There was a time, not so very long ago, when just about every community had at least two newspapers. Each paper would champion the efforts of a particular political party, sharing the news of the day through a favourable or unfavourable lens depending on which party was currently in power. When the reins of government switched hands, the paper on the winning side would be rewarded with the coveted prized appointment as Queen’s Printer—quite literally a licence to print money, as every government form had to come from the shelves of a Queen’s Printer. Those days are over for newspapers/printing.
Times have changed, but recently, not so very much it seems.
The Ford government is unapologetically populist and generally bombastic in its delivery. That in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, being largely a matter of style rather than substance, and not so very different from what has often come before.
What is very troubling about this government, however, is the baggage that tends to come with governing old-style. Nestled amongst that baggage is the tendency to reward one’s friends and punish one’s enemies, utilizing the levers of government and legislation. Chief among these are appointments to plumb government appointments.
In the past few years of the Ford government’s reign, a cascade of Progressive Conservative government appointments, such as that of Madeleine Bodenstein’s to the York police board (Ms. Bodenstein might be recognized sitting at the premier’s table during his daughter’s wedding or from the donor list of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives).
More alarming was moves by the Ford government to instill partisanship in the judicial selection process. The way Ontario has selected appointments to the bench is lauded across the globe as a gold standard when it comes to selecting judges. The alarm on those moves was raised by Canadian Lawyer Magazine over a year ago.
Patronage, and the corruption that inevitably follows, is a dangerous cancer in democracy. Moves to eliminate patronage from our systems of government appointments have made our democratic institutions and governance the envy of the world. That is why the Ford government’s nostalgic reach back to a time when donating money to a political party or sitting at the premier’s table was a locked-in qualification for appointments is so disturbing.
Make no mistake. Every political party has patronage in mind when it comes to making appointments or awarding contracts to its friends. But patronage is a slippery slope that too often proves irresistible to the political class and must be pushed back against whenever and wherever it raised its head.
Patronage, especially the rampant style currently being practiced by the self-styled “peoples’ government,” brings democracy into disrepute. This is critically important, because when the “actual people” lose faith in their government, fascism and authoritarianism creep into the cracks created by that distrust.
A glance back into time will illuminate where that slippery slope comes to rest. It isn’t pretty.
