Doug Ford and the politics of disruption

 

Ontarians recently experienced yet another one of those “make it make sense” moments in Premier Doug Ford’s tenure. In a bid to keep children in the classroom, Ford and Minister of Education Stephen Lecce kept kids out of the classroom for two days.

We arrived at that nonsensical position after months of lacklustre negotiating by the government with its 55,000 education workers represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

“Don’t force my hand,” Ford told them in early-October, which, in retrospect, likely pointed to his intention to use the notwithstanding clause trump card. When CUPE moved to commence a legal strike, the government pre-emptively imposed a new contract.

“After two years of pandemic disruptions,” Ford said, “enough is enough. We need kids in the classroom learning.”

The two-day protest that ensued ended only when Ford rescinded Bill 28.

Ford’s invocation of Section 33 of the Charter of Rights and Freedom was alarming, like someone bringing a gun to a knife fight. Even if he shot himself in the foot, the episode holds important lessons.

Ford’s actions were equal parts bad optics and bad politics, which is likely why he “blinked.” Strong-arming the support workers who keep our schools running but can barely eek out a living is embarrassing for a supposedly populist government. Sitting on a $2.1-billion budget surplus, the government’s miserably low offer — when combined with its assault on workers’ rights — acted as a canary in the unionized coal mine, energizing the labour movement.

 

Looking past the failed union busting effort and into this government’s recent history of norms busting reveals an disquieting pattern. Whereas all previous Ontario governments since the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 had never once used Section 33, Ford has used or threatened its use on three occasions in four years.

It’s an illiberal style of governance that is now being fuelled by the politics of disruption.

“This strike will be illegal and we will use every tool we have to end this disruption,” Lecce said about levying crippling fines on the workers and the union. Bill-28’s preamble frames the “two years of pandemic disruptions and learning loss” as the key factors for forcing workers back to work.

In mid-October, Lecce used the “two years of pandemic-related learning disruptions” to justify the province’s disinvestment plan that siphons millions out of the education system with its “catch up” payments to parents.

This is not to say that the pandemic wasn’t disruptive — it was and continues to be. We are still reeling from its effects, in part, because we function as if it is over when it clearly isn’t (ask a health-care worker near you). And we’re tired. Exhausted even (think back to the “apathy election” of June 2022).

It’s in the context of this emotional exhaustion that the Ford government collapsed the difference between the necessary public health lockdowns of the pandemic and this strike. It did so by harnessing the ongoing fears of further disruptions to mobilize a state of emotional emergency. Avoiding further disruptions became a justification for this government to slash collective bargaining rights with “constitutional recklessness” and enforce “draconian” measures to enforce it, as some experts have described Ford and Lecce’s recent actions.

The emotional politics of this episode hold a vital lesson for the crises in health care, housing, and cost of living. We cannot allow the Ford government to exploit our collective exhaustion to enact other dangerous “unprecedented solutions,” as he called Bill 28. .

 

If a deal is reached between CUPE and the Ford government, the two-day disruption will have been relatively minor, perhaps even to the burnt out parents and guardians forced to scramble. But the stakes of the strike must continue to feel existential because Ford’s methods were those that turn liberal democracies into illiberal ones. He was right about one thing, then, enough is enough.

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