Don’t know who made this, but it’s perfect. It sums up the situation quite succinctly. When you have first past the post with nowhere near a majority of the vote, when voters stayed home rather than turn out for democracy’s sake, when craven partisans saw that they could stop this Drumpfish nonsense and didn’t, and when somebody took that bullshit for a mandate, this is what happens: A former hash dealer who never was elected mayor of Toronto (but whose crack-smoking brother was, for a time) decides unilaterally and on no one’s advice to gerrymander Toronto so that Conservative candidates get the upper hand in the upcoming municipal election. And he does it by reducing the overall seat count on city council.
Only there’s a catch: It’s unconstitutional as all hell. And a superior-court judge rules as much. So what does our would-be dictator do? An end-run around that by invoking the infamous Notwithstanding Clause. Which is basically a loophole in the Charter of Rights that allows a government, at least theoretically, to arbitrarily violate the Charter rights of Canadian citizens. In reality, it’s rarely been used, and those who’ve tried have been shot down in court.
But all that isn’t deterring ol’ Dougie. He’s determined to be Dictator of Toronto, even though he was not elected to that (and very dubiously elected to the premiership, but that’s another story for another day). And he’s doing it all to spite and punish the people of Toronto, among whom he was vastly unpopular as a council member, for good reasons and plenty of them.
Oh, and he’s threatening to do it to Ottawa, too, because that city is also not Conservative, no doubt as a fuck-you to them for sneering at his uncouth ass from their lofty perches around Parliament Hill.
If Dougie’s looking to make enemies, he’s sure got a blinding head start. Whether he’ll ultimately accomplish anything by it other than alienating and infuriating a lot of good people further up the food chain, however, is another story. More likely, he’s going to end up going down in Ontario’s history as the worst sack of shit to squat in Queen’s Park since Mike Fucking Harris.
Only, with any luck, Dougie’s nasty, brutish term in office will be far shorter than Mikey’s. And less effectual, too.
