Geoffrey Stevens's blog

Hon. Doug Ford,

Premier of Ontario,

Queen’s Park, Toronto

My Dear Premier Ford,

You won’t remember me, but I’m the fellow who wrote to you back in July to congratulate you and your valiant crew of Ford Nationalists on leading Ontario back to the Promised Land of the 1950s.

My admiration has doubled – nay, trebled – in the intervening months. Not only have you overturned everything the radical Liberal, Kathleen Wynne, stood for, you have put that stuffed shirt, John Tory, in his place.

Summer is usually the best of times for the party in power in Ottawa. With Parliament in recess, ministers have the stage largely to themselves, free to announce whatever they wish with as much spin – and as little explanation – as they choose.

The opposition parties are left to whine about high-handed government while they count the days until the House resumes, and they can get their teeth into ministers in question period.

Justin Trudeau and his government were handed two painful and costly lessons last week.

One lesson was not to take the courts for granted. Trudeau and his people were read that lesson in a Federal Court of Appeal decision that froze construction on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

The death on Saturday of United States Senator John McCain removed a unique player from the political stage.

War hero, patriot, presidential candidate (in 2008), and for 35 years the “lion of the Senate,” McCain embodied qualities of independence and courage that are prized, but are rarely found among politicians, in Canada as in the United States.

When we last saw our members of Parliament in action, in June as they were rushing off on their three-month summer recess, Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer was on his feet hectoring Justin Trudeau for allegedly spending $7,500 in public funds on a swing set for the Prime Minister’s official summer residence at Harrington Lake.

Scheer’s facts were wrong. The Trudeaus paid for the swing set; the National Capital Commission installed it, and the NCC will retain ownership when the family moves on.