Looking back on Global News' 'Mandated'

Note: I had intended to write a piece about Israel’s deadly attacks on journalists, but my first draft was in the middle of being written when the bombing of the al-Ahrib Hospital in Gaza City that killed 500 people, and Israel’s subsequent denial, occurred. The news media’s reporting on Israel’s claim without any contextualization has been some of the worst reporting I’ve seen in my lifetime. That being said, I’ve been following developments in the Gaza ethnic cleansing every waking moment and have burned myself out too much to write a full article on it this week. That’s why this week’s edition of The Catch is late. I’ve chosen instead to release a draft I had written before the back-to-back news cycle of Parliament praising a Nazi and the Gaza assault. I apologize. You can follow my news updates on the Palestinian genocide on Bluesky, or (more likely) Instagram stories. A piece will be coming next week on the subject. For now, detox a bit with the shitshow that is Ontario provincial politics.

When Colin D’Mello and Isaac Callan from Global News released the first in their new series called Mandated, I was ecstatic. Doug Ford and his Ontario Progressive Conservative government have been in a legal battle with the press to keep the contents of his mandate letters to ministers secret. He’s spent 5 years and hundreds of hours fighting to keep directions to public politicians private. The case currently rests in front of the Supreme Court of Canada as they deliberate this important question of transparency.

So while Global News may not have resolved that important legal debate, they have provided a public service by releasing the important contents of the letters to the public. In the midst of the ongoing Greenbelt scandal, Ford’s instructions to ministers in his cabinet can provide additional pressure to the disastrous mandates he required since his first term as premier. This is important to know, as we now have five years of Ford Nation policies and their disastrous consequences to point towards.

But the reporting doesn’t seem interested in the broader picture of Ford’s government. Instead, the headlines in the pieces have underscored Ford’s words to ministers that are expected of any politician. The best example of this is the first entry’s headline. It underscores the promise of Ford’s letter to “hold cabinet ministers accountable.”

What, exactly, does this tell us about the Ford government? Did we expect Ford to instruct ministers that they would be unaccountable? If anyone expected the premier to declare that his government will foster and facilitate corruption, then they were sorely mistaken.

Though I was disappointed with the first entry, I saw the utility of these letters being public. I looked forward to the next editions and what they revealed about Ford’s direction for the province. Unfortunately, Mandated doesn’t share these concerns, or at least in the same way.

Misguided Priorities

In the first entry, D’Mello and Callan point to the letter’s general attitude for accountability. This mainly includes Ford’s intent to have ministers hold themselves to “the highest ethical standard,” contrasted with the Greenbelt scandal that has enveloped Ford in recent weeks. The scandal saw developers directly interfere with the process to remove Greenbelt lands for development, to their personal benefit, and saw three members of the government resign, most notably Housing Minister Steve Clark and Minister of Public and Business Service Kaleed Rasheed.

This entry is primarily the findings of the general letters, pointing to Ford saying that he will hold ministers accountable, they must serve Ontarians, etc. It’s unclear what, exactly, this says about the Ford government, as it’s pretty standard fare for governments to announce how honest and virtuous they’ll be compared to governments of the past. Like previously mentioned, nobody honestly believed Ford would send letters to his ministers asking for backroom deals and corrupt practices. We know he’s dishonest, isn’t that the whole problem?

I thought that this would be a soft landing, ramping up to more damning revelations to be published in the coming days. Unfortunately, that’s what happened.

I write “unfortunately,” because the following editions of Mandated do actually include damning revelations about the Ford government’s direction since 2018. The problem is that they’re shuffled behind milquetoast critiques of the premier as a hypocrite.

This problem became undeniable in the second entry, “EXCLUSIVE: 2018 Ontario housing minister mandate letter promised to ‘protect the Greenbelt.’” We’ve known since 2018 that Ford reversed his position on developing the Greenbelt, ever since the public pushback exploded when he told a room full of supporters that it was his and developers’ idea to open up the protected lands.

So what this letter tells us is that Ford put this promise in writing. That’s it. However strong this line of questioning has been in the current scandal, it doesn’t further any revelations on the inner-workings of his government.

The problem is that this entry includes much more damning mandates by Ford, buried underneath this near-useless headline. For example, these letters show that Ford targeted rent control immediately once taking office. The letter to Clark asked to review changes in the housing sector including “re-evaluating the future of rent control while not removing any protections for any current renters.” That second part implies that only future renters will have protections removed.

This directly led to the abandoning of rent control for units that came to market after Nov. 15, 2018. Ford’s policy means that for any unit used for residency after that date, landlords can raise rent as much as they want. Ford’s intent was to directly make the rental crisis worse, and yet this receives mention only 20 paragraphs into the piece.

Not only that, but the letter also outlined the strong mayor powers that came into effect in 2022, That’s a full four years before their implementation. Ford had a premeditated plan to strengthen his grip over municipal governments. This was relegated to the third section.

So we have tangible proof of Ford’s coordinated plans to attack renters and democratic processes, and yet the headline is something that was publicly available, but in a different form? This is done, presumably, to capitalize off of the Greenbelt scandal, but why does this provide a pass for Ford’s other disastrous capitalist policies? This is an opportunity for Ontarians to see the totality of the viciousness that Ford has for their lives, yet it’s quietly shuffled behind surface-level critique.

The Problem Continues

While the third entry mainly contained the verbatim text of these letters, it still somehow buried an important revelation. Ford’s entire priority with Ontario Works (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) was to transition recipients into the workforce. “This review should focus on reducing the number of people on social assistance and decreasing the cost of administering these programs by considering reforms...”

ODSP is criminally low. Recipients, who (need I remind you) are disabled, receive little over $1,000 a month. In a report from July of this year, the Income Security and Advocacy centre found that, despite modest increases, “ODSP incomes are still far too low to adequately cover food, housing, transportation, medication, costs related to disability, and other necessities of life.” OW rates also hasn’t risen in five years.

Ford’s mandate is making these people work, instead of providing them the means to live, all while recipients are demanding payments to be doubled. It’s frankly disgusting and ableist that the government would feel the need to trim as much as possible from people who already don’t have enough. But it’s equally disturbing that Global News doesn’t feel it a necessary highlight.

This misfocus continues. The fourth edition focuses on the government’s financial goals. It does highlight the political controversy that surrounded the introduction of the 2018-2019 budget by then Minister of Finance Vic Fedeli, but the headline and first part focus on the government’s obsession with “efficiencies and savings.”

Once again, this is par for the course, especially for conservative governments. The buried lede this time is that Ford instructed the cabinet to prepare for labour disruptions from this financial goal, including concepts which would lead to the unconstitutional Bill 124, restricting raises for public sector workers to one per cent per year. Ford knew these policies would be “disruptive,” writing “I am comfortable with that fact. You need to be too.”

In the sixth entry, D’Mello and Callan detail Ford’s plans to control Metrolinx, but bury Ford’s instruction to include private contractors in building subways and controlling air rights above them to build housing and the absence of mentions about Highway 413.

When they don’t bury the lede, they simply confirm what we know was Ford’s priorities since coming to office. In the fifth edition, they highlight Ford’s letter to reform health and education, Global News mentions that Ford targeted OHIP+ and math curriculums, primarily on ideological grounds. The seventh edition finds that Ford directly put environmental rights against business interests. The eighth highlights Ford’s obsession with handing over public land to private interests in some form. While having public availability of all mandate letters is good, these entries contain less bombastic information.

In the totality of these mandate letters, we have proof that Ford targeted renters, disabled people, public sector workers, democratic processes and healthcare accessibility for Ontarians the moment he took office. Yet in most of these revelations, they’re buried under headlines that broadly describe conservative politicians, or focus on some finger-wagging hypocrisy.

Once again, it is certainly a public good that D’Mello, Callan and Global News have accessed and released the pertinent information from Ford’s mandate letters. Whether or not the Supreme Court decides, Canadians should have access to documents that influence their lives in such broad terms and don’t compromise safety. But the release of these letters showcase where journalism fails in a liberal democracy.

Upon reading the headlines and main takeaways presented to us in this series, it conveys that Ford’s biggest sin is that he didn’t uphold his words calling for honesty. The disastrous policies that have worsened the renting crisis, healthcare and access to democracy are mentioned almost out of sufferance.

I recommend you read through all of the entries for yourself, if nothing else to appreciate the hard work done to deliver these to the public, but reading them by themselves offers little if not analyzed through a proper framework. We know Ford is dishonest and corrupt, the Greenbelt scandal has shown us that if nothing else, what matters is that his intentions from the beginning under that guise were always damaging.

But that apparently does not receive top-billing when one can point to Ford’s written word and remark smugly that he may not have completely truthful.