If you’re treading water on welfare in Doug Ford’s Ontario, you’re slowly sinking
Monday, April 27th, 2026
By the end of this budget’s 2026-27 fiscal year, the projected inflation rate of two per cent will have further eroded the purchasing power of Ontario Works payments by more than 22 per cent cumulatively, since 2018… it’s worth remembering that the high water mark for welfare was in 1993… If that figure were indexed to inflation today, it would be $1,303 a month, some $570 (78 per cent) more than the current rate of $733 under Ford’s Tories.
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, jurisdiction, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | 1 Comment »
Protected from voters’ wrath, Doug Ford’s latest budget defies fiscal reality
Friday, March 27th, 2026
Ford’s Tories have slashed traditional revenue sources by billions of dollars in good times — licence plate fees, gas taxes and tolls for drivers — only to drive the government deeper into deficit and debt… In the latest budget, those interest payments are now the Ford government’s fourth-biggest expenditure — after health care (41 per cent), education (16.7 per cent) and social services (8.8 per cent)…
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, jurisdiction, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Getting rid of school board trustees is the right thing to do
Saturday, February 21st, 2026
Calandra’s stated goal is to restore solvency and stability — fiscal and pedagogical — to the system. The minister has catalogued a litany of unauthorized budget deficits, implausible fiscal plans, botched agendas for staff and students, and classroom funding sacrificed for pet projects or fanciful causes. Opposition critics suggest Calandra has a hidden agenda to disempower trustees.
Tags: Education, ideology, jurisdiction, participation
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
Doug Ford has learned a hard lesson after starving Ontario’s colleges and universities
Thursday, February 12th, 2026
This week’s boost will not come close to making colleges and universities whole, but a half loaf is better than the premier’s half-baked ideas on postsecondary funding. Tuition can now rise by up to two per cent a year, but for too long the government ignored the initial five per cent increase recommended by its own blue ribbon panel in 2023, alongside fresh funding.
Tags: budget, economy, Education, jurisdiction
Posted in Education Policy Context | No Comments »
Doug Ford’s fiscal time bomb is devastating Ontario’s colleges
Monday, July 14th, 2025
The root of the crisis in higher education lies with the fiscal time bomb planted by Doug Ford’s provincial government when it came to power seven full years ago… The latest job losses and cancelled courses were always foreseeable, because post-secondary funding remains unsustainable… universities say the government’s chronic underfunding will leave them unable to find spots for 80,000 worthy Ontario applicants over the next five years.
Tags: budget, Education, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, youth
Posted in Education Delivery System | No Comments »
Doug Ford’s $612-million beer boondoggle tab could hardly have arrived at a worse time for him
Wednesday, January 29th, 2025
Why starve hospitals and deprive patients of family physicians while pouring money down the drain for beer and wine?… Ford had the past seven years to make good on his promises — on health care and housing, if not booze. Yet only on Monday, on the eve of an election, did his government come forward with a last-minute plan to give two million more Ontarians access to a family doctor within four years (in time for another election).
Tags: budget, economy, Education, featured, Health, homelessness, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Why doesn’t Doug Ford care about funding colleges and universities? Because you don’t care either
Friday, January 24th, 2025
Shortly after taking power in 2018, with colleges and universities starved for money, the premier further reduced their cash flow by ordering every campus to cut tuition by 10 per cent… But those tuition dollars weren’t his to cut — the money was remitted by students. More to the point, his government didn’t consider making up the difference to keep universities and colleges whole, leaving them in a deeper fiscal hole.
Tags: budget, Education, ideology, jurisdiction, youth
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
Doug Ford has bungled affordable housing and now Ottawa is rubbing his nose in it
Tuesday, May 14th, 2024
The federal government now says it will send funding directly to municipalities, cutting Ontario out of the equation entirely… Why can the two levels of government come together to build subsidized factories, but not subsidized housing? … Ultimately, the friction over funding may have less to do with personalities than priorities. In Ford’s Ontario, unaffordable factories count for more than affordable housing.
Tags: budget, economy, housing, jurisdiction
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Here’s why Doug Ford can get away with squeezing Ontario’s colleges and universities
Thursday, February 29th, 2024
This week, Dunlop ‘s ministry had fun with figures by coughing up — and then dressing up — roughly $1 billion in one-time funding, stretched over three years, spread across so many areas that it amounts to a rounding error and a strategic error… In truth, their policy is neither idiocy nor ideology, merely expediency. There are no votes to be had in higher tuition for higher education, and there are no votes to be lost in starving the system of proper funding to keep it afloat
Tags: budget, ideology
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
How shamelessly has Doug Ford ground down Ontario’s colleges and universities? Let me count the ways
Tuesday, February 13th, 2024
The Tories set up a fancy-sounding Blue Ribbon Panel on Post-secondary Education that quickly focused on fixing the distorted bottom line with straightforward advice: Stop cutting tuition and stop freezing funding… Let’s not confuse efficiencies with distortions. By profiting from the penury of post-secondary institutions — boosting his own bottom line while starving universities and contorting colleges — Ford is giving the province a costly lesson about false economies.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology
Posted in Education Policy Context | No Comments »
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