The Washington Post ran a contest long ago for the most boring headline of the year. The winner was “Canadian initiative launched.” The word that won it for us was “Canadian” because what could be duller or less newsworthy in Washington than anything Canadian? Even “Belgian,” or “Aussie” felt more exotic.
So I was surprised on Monday not just to see a major piece in the Post entitled “Doug Ford Must Resign”, but to see that for a couple of hours, it was the most-read piece in one of the most revered newspapers in the world.
What caused Washington to sit up and take notice of Ontario’s Conservative Premier?
His actions were finally reaching the levels of incompetence and intransigence shown by some Republican governors under Donald Trump.
The piece was written by David Moscrop, a regular contributor to the Post and a Fellow at the University of Ottawa. He spelled out for Americans what every Ontarian knows about Doug Ford’s very bad week: How he lied (again) that Ontario has the toughest lockdown measures in North America. How he restricted playground gatherings, until parents (and science) forced him to open them. How even the bedrock of his base, the police, rose up to say they’re not going to conduct random checks on anyone. Not just the Peterborough police, but the police in the fourth largest city in North America.
Moscrop concluded for Americans what every Ontarian also knows: “Over a year into the pandemic, things are worse in Ontario than they have been since it began.”
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with Heather Munroe-Blum, at the April 29 RamsayTalk
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