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Ford’s school board takeover: a real estate heist disguised as education reform?​

From https://educationactiontoronto.com/articles/fords-school-board-takeover-a-real-estate-heist-disguised-as-education-reform/

Let’s not sugarcoat it. Doug Ford’s so-called school board “takeover” isn’t about fixing schools. It’s about cutting, silencing, and selling — full stop.

For years, this government has starved public education of funding. They’ve ripped $6 billion out of our schools since 2018. They’ve forced larger class sizes, stripped special education supports, and left students and staff to deal with unsafe, crumbling learning environments.

Now, rather than admit the damage they’ve caused, Ford and Education Minister Paul Calandra are grabbing more power — rewriting the rules so they can take control of school boards, muzzle parents and trustees, and force through their own agenda.

Let’s be clear: their agenda has nothing to do with student success. This is about money and control — and, most of all, real estate. The Ministry has given the job of supervising the TDSB to Rohit Gupta, someone with no known experience managing anything related to public education. He is the senior managing partner of Harrington Place Advisors. Harrington Place describes itself as “bridging public and private sector priorities” by “unearthing latent demand and identifying high value opportunities for public sector assets. He has a background in working with the federal government regarding public-private-partnerships as well as in mergers and acquisitions for Scotiabank. Prior to working at Harrington Place, he led transaction negotiations with Metrolinx for Boxfish Infrastructure Group. This doesn’t mean that the Ministry plans to sell the TDSB to the lowest bidder, but it is interesting that it has chosen a supervisor with so much experience in real estate transactions.

The Toronto District School Board controls some of the most valuable public land in the country, with 612 properties worth up to $20 billion. Alexis Dawson, a community member who was publicly elected to serve as a Ward 9 trustee for the Board told School Magazine that she is worried that the Board takeover might be part of a land grab, Bill 98 passed in 2023 gives the Minister the power to force a Board to sell land not needed for future use – even to a private developer. Dawson is concerned that the supervisor is mindful of the TDSB’s future use needs. Schools sit on prime real estate developers would love to get their hands on. And if history is any indication, that’s exactly what this takeover is paving the way for.

Look at the Greenbelt. Look at Ontario Place. Look at the billions in shady backroom deals this government has worked out with loyal friends and developers while communities lose green space, affordable housing, and public services. Highway 413 is expected to cost between $6 and $10 billion as friends along the route just happen to own land the government needs to buy. Costs of building the Therme Spa, the park, the stage and the new parking tower have ballooned from $335 million to $2.4 billion according to the Ontario Auditor General’s report from December 2024. Contrary to rules around calls for development Infrastructure Ontario’s vice president was in direct contact with primary leaseholder, Therme.

Ford and his insiders don’t see schools — they see dollar signs. They see land that could be flipped for a quick profit while they cry crocodile tears about “fiscal responsibility.”

And don’t be fooled by the language of “fixing deficits.” The only deficit driving this crisis is the one created at Queen’s Park — a manufactured shortfall caused by their own cuts and refusal to pay what they owe school boards. There is no magic solution through layoffs or so-called “efficiencies.” Teachers, education workers, and parents have been holding this system together with duct tape and goodwill for years. There is nothing left to cut.

What is left? Land. Lots of it. And now, with Bill 33, they’re giving themselves the power to steamroll communities, sideline elected trustees, shut down public input, and cash in.

This is an attack on public education, on democracy, and on our children’s future — dressed up as “reform.”

Parents, educators, and every Ontarian who values public schools should be outraged. We can’t be quiet. We can’t let them quietly dismantle our education system while they plan the next land sell-off.

We’ve seen the Ford government’s playbook. Starve the system. Blame everyone else. Change the rules. Sell off public assets. And reward their developer buddies.

It’s happening again — this time with our schools.

The only thing that’s ever stopped them is organized, vocal, public pressure. That’s what we need now.

Our message is simple: Keep your hands off our schools. Keep your hands off our public land. And start funding education properly — before there’s nothing left to fight for.
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Former MPPs want to be included in Doug Ford’s new pension plan for legislators​

From https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/former-mpps-want-to-be-included-in-doug-fords-new-pension-plan-for-legislators/article_66571603-59c7-47f4-8587-5df7084ae350.html

For three decades, Ontario MPPs didn’t have a full pension plan. But now that Premier Doug Ford has restored what then-premier Mike Harris axed in 1995 in a populist move to signal fiscal restraint, a push is on to provide more retirement support for a few hundred legislators who served in the interim.

Pension tension is brewing.

For three decades, Ontario MPPs didn’t have a full pension plan. But now that Premier Doug Ford has restored what then-premier Mike Harris axed in 1995 in a populist move to signal fiscal restraint, a push is on to provide more retirement support for a few hundred legislators who served in the interim.

It is fuelled in part by the plight of former Scarborough MPP Lorenzo Berardinetti, who ended up homeless for a time, but also by the belief that people who leave careers to serve the public in elected office should not be left behind financially.

“For the biggest province in the country not to have it, that’s an embarrassment,” Peter Shurman, a Progressive Conservative and longtime broadcaster who represented Thornhill from 2007 to 2013, says of retirement aid for a generation of one-time MPPs now in their senior years.

Shurman notes he has approached Ford on the issue but says he didn’t get far.

“There has been created a unique divide between the haves and the have-nots,” George Smitherman, who served as health minister and deputy premier under Dalton McGuinty until 2010, says of the new pension plan — which he fully supports.

“I had an extraordinary opportunity over a 10-year period that doesn’t need a pension to make it worthwhile and valuable, but you can’t help contrasting yourself with people that do the same work and have a different scenario now,” says the 61-year-old who represented Toronto Centre.

The pension gap is under consideration by the Ontario Association of Former Parliamentarians, which has an office in the legislative precinct at Queen’s Park and works to advance the interests of past MPPs of all political stripes and tracks their well-being. Leaving politics can be abrupt.

“There has always been strong support, crossing all party lines, for the reinstatement of a pension plan, including a provision that would let former members ‘buy back’ their service time,” says Steve Gilchrist, a Conservative MPP for Scarborough East from 1995 to 2003 — including most of the Harris years — and one of several directors on the association’s board.

“Our intention is to put the question about the possible incorporation of former members into the reconstituted pension plan at our upcoming annual general meeting on Oct. 3,” Gilchrist added in an emailed statement.

The next steps would be to make a formal approach the legislature’s all-party board of internal economy and from there to pension regulators. Questions remain as to whether former MPPs could be somehow included or allowed to buy back time, or whether buy-backs could only be open to current MPPs elected in the no-pension era.


“When you do exit politics, it seems like you’ve got to double your efforts to get some level of stability,” says Taras Natyshak, who was the New Democrat MPP for Essex from 2011 until he decided not to seek re-election in 2022. He now works as a government relations consultant and opened the a spa and event venue called The Lodge at Lakeshore near Windsor with his wife two years ago.

He calls the move by the Harris government to scrap pensions “bottom-of-the-barrel optics.”

Instead of pensions, the province had contributed 10 per cent of an MPP’s salary to retirement savings accounts since 1995.

But following years of pressure in the wake of a 2009 pay freeze for legislators amid the global financial crisis, Ford decided this spring to loosen the purse strings. MPPs were given a 35 per cent raise to $157,350 and made eligible for a defined-benefit pension after six years of service starting next January. That means they will have to be re-elected in the 2029 provincial election to qualify.

The plan, which is part of the public service pension system for bureaucrats, does not credit previous years served. A qualifying retiree would get an initial pension of $33,435 a year at age 65 after serving six years in office.

“After examining a range of options, the new pension plan represents a fair and reasonable path forward that allows sitting members to pay into the new program while former MPPs can utilize the retirement savings arrangement that was previously in place,” says Colin Blachar, director of media for Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy.

The pensions and raises were passed quickly fanfare by all parties with no public backlash, surprising some politicos who had long feared such a move would be “political suicide.” It didn’t hurt that Ford’s popularity was high after winning a third consecutive majority government in February.

“It was forgotten in one day, and the reason was people said, ‘Well, I thought they had pensions. They deserve pensions’” says Shurman.

Given that members of Parliament in Ottawa have long enjoyed pensions and higher wages than Ontario MPPs, Smitherman says he’s lost count of the times he’s heard, “‘I guess you’re living pretty large on your fat public pension.’ And I’m like, ‘No, not so much.’”
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For four years (June 8, 1995 – June 3, 1999), Douglas Bruce Ford Sr. sat as a backbench supporter of Premier Mike Harris's government.

In 1996, the Harris government reduced the number of provincial ridings from 130 to 103, a change which forced some sitting MPPs from the same party to fight one another for re-nomination. Doug Ford Sr. challenged Chris Stockwell for the Progressive Conservative nomination in the newly created riding of Etobicoke Centre. Despite support from Jim Flaherty and others in cabinet, he was defeated.

Wonder if Douglas Robert Ford Jr. (current Premier of Ontario) is looking at a way to benefit from former or deceased MPP's possible pension?
 
Today at a media event, Doug Ford, in response to a Crown Royal bottler closing down Ontario plant, shifting some operations to U.S., said "A message to the CEO in France, you hurt my people, I'm gonna hurt you." and then after he literally pulled out a bottle, turned it upside down and poured it out as he said, "This is what I think about Crown Royal. That's what they could do and I think everyone else should do the same thing"

And people wonder how he stays so popular

 
txlseries4 said:
Today at a media event, Doug Ford, in response to a Crown Royal bottler closing down Ontario plant, shifting some operations to U.S., said "A message to the CEO in France, you hurt my people, I'm gonna hurt you." and then after he literally pulled out a bottle, turned it upside down and poured it out as he said, "This is what I think about Crown Royal. That's what they could do and I think everyone else should do the same thing"
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Doug, take the plastic flow restricter out of the neck before you do something performative like this; else you're going to spend 10 minutes to pour out the entirety of that bottle.

A bottle, I might add that your supposed "teatotaler"-self likely had to fork over $72 for what amounts to silly theatrics.
.
 
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txlseries4 said:
Today at a media event, Doug Ford, in response to a Crown Royal bottler closing down Ontario plant, shifting some operations to U.S., said "A message to the CEO in France, you hurt my people, I'm gonna hurt you." and then after he literally pulled out a bottle, turned it upside down and poured it out as he said, "This is what I think about Crown Royal. That's what they could do and I think everyone else should do the same thing"

And people wonder how he stays so popular

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The company said it will still maintain a “significant” footprint in Canada — including its headquarters and warehouse operations in the Greater Toronto Area, and bottling and distillation facilities in Manitoba and Quebec.
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From https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-doug-ford-crown-royal-ontario/

From https://www.diageo.com/en/news-and-media/press-releases/2025/diageo-plc-announces-strategic-changes-to-increase-resiliency-of-north-american-manufacturing-operations

Crown Royal whisky destined for Canada and non-U.S. export markets will continue to be bottled in Canada, at Diageo’s Valleyfield, Quebec facility.
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txlseries4 said:
Today at a media event, Doug Ford, in response to a Crown Royal bottler closing down Ontario plant, shifting some operations to U.S., said "A message to the CEO in France, you hurt my people, I'm gonna hurt you." and then after he literally pulled out a bottle, turned it upside down and poured it out as he said, "This is what I think about Crown Royal. That's what they could do and I think everyone else should do the same thing"

And people wonder how he stays so popular

Click to expand...
I will add context as many online articles point out...

Crown is still made in Canada (Gimli MB)... Only US product bottling is moving south to the US - the rest (Canadian and non-US market) to Quebec.

200 jobs are affected in Ontario (Amherstburg).

This seems a bit over the top.
 
Coolibop said:
I will add context as many online articles point out...

Crown is still made in Canada (Gimli MB)... Only US product bottling is moving south to the US - the rest (Canadian and non-US market) to Quebec.

200 jobs are affected in Ontario (Amherstburg).

This seems a bit over the top.
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Absolutely, it's over the top and completely performative, but it gets him in the headlines and shows people he's "one of us" who wants to stick it to the big guy taking away our jobs. Just about none of the people this will appeal to will read the articles to know the nuance.

I loathe the guy but so wish those on the left had a sliver of his political guile when it comes to appealing to voters. He's polling at 53% vote share and stunts like this are factors why IMO.
 
Agree w./ @evandyk and @txlseries4 above.

Will say though, from a visual standpoint, this has shades of the closure of the Heinz Ketchup operation in Leamington........ the amount of marketshare they gave away to French's they have yet to recover.....and that decision cost
them more than they ever saved.

I totally grant, this is different in terms of what will still be made/bottled in Canada..........but the singular optics of Ford's stunt will likely impact sales by several million per year, possibly more.

It would not surprise if the near term sales loss exceeding any savings from the plant closure.
 
Northern Light said:
Will say though, from a visual standpoint, this has shades of the closure of the Heinz Ketchup operation in Leamington
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This was my first thought, as well.
Northern Light said:
I totally grant, this is different in terms of what will still be made/bottled in Canada..........but the singular optics of Ford's stunt will likely impact sales by several million per year, possibly more.
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I probably wouldn't be aware of the story if not for Ford's stunt.

Unfortunately Ford is a very savvy politician who knows exactly what his base wants and gives it to them periodically.
 
evandyk said:
Some more detail here on the business reasons for making the decision.

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From the link...
"Whisky in general is selling less right around the world," said Davin de Kergommeaux, who has been researching whisky for 25 years. He is also the author of Canadian Whisky: The Portable Expert.​
​
"People are drinking less alcohol, brown spirits. In fact, distilled spirits in general are not selling as well as they used to. Nobody's meeting their targets."​
 
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