Doug Ford’s decision to carve up environmentally protected land for Tory-friendly developers who stood to net billions off its sale shocked even the most politically uninterested out of their torpor. The report from the province’s auditor general about the Ontario premier’s plan found damning evidence of corruption. The integrity commissioner launched an investigation and found the same. The RCMP has since launched a criminal probe. Two staffers and two cabinet ministers resigned over it—and a third minister, Monte McNaughton, left for what he claims are unrelated reasons. Ford’s poll numbers plummeted, and his personal approval recently hit an all-time low as the majority of respondents in one poll found the Greenbelt deal corrupt. The affair was so scandalous that after weeks of defending the plan, Ford reversed course and cancelled it.
Scandalous—but hardly surprising. There may not be enough hard drive space in the known universe to catalogue Ford’s many failures as premier. The Ontario Federation of Labour has a Ford Tracker, which lets visitors “Follow & fight Ford’s decisions that affect you.” It lists detailed, month-by-month fiascos, humiliations, and ignominies. You must click a “Read More” button to see the list, ten at a time. Clicking through, the minutes move slowly. Like it’ll never end. A few dozen clicks in, you start to wonder just how long it’s going to take to get to 2018—or however long back it goes.
