Stephen Maher: Ontario's premier seems determined to put his friend in charge of the OPP, which is much more worrying than L'affair SNC-Lavalin
On Monday, after a month in which Justin Trudeau’s government has been tearing itself apart over allegations of interference with the corruption prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, Ontario Premier Doug Ford fired the deputy commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police.
For his arrogance and foolishness, Trudeau is now being brought low by members of his cabinet: Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott’s resignations may yet bring him down, since if these front benchers no longer have confidence in him, how can voters? Meanwhile, in Toronto, Ford is acting like the president of a banana republic, or the commissioner of Hazzard County, and his cabinet ministers are apparently all fine with that. They should not be.
On Friday, Boss Ford’s hand-picked deputy minister of community safety, Mario Di Tommaso, wrote a letter firing Blair. Di Tomasso, who was Taverner’s boss in the Toronto Police Service, was on the three-person committee that hired him. This is much more worrying than l’affair SNC-Lavalin, because the police must be independent of government, and this government seems not to have any understanding that.
But Boss Ford does not seem to appreciate that there is a line. And, unlike Trudeau, nobody in his cabinet is resigning or speaking out about the importance of the rule of law. French and Ford are now more firmly in control, and if they finally get Taverner into the top job at the OPP, the whole police force will be suspect every time it touches a file with political ramifications. This will be terrible for the public’s perception of the force.
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