Last Updated on: 4th September 2019, 02:09 pm
You might listen to that song and think hey, this has nothing to do with the subject matter, but I beg to differ. We in Ontario, much like Jerry Reed here, are currently stuck with our own overly costly, defective Ford.
Ron Taverner, friend of Doug Ford, withdraws from consideration for OPP commissioner
So if Doug Ford can’t even pull off the simple act of political patronage without messing things up to this sort of massive degree, how are we supposed to trust him not to screw up all of his other policy decisions?
This, by the way, feels so much more like a political interference scandal to me than SNC-Lavalin. Blatantly lowering the qualifications for an important job so a family friend can be in charge of the institution that would be conducting any criminal investigations that you or your government may find yourselves on the wrong end of and then firing the guy who helps bring it to light is so much worse than pestering somebody about using a perhaps unpopular new criminal code provision to help a big corporation avoid bribery charges. To be clear, I’m not saying I’m in favour of big companies skating away scott free from serious offences. There should absolutely be harsh penalties involved, DPA or no DPA. But I’m also aware that there are economic complexities at work that may warrant taking a second look at what might be appropriate punishment.
But scandal or not, Trudeau definitely has some serious communication problems on his hands at the very least and I beg him to please get his shit together before we end up with Andrew fucking Scheer as our next Prime Minister. Stephen Harper is much too recent a memory, plus the last thing we need is an emboldened Doug Ford with federal friends. None of us needs to try swallowing that shit sandwich.
Ron Taverner on Wednesday bowed out of the appointment process for the post of commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police, citing “the controversy” surrounding his appointment.
Taverner, 72, was controversially named by Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government to become the next chief of the OPP in late November.
He later requested that the appointment be delayed, and the government said it would “respect” the request while the province’s integrity commissioner reviews the circumstances of his selection.Taverner, a longtime family friend of Premier Doug Ford, did not meet the original requirements for the job posting. The government said it lowered the job qualifications to attract a wider field of candidates. He was later approved as the next OPP commissioner by the Ontario cabinet.
Ford has repeatedly denied any involvement in Taverner’s appointment, and said the decision was made by a hiring panel.
I’m neither a Ford nor a Trudeau fan, for very different reasons that all pretty much boil down to neither of them having any business being where they are, but when the DPA actually came in, the government shot itself in the foot. Economic concerns were one of the things the legislation explicitly said couldn’t be used in determining whether or not that was an option. Also not helpful was the fact SNC lobbied for it. I mean they had to know. And yes, you can substitute either SNC or the government in place of they.
I don’t recall them explicitly saying the bit about economic concerns, but what a dumb thing to say if they did. There are literally 0 other valid reasons to use them unless of course you consider protecting rich people from consequences to be a valid reason.