Doug Ford is in the wrong job. He was elected to be Ontario’s premier. He wants to be Toronto’s mayor.

Or perhaps more accurately, he wants to be Emperor of Toronto.

How else to explain Ford’s fixation with Toronto? He meddles. He micromanages. He routinely overturns decisions reached by the city’s elected mayor and councillors.

No detail of city business is too insignificant to dissuade his involvement.

His government’s decision to override the city’s development plans for two discrete areas of Toronto is perhaps the most extreme example. In effect, the provincial government is involving itself in the nitty-gritty of zoning.

The reason? Ford wants taller condos built in Toronto’s booming downtown and Yonge-Eglinton areas.

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Typically, his government didn’t bother to tell city council until the decision had been reported in the media.

But then that’s an emperor’s prerogative. His word is law. There is no room for discussion.

Ford’s fascination with Toronto is not new. It revealed itself immediately after the election last year that saw his Progressive Conservatives take power at Queen’s Park. That’s when, out of the blue, he decided to dramatically cut back the size of Toronto’s city council.

Was he settling scores? Was he fulfilling a downsizing dream that had eluded him when he and his brother Rob were members of that council? Who knows his motive?

The point is that the new premier of Ontario saw this bit of Toronto-centric localism as a top priority. He was even prepared to override the constitution’s charter of rights and freedoms in order to ensure the cuts were made.

Since then, Ford’s focus on Toronto has continued unabated.

He has trashed the city’s latest public transit plan, reached after years of agonizing to and fro. In its stead is a brand new Ford plan.

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Did the city want one midway stop on its proposed Scarborough subway line? Phooey. Ford would have three.

Did the city have plans for a so-called relief line to ease the pressure on existing subway routes? Forget that. Ford would replace it with a so-called Ontario Line, running from Ontario Place on the lakeshore to the Ontario Science Centre in the city’s northeast.

As for Ontario Place itself, Ford has big plans for the provincially owned chunk of land on Toronto’s waterfront. But other than ruling out condos and casinos, he won’t say what those plans are.

The Ford government’s decision to let developers more easily challenge municipal decisions at the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (formerly the Ontario Municipal Board) does not apply just to Toronto.

But I suspect that Ford had Toronto’s pesky council in mind when he made that move.

Toronto is too big for any premier to ignore. Ford is not the first to stick his nose into the city’s business.

Mike Harris famously forced the amalgamation of Toronto’s disparate parts into one so-called megacity. Kathleen Wynne, equally famously, nixed Toronto Mayor John Tory’s plan to charge tolls on two Toronto expressways. Her Liberal government also interfered with Toronto’s transit plans for Scarborough.

But Ford has brought meddling to new levels. It’s as if he were taking the opportunity to rewrite history and act as the Toronto mayor he never was.

Tory, a former PC leader, always wanted to be premier. But he never made it. He has had to make do as mayor instead.

Ford, by contrast, wanted to be Toronto’s mayor. He too didn’t succeed. In fact, he lost to Tory.

But now, as premier and plenipotentiary, he gets to tell Toronto’s mayor and council what to do. Revenge is sweet.

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