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Premier Doug Ford's Ontario

As early as 2016, before the bypass was revived, the DeGasperis family’s DG Group and another developer, FNB Developments, aspired to convert its land near the bypass project for residential development. A letter sent on the developers’ behalf to Bradford Council said the bypass would make its properties less desirable as employment lands compared to building homes. Residential development is usually more profitable.

Another developer who has hoped to build homes near the bypass is Angelo Orsi, who owns 114 acres along the proposed route. In his case, however, the highway is not a clear path to good investment returns but an apparent roadblock. He says he cannot develop because the province has deemed his property necessary for the highway.

Without the designation, Orsi says, “they would have been developed for housing 15 years ago.” He wants either a permit to build or the government to buy him out.

Orsi said he has hired Peter Van Loan, a former federal Conservative MP, as a municipal and land use planning lawyer to “find a way out of this difficult situation.”

Ontario’s lobbying registry shows that in February 2021, Charter hired Van Loan to lobby on its behalf to “encourage construction” of the bypass.

Van Loan, who represented the York-Simcoe region as an MP, chaired Caroline Mulroney’s 2018 PC leadership campaign.

Van Loan is a former president of the Ontario PC Party, and from 2015 to 2018 was its director of candidate training and recruitment. After the Star and the Observer highlighted Van Loan’s work lobbying for developers in an investigation into the Ford government’s push to build Highway 413, political watchdog group Democracy Watch filed a complaint to Ontario’s Integrity Commissioner, calling it a conflict of interest. Van Loan has said he did not violate the rules.

Bradford is now reviewing at least six proposals for residential developments along the proposed route of the bypass.

A developer buys up land in anticipation of value increases, Wekerle said. “They know about where people are buying houses and are making an educated guess, based on a lot of data. Sometimes they’re wrong.”

Lobbying and political donations don’t buy support from politicians. They buy access — and give powerful players a way to help politicians who are receptive to their asks get into office, Dan Gold, who recently completed his PhD at the University of Ottawa on how lobbying influences decision making, previously told the Star and the Observer.

“In some ways, it’s more insidious, because it’s not just one decision but finding an elected official whose viewpoint aligns with yours,” Gold said.

Gazing out of his kitchen window in late October, Thomas To admired the maple trees about to burst into vibrant reds and golds. His two young kids played in the wooded yard.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to me,” the East Gwillimbury homeowner said.

To was shocked to find his 24-acre property was in the sightline of the bypass’s proposed route change.
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He found a government slide deck online, showing how the route had overlaid the edge of Silver Lakes golf course, and how it would now dip 150 metres south, cutting right through his property off Yonge Street.

He has lived here since 2009. Yet he has heard nothing directly from officials about potential expropriation.

An MTO spokesperson told the Torstar/Observer that staff will meet with individual landowners prior to the second public meeting scheduled for the fall of 2022.

To and his wife cherish walking their two Labrador Retrievers every morning through the forest to the river bank while they forage mushrooms on the trail. But the morning walks have become a constant reminder of the planned bypass that could pave over everything.

“If a highway cuts through this land, we won’t be the only ones who would get expropriated,” To said. “All this habitat would be forever lost.”
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From link.

He is definitely not worthy.
 
It's always good for a laugh whenever one of Ford's bootlickers emerges from the primordial slime, ignores all the blatant, in-your-face crookedness and corruption we're seeing from this government, and starts blubbering about how mean we're all being to poor, persecuted, helpless, defenseless, innocent widdle Thug. "Harping" on Ford, indeed.
 
John_Dee said:
It's always good for a laugh whenever one of Ford's bootlickers emerges from the primordial slime, ignores all the blatant, in-your-face crookedness and corruption we're seeing from this government, and starts blubbering about how mean we're all being to poor, persecuted, helpless, defenseless, innocent widdle Thug. "Harping" on Ford, indeed.
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I don't like him at all. I've criticized him plenty in the past ... but there is no source for that meme, and I don't really think that non-sourced images are reliable.
 
DirectionNorth said:
I don't like him at all. I've criticized him plenty in the past ... but there is no source for that meme, and I don't really think that non-sourced images are reliable.
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I did do some googling and found some questionable sources that make the claim but don’t really back it up with their source. That’s why I asked … TikTok isn’t really a great go-to news source.
 
More useful health advice from the Ford Family - from BlogTO https://www.blogto.com/city/2021/11/doug-ford-daughter-video-poppies-instead-masks/

Surprise, surprise: Ontario Premier Doug Ford's daughter is at it again with her anti-mask and anti-vax rants, which have now become an amusingly regular feature on her Instagram stories.

Much like when Krista Ford Haynes said that the Canadian government should be mailing residents bibles instead of informational leaflets about the benefits of immunization against COVID-19, the 30-year-old took to social media on Monday morning to suggest people don a poppy in indoor public spaces this month rather than the mask that is required by the provincial mandate that her father's leadership enacted 13 months ago.
 
DirectionNorth said:
I don't like him at all. I've criticized him plenty in the past ... but there is no source for that meme, and I don't really think that non-sourced images are reliable.
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Well, sure, but I was referring more to the ethical morass surrounding the Bradford Bypass than the latest TikTok posting. And it's just the latest episode of this nature from Ford and Company...
 
Again, re Krista, whaddaya wanna bet that Dave Haynes is in the Bernier camp.

And re Deco, whaddaya wanna bet they secretly cornered the social-distancing-sticker marketplace.
 
DSC said:
More useful health advice from the Ford Family - from BlogTO https://www.blogto.com/city/2021/11/doug-ford-daughter-video-poppies-instead-masks/
Much like when Krista Ford Haynes said that the Canadian government should be mailing residents bibles instead of informational leaflets about the benefits of immunization against COVID-19, the 30-year-old took to social media on Monday morning to suggest people don a poppy in indoor public spaces this month rather than the mask that is required by the provincial mandate that her father's leadership enacted 13 months ago.
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I wonder if Krista knows you can get masks with poppies on them
 
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