Now Douglas, I only want the best for you, because although I’m a Scorpio - just like you — I try to channel my Higher Impulses, because I am a Good Person At Heart. As long as people behave themselves. Which you have not been doing, I am sorry to say.

I promised to follow up on the useful advice I was giving you recently, because you do want to be the very best Premier that ever a fellow can be, don’t you? Don’t you? Oh. You’re not hearing this because you’re up a tree or hiding under a rock? You’ve noticed some unrest among the masses, and that can be scary? Oh well. I’ll carry on regardless, because I’m keeping the promise I made.

It’s good to keep your promises, Douglas. It helps people trust you. Thing is, you broke your own promise. Bigtime.

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To remind you of something you seem wilfully to have forgotten, here is you making that promise. Just skip to the parts with you in them; you don’t have to listen to all that pesky bumph about farmland and affordable housing and safe drinking water, since we know these items bore you. But the parts with you in are so positive! You sound so sincere! You have such a convincing big white tooth-filled smile! And lots of people believed you. They trusted you. They thought you were maybe a little rough, but a straight-up guy.

You can see that your whopping failure to keep your promise might shake people’s faith in you. And shaken that faith it has.

I spent yesterday lurking about on the Internet. There’s a lot of roiling and moiling going on out there! If it were just a few folks with signs saying Save Our Fur-Belllied Newts, or Ford Is A Meany Capitalist and Cheats At Marbles, you could dismiss the pushback as coming from deranged environmentalists and wacko lefties, or the dreaded urban élites. You could count on near-zero interest in the fate of newts in the larger electorate, an ingrained suspicion of Maoists, and a general disdain for downtown latte drinkers among anyone who isn’t one of them, and that’s quite a few.

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But that dog won’t hunt, because the opposition to your Bill 23 is very broad. It’s farmers, it’s small towns and municipalities, it’s the young affordable housing advocates, it’s water safe-guarders, it’s the First Nation Chiefs of Ontario, among others. People who might once have refused to share their butter tarts or trashed each other’s lawn signs are plotting together as if they’re about to storm the Bastille.

But also – and, Douglas, this is the greatest danger to you, and especially to those Conservative Party elected members who are supposed to be listening to their constituents, but who’ve stuffed their ears with wax because you’ve got them so firmly choke-collared — it’s just plain ordinary voters. They’re royally steamed because of the blatant cynicism you’ve displayed. People of goodwill want more affordable housing – who doesn’t? – but to use that as the front for what is a spectacular landgrab and dodgy backroom deal with a bunch of developers — well, that takes the cake! And not only that, you’re pulling this fast one on their dime.

https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2022/11/17/they-recently-bought-greenbelt-land-that-was-undevelopable-now-the-ford-government-is-poised-to-remove-protections-and-these-developers-stand-to-profit.html

I predict that you’ll shove this bill through as fast as you can, because you’re more frightened of breaking your promises to the developers than you are of breaking your promises to the voters. You don’t want to end up at the bottom of Toronto harbour with your feet in a bucket of cement! And hey, who cares if the peasants are mad at you? Who wants to be Premier forever when there’s more fun and money to be had elsewhere? So you’ll get the thing voted on, and your pals will be happy and rich, and then it’ll be So Long Suckers. The elected members who vote for the thing – well, that’ll be another story.

That’s one of my predictions. Another has a court case in it. In a third possibility, the ghost of Bill Davies appears to you and has a heart to heart, and you have an Awakening, and think better of this nasty Bill, and act for the public good. Improbable, I know. But not impossible!

I will continue to pray for your moral amelioration, Douglas, because everyone deserves a fiftieth chance. Either that, or, in a moment of Lowest Scorpio Impulse, I’ll get out the wax doll and the pins.

At my age a gal is either a Wise Old Woman or a Wicked Old Witch. I’m both.

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Coming soon: The Coronation of King John Tory the First. Dear Reader, you won’t want to miss THAT! Maybe there will even be souvenir coffee mugs! And T-Shirts, if we’re lucky! Get busy, Etsy!

In the Writing Burrow

The Peasants Are Revolting!