An open letter to MPPs

Doug Ford by Bruce Reeve

In a few days, possibly even less, you will receive a summons to Queen's Park to vote. Doug Ford wants you to invoke the "notwithstanding" clause in order to override a judicial decision preventing him from changing the size of Toronto's wards in the middle an the election already underway. You can do it, but you don't have to. You shouldn't.

The notwithstanding clause has always marked out a line, a line between the collective will and the rights of the individual. Until now, Ontario has always stayed on the side of individual rights. We have always had governments, and representatives, in this province who undertook to reconcile the desires of the majority with the rights of minorities. It made governing harder, but it should be hard. Members of the Provincial Parliament get offices and good pay and respect because you have taken on a difficult job. Make it easier by curtailing our rights and you lose that respect.

You don't have to do this. The voters of Ontario have not asked it of you. They gave Doug Ford no mandate to do it, and you represent the people who elected you. Don't deceive yourselves: this doesn't just affect some "latte-sipping elites" in downtown Toronto. The "elites" will make out just fine whatever Doug Ford tries to do in any case. This affects everyone in Ontario who needs recourse from the courts. It affects every business person who will ever need judicial review of an unwise provincial policy. Doug Ford has not framed this as a singular event, a judicial overreach so extreme it leaves him no choice. He has announced his intention to invoke the notwithstanding clause any time his will, which he apparently conflates with the will of the people, is thwarted. Remember, the people whom you represent elected you; most of us did not get an opportunity to vote for or against him. In our system, the first line of defence against the authoritarian impulse is the member of the legislature. Doug Ford can only ride roughshod over the people of this city, and in doing so diminish the rights of every resident in this province, if you let him. Don't.