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Front Burner Transcript for May 3, 2023

Host: Jayme Poisson

ALEX PANETTA: Hi, I'm Alex Panetta.

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DOUG FORD: If you don't support our police, and we're seeing stabbings in the subway, you know, car thefts coming out of our gazoo. And just, enough's enough. We got to put more money into policing.

ALEX PANETTA: If you've been hearing about Ontario Premier Doug Ford lately, you're probably hearing about one of two things. One, his latest changes to policing in the province.

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DOUG FORD: We need reinforcements. We need more police officers on our streets. As we say, boots on the ground.

ALEX PANETTA: Two, his big plan for the redevelopment of a parcel of public land on Toronto's waterfront known as Ontario Place. Which includes a sprawling private spa.

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DOUG FORD: This is, first of all, going to be a world-class destination. You know, it doesn't come without bumps and hurdles.

ALEX PANETTA: As one might imagine, his critics aren't impressed and are asking who these moves are actually for.

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MARIT STILES: This government has failed, failed, to show Ontarians what value this deal has for the people of this province. They failed to produce the contracts. They failed to provide the business case. Speaker, Ontarians deserve to know. And I'm going to go back to the premier again -- when will this government come clean about this backroom deal?

ALEX PANETTA: Today, my colleague covering Ontario provincial affairs, Mike Crawley, is here to talk about what Ford's been up to lately and who benefits. Hi, Mike.

MIKE CRAWLEY: Hey, Alex.

ALEX PANETTA: OK, so before we get into the specifics of what Doug Ford has announced in terms of policing in Ontario, maybe you can start by giving me a bit of the context. So why is Ford out there talking about police and putting police boots on the ground, as he puts it, right now?

MIKE CRAWLEY: Well, he's been talking about a spike in crime.

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DOUG FORD: Here in Toronto, major crimes are up over 20% compared to the same time last year. People don't feel safe. Some are scared to take the subway or to go out for a walk.

MIKE CRAWLEY: And there have certainly been a few high-profile violent crimes in Toronto, as well in other parts of Ontario, that have got a lot of public attention. So there's a perception of a rise in crime, and Ford's solution that he's proffering for this is to have more police out there.

ALEX PANETTA: But how accurate is the perception? Is there, like, is it grounded in reality?

MIKE CRAWLEY: Yeah, if you look at the stats, Alex, certainly the long-term trend for a long period of time in Canada -- as in Ontario, as it is across North America -- has been a decline in crime since the early '90s. But then things have changed a little bit in the past few years, and Statistics Canada does seem to suggest there's been a bit of an increase in violent crime since about 2015. But the degree to which there has been this increase is probably less than the perception and the fear, right. These high-profile incidents -- we cover them in the media. They draw a lot of attention. And the political response, in this case from Ford, is, you know, we need more cops. And there's certainly a debate about whether that's the right solution.

ALEX PANETTA: OK, so we know Doug Ford is a big supporter of the police. And he's been vocal about his appreciation for police. Even just a couple of months ago when he was being grilled by reporters about his daughter's stag and doe party that was attended by developers, he said the majority of people there in attendance were actually cops and that he supports them.

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DOUG FORD: And by the way, the vast majority of people who were there? My daughters, who are all -- well, three out of four are with police officers. The place was packed full of police officers. And by the way, they're champions. We support 'em.

ALEX PANETTA: And, you know, I understand there are a few things he's announced here. And one of them has to do with covering police education costs. What's Ford's plan here?

MIKE CRAWLEY: So everyone who works as a police officer in Ontario has to go through a course -- constable training. It's provided at the Ontario Police College or the Toronto Police College. And what Doug Ford announced is free tuition at these colleges. And so that's about $15,000, that course. And it was-- the officers were paying that. And it's not your typical, you know, university or college course. You actually take it only once you've been hired. So it's a prerequisite to actually do the job, but you only go to that college once the police force has said, yeah, we're going to hire you. Then you go to it. But it's a significant cost to taxpayers. It's going to be somewhere between $20 and $30 million a year of free education for these police officers.

ALEX PANETTA: OK. So in addition to free education, you've got another piece which has to do with the level of education you need to become a cop, right? Can you walk me through that?

MIKE CRAWLEY: So what Ontario announced is that the government is not going to go ahead with the plan to increase the education that was required to serve as a police officer. So right now what's on the books is you only actually need high school education to qualify as a police officer. But the government had actually brought in legislation a few years ago to increase that requirement. The legislation actually passed, and what it said was you're going to have to have some post-secondary -- either a degree or some actual college diploma. But then the government actually never enacted the legislation or brought it into force.

ALEX PANETTA: Ah, I see.

MIKE CRAWLEY: So it was there on the books. And so the announcement was that Ontario would not move ahead with this. And the justification that I got from the government is that police forces and the police associations, the police unions, had pushed back against this and said it was going to have an impact on their ability to recruit.

ALEX PANETTA: So we'll get to the recruitment issue in a second, but I think it's worth noting that the Mass Casualty Commission in Nova Scotia -- something Front Burner has covered extensively -- looked at policing failures during the Portapique massacre. And one of the recommendations as to how policing should change, well, it said the exact opposite of what Ford's doing here. It said, you know, barely a month ago, that, you know, more education would be useful for police officers. Why is that?

MIKE CRAWLEY: Yeah, so the Mass Casualty Commission said that policing across Canada should require a standardized three-year post-secondary program. And the recommendation from the commission to the public safety minister, the federal public safety minister, was to work with the provinces to make this the requirement. The research that the commission did showed that police with higher levels of education were basically better trained to be police officers to deal with alternatives to the use of force. And one of the examples that they put forward was Finland, which has a post-secondary requirement, and that was seen to be quite successful in reducing unjustified use of force by police officers.

ALEX PANETTA: OK, so let's talk about the sort of-- The pretext for all of this is police struggling with recruitment. Are police even really struggling with recruitment?

MIKE CRAWLEY: It's a really good question, Alex. I think the answer is it depends on what you mean by struggling. If you compare policing to, let's say, some professions that are really in acute recruitment struggles right now like nursing, the child care sector, even construction, you know, they are struggling to fill jobs. What the police forces are seeing is they are actually seeing fewer people apply to become police officers, but they're still getting dramatically more people applying than they have positions. So, like, let's take for example, Hamilton. They told us a couple of years ago that they would have 2,000 applicants, and they're typically hiring, say, 30, 40, 50 cops in a given year. Last year that came down to 1,000 people actually applying to be police officers. So there's no shortage of people who want to be police officers, but there is definitely a drop in the number of people applying.

ALEX PANETTA: So are we hearing anything from, say, nurses or other public sector workers about this idea that police get a free education, but not them?

MIKE CRAWLEY: There was definitely a lot of complaint about that. And, you know, in the defence of the Ford government, they have brought in a few programs to incentivize some nursing training, for instance, and some training for personal support workers who would, for instance, work in nursing homes or in home care. But a lot of that is related to the location of where nurses would work. There's also some incentives, say, for doctors to work in some of the more rural and remote areas that relate to kind of rebating your education. But a blanket, free tuition for police officers who, of course, remember, now only need high school education so they don't have to actually go to any sort of post-secondary like nurses and doctors do. There's a certain amount of resentment that the Ford government doesn't necessarily have its priorities in the right place. At least that's what we're hearing from people in the nursing sector.

ALEX PANETTA: So I want to pivot now to another part of Ford's plan that's attracted a bit of controversy, and those are his plans for Ontario Place. So can you tell me, as a non-Ontarian, what was Ontario Place in its heyday, and what is it now?

MIKE CRAWLEY: So Ontario Place is on the water on Lake Ontario. It's actually fairly close to where I live, so I actually go past it and through it frequently. Lovely place to jog along. It's a gorgeous, real jewel on the waterfront.

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ONTARIO PLACE PROMO VIDEO: The decision to go offshore gave the project a chance to grow and do something really worthwhile. It helped the architects come up with a completely new pavilion design, a building that takes advantage of both the land and the water.

MIKE CRAWLEY: It's just to the west of downtown Toronto, and it's provincially-owned land. It was developed in the early '70s under a Progressive Conservative government, and it had, and still has, a geodesic dome with an IMAX cinema inside it.

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CINESPHERE ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, the next performance at Cinesphere begins in approximately 10 minutes. May we suggest you proceed to Cinesphere now to ensure a good seat for this showing.

MIKE CRAWLEY: There is an outdoor concert venue.

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ONTARIO PLACE PROMO VIDEO: And it gave us room to build boutiques and restaurants, to include an 8,000-capacity outdoor amphitheatre...

MIKE CRAWLEY: And back in its heyday it was a real destination for families. You know, there was an outside water park and lots of places for kids to play. Very family-oriented.

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(Music from Ontario Place promotional video)

MIKE CRAWLEY: And then, over time, it kind of saw better days. And by the time I moved to Toronto in the late 2000s, it looked kind of sad. It had that feeling like an abandoned amusement park. After they closed the water park it just was kind of dead. And then the previous Liberal government actually closed it. They shut it down entirely for years because it was bleeding money, and set about on a plan to redevelop it that basically took forever. The only thing that the previous Liberal government did was they redeveloped a small strip on the eastern side of it into a park. Gorgeous park, but there was still a whole bunch of Ontario Place left with nothing really going on in it.

ALEX PANETTA: So, you know, it stands to reason if you've got this public land sitting there, kind of underused, well-located. The premier wants to change that. What's his plan to do that?

MIKE CRAWLEY: So Doug Ford had some really big ideas. He talked about wanting to turn Ontario Place into a world-class destination. And so they got elected in 2018, and over the course of time there were various ideas being floated. There were concerns that, you know, potentially there was going to be some kind of development on it in the way of condos, possibly. Maybe a casino. Doug Ford has a bit of a track record of floating waterfront development ideas when he was a city councillor in Toronto, and his brother, the late Rob Ford, was mayor of Toronto. They had an idea for some city-owned land on the waterfront in Toronto to have a casino and a giant ferris wheel.

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MATT GALLOWAY: Some of the things that could be there -- the world's largest ferris wheel?

DOUG FORD: Yeah, well, these are just visions and ideas that people have brought forward. What we'd like to do is have a monorail system that's running right from Pan Am Games, right along the lakefront, and stops at Union Station and Ontario Place and right across the front of the lake. And then the next stop would be the mega-mall. It'd be 1.6 million square feet, one of the most prestigious malls in Canada. We'd try to attract Nordstroms and Bloomingdale's...

MIKE CRAWLEY: So people's antenna were up about what is Doug Ford going to do with Ontario Place. So eventually the government had consultations. They appointed a special adviser about what to do with Ontario Place, and then over the course of the past year started revealing the plans.

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DOUG FORD: We're building a world-class, year-round destination. You remember when we grew up you could only come here in the summer. This is going to be a year-round destination that's fun for families and students and tourists to enjoy for generations to come.

ALEX PANETTA: OK, so what is the plan?

MIKE CRAWLEY: So right now the plan is a giant spa.

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THERME SPA PROMO VIDEO: Imagine a place of well-being that connects us, entertains us, and transforms us from something you dream about, into something we live.

MIKE CRAWLEY: From a European spa company called Therme.

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THERME SPA PROMO VIDEO: Welcome to Therme Canada Ontario Place.

MIKE CRAWLEY: There would be a massive parking garage underneath the spa, would cover pretty much one-third of the land of Ontario Place. There'd be a little strip of public access around the water's edge. But, you know, a big chunk of this property is being given over to a spa company on what has been reported to be a 95-year lease from the provincial government. Now, the province hasn't confirmed that, but they're not denying it either. Much of the rest of Ontario Place would be devoted to a redevelopment of the existing outdoor music venue, so that would be expanded. So you'd have about a third of the property covered by the spa, a third of the property covered by the outdoor music venue, and then some of the rest would be various park-like places/public access. And a presence of the Ontario Science Centre, which would move from its current location to Ontario Place.

ALEX PANETTA: Right. And there has been some controversy over this science centre part of the plan, mostly centred on the affection for the building it's in now and the way it serves the neighbourhood it's in now. But let's talk a bit more about the spa part of this plan. Why are critics unhappy with this idea?

MIKE CRAWLEY: There's basically a feeling that a big chunk of publicly-owned land, right on the waterfront in Toronto, is being handed over to a private company in a deal that we don't really know a lot about. So the government hasn't made public the lease. It's been reported that it's a 95-year lease, which, you know, is a long period of time to hand over public land to a private company. There's concern about the fact that taxpayers are going to be paying for the parking garage that's part of that building. Almost a half a billion dollars for the parking garage. And there's, you know, just generally concern about the lack of public access to this part of Ontario Place. It would mean that if you want to go there, you got to pay to go into the spa. And is that really what public land on the waterfront should be all about?

ALEX PANETTA: OK. And we played a clip at the beginning of this episode of the opposition NDP leader Marit Stiles, saying basically this was a backroom deal he made with a private company on public land. And I wonder if part of the frustration you're hearing from his critics is basically part of a broader perception or critique of Ford and his relationship with the private sector, and how he weighs that against the public interest.

MIKE CRAWLEY: This has been one of the knocks against Doug Ford pretty much since he became premier. For instance, he said he would never touch the Greenbelt -- protected land around the Greater Toronto Area.

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DOUG FORD: Unequivocally, we won't touch the Greenbelt. Unlike other governments that don't listen to the people, I've heard it loud and clear. People don't want me touching the Greenbelt, we won't touch the Greenbelt.

MIKE CRAWLEY: But then, just last fall announced that some chunks of the Greenbelt were going to be exempted, and so developers who owned the property could build housing on it.

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DOUG FORD: We are developing right butt-up against existing communities. One side of the road there's communities, there's houses. On the other side of the road there's a field.

MIKE CRAWLEY: You know, his mantra during the first election was "For the People," but some of the first things that the government did when they took power was to, you know, scrap increases to the minimum wage, make it more difficult to join unions. So there's, you know, clearly a perception out there that Doug Ford does things that favour big business. And so any time that there are deals that happen that, you know, could be seen to be good for the interests of business, people are naturally going to kind of question whether the public interest is actually being served.

ALEX PANETTA: Doug Ford still retains some political popularity -- a fair bit of it. He's got some juice. And I'm just wondering about his own role in the Toronto mayoral campaign. So let's talk a bit about this byelection to replace John Tory, who resigned in the winter over an extramarital affair with a staffer. And interestingly, the two stories we've talked about today, I understand they intersect in one particular mayoral candidate. Can you talk to me about that?

MIKE CRAWLEY: So I mentioned that the government had hired a special adviser on Ontario Place. Well, that special adviser was Mark Saunders, the former police chief of Toronto. Also a former PC candidate in the last election and also a mayoral candidate in this coming election.

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MARK SAUNDERS CAMPAIGN AD: What is happening in our city? Crime and disorder is out of control, and the city politicians are failing us. I'm Mark Saunders, and I'm running to be your mayor. I was a cop for 38 years, and I've never seen things this bad.

MIKE CRAWLEY: So Doug Ford, you know, at the very beginning, said that he wasn't going to get involved in the mayoral race.

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DOUG FORD: I'll work with anyone, so it doesn't matter who gets elected. And I'm staying out of that election, so. Well, good luck to all of them. I encourage you to run and all the very best. It's tough putting your name forward.

MIKE CRAWLEY: But then, very quickly afterwards, he started stating his opinion, at least.

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DOUG FORD: Well, if a lefty mayor gets in there, God help the people of Toronto.

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DOUG FORD: And there was a couple candidates that are running, that are sitting councillors, that voted to defund the police. The people that voted for defund the police -- don't vote for 'em. Simple as that. We can't have anarchy in our cities.

MIKE CRAWLEY: And a lot of what Doug Ford has said has kind of indicated that he's suddenly, you know, implicitly, if not explicitly, actually endorsing Mark Saunders as the best person to be mayor of Toronto.

ALEX PANETTA: And so I just referred earlier to, you know, Doug Ford and whether he's got any political juice in the city. So, you know, what effect do you think that could have? Like, his involvement in the campaign. And what role do you see him playing?

MIKE CRAWLEY: Well, look, he just won a majority. He is arguably the most powerful conservative politician in Canada. And, you know, he takes a great interest in what goes on at Toronto city hall. This is, in part, because of the time that he spent there as a councillor and a very close adviser to his brother when he was the mayor. Also, Doug Ford has done a lot of things as premier that have an impact on Toronto and how city hall works. So, you know, one of his first acts was to cut down the size of Toronto city council. His government recently brought in legislation to reduce the city's ability to charge developers fees for new infrastructure. Last year, Doug Ford agreed to give John Tory extra powers as mayor. We call them "strong mayor" powers. Effectively what it means is, whoever is mayor of Toronto can have their agenda move forward through council, even if they don't get a majority of councillors approving things. So basically the mayor can pass bylaws on certain priorities -- a lot of them related to housing -- even if they only have one-third of the council there. So all of this is related to stuff that the powerful premier has done, and a lot of the debate in the mayoral byelection is about how the mayor, the new mayor, is going to relate with Doug Ford. Will they be able to, you know, negotiate with him? Will they be able to fight with him? Will the new mayor, you know, just do whatever it is that Doug Ford wants? So that's a big part of the debate that's going on with this mayoral campaign.

ALEX PANETTA: Toronto mayoral election is June 26th. Doug Ford's term as premier lasts another three years. Thanks a lot, Mike.

MIKE CRAWLEY: You're welcome, Alex.

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(Music from Ontario Place promotional video)

ALEX PANETTA: I'm Alex Panetta. Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you all tomorrow.

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Police, a private spa, and more from Ford's Ontario - Transcript

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