Premier Doug Ford's Ontario

[urbanclient]

Ford strategy is to stay just a little less corrupt than the federal Liberals.
This strategy has given Ford a lot of runway to act without fear of being defeated.

Hopefully Carney cleans up the ship, so Ford looks worse. I suspect Ford's record on transit has endeared him enough to urban voters, and his suburban policies are appreciated by well, suburban voters. (To say nothing of the cuts)

But the ideologues here will tell me Ford is objectively worse on transit than Wynne/McGuinty.

 

[UtakataNoAnnex]

And the Ontario electorate has not as yet shown that they care

...well, they do care. They haven't really decided which party to back to take up their cause, which is frustrating.

What I can agree with is why the electorate that stands behind the PC's still wants to support Doug. They really should be ashamed of themselves after all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about accountability and what not before they voted his party in. Because when they keep supporting him, it was never really about accountability to begin with.

 

[lenaitch]

The optics of the purchase were so obviously poor, I find it bizarre that no one in the Premier's office had an inkling how this would go over w/the broader public like a lead balloon.

In relative terms is a drop in the bucket of the provincial budget, and the labour training slush fund is a much larger scandal.......

Still.

We'll surely ending up taking a write down on sale.....what's a few million and all that.

We've all had buyer's remorse over some purchase that seemed like a good idea at the time but, jeez, this is a spectacular 180* turn-around. Does he have bad advisors or just ignores the ones that he does have?

They flew on OPP King Airs when commercial was not feasible.

They were not OPP aircraft. Previously, they were operated by the MNR in its role as the Provincial Air Service but since they reorganized to Aviation, Fire and Emergency Services I don't know if they still manage the 'admin' fleet or if it was carved off to somebody else. At the end of the day everything is registered to 'The Crown in the Right of Ontario (XXMinistry), but operating a flight service is complicated and it's not easy to simply fob it off to some random government department like they often do with other services.

Anyone bidding on the second-hand aircraft?

Do I hear $30 million? Do I hear $25 million? What about $20 million?​

Will OPP sell it on auction for him, since he's so friendly with them? ( https://www.policeauctionscanada.com/ )

I thought I read somewhere that it was used to start with.

The OPP does not auction off Crown assets. Individual detachments, generally the larger ones, may use that service to unload property that is seized, found, etc. but that company takes a cut. Crown assets such as police vehicles are disposed of by the MTO. Used aircraft are typically disposed of as part of the replacement acquisition ('trade-in'). I don't know how the MNR handles their property.