to consider environmental, agricultural and financial impacts.”
Other than accepting much of what the Auditor-General found, saying they personally did not tip off the developers, tossing the chief of staff of the Minister under the bus, and vaguely undertaking to do better in future, the Premier and his Minister have promised only that they will not reverse the decision to remove the land from the Greenbelt, claiming the removal is essential to fulfill the government’s “promise”- there’s that word again - to increase the province’s housing stock in response to the crisis.
Things were wrong, but things are right.
Elder Advice hasn’t felt this gaslighted since the Liberal government’s gas plant scandal in 2011.
The 2022 report of the Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force comprised of industry leaders and experts found that shortage of land was not a cause of the housing crisis. The 2023 report of Environmental Defense found that 1.3 million homes could be built in existing, already serviced urban areas inside Southern Ontario municipalities and an additional 700,000 units could be built either on designated greenfield areas or rural land outside the Greenbelt. And while the provincial government says it has added more land to the Greenbelt to compensate for the land removed, it turns out that 7,000 of the 9,400 added acres were already protected.
So things are not right.
Anyway, Elder Advice’s immediate concern is with ministerial responsibility. The doctrine of individual ministerial responsibility is a constitutional convention in parliamentary democracies that requires government Ministers to be responsible for their own acts and omissions as well as the acts and omissions of those in their ministry. When corruption, waste or other mischief is uncovered, the Minister is held responsible even if they had no knowledge of it. The doctrine seeks to ensure that elected officials are motivated to scrutinize all activities of their department. Elder Advice belabours the point because ministerial responsibility, while essential to the concept of responsible government, has apparently become a quaint notion. A notion routinely ignored by the same provincial and federal politicians who constantly bemoan the public’s declining trust in government.
In this instance, there are only three possibilities. First, the Premier and his Minister directed the Minister’s chief of staff and knew of his misconduct. Second, the Minister directed his chief of staff and knew of his misconduct. Third, the Minister did not know of his chief of staff’s misconduct, but ought to have known. In the first case, the Premier and the Minister need to resign. In the second and third, at least the Minister needs to resign. And, in any event, the chief of staff needs to be fired. None of this has been admitted and no resignations or terminations appear forthcoming.
Elder Advice? If you aspire to lead, you need to be an example not only of what should be done, but how it should be done. Admitting error and accepting consequences for failure is a measure of leadership; not a sign of frailty. And so is imposing consequences on the deserving. Making up everything is not.
As for the Greenbelt issue, the image of an old woman and others having to live in a shoe … because the cost of housing is so high they didn’t know what to do, gives Elder Advice an idea.
If this government refuses to accept the consequences of its actions, and make things right, perhaps it is time for the return of corporal punishment.
The Greenbelt or the strap, Doug. Take your pick.