Nepotism, it seems, is the Ford government’s preferred way of doing business.

Long-time Ford family friend and ally Ron Taverner was handpicked by the premier as the next Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) commissioner. The only problem was that Taverner was not qualified for the job because his rank was too low. Ford’s solution was to water down the job requirements. Publicly, the government claimed the reason for the lower application standards was an insufficiently broad pool of candidates for the commissioner job. In reality, it was so Ford could appoint his unqualified friend. As former OPP commissioner Chris Lewis put it, the fix was in from Day 1.

And this summer Doug Ford’s chief of staff, Dean French, resigned in the wake of damning reports that multiple plum patronage appointees had close ties to French. The criticisms of Ford and French were so hot that the premier promised he would review all “pending appointments,” including those made by long-time Dean French friend Andrew Suboch, who had been appointed as chairman of Ontario’s Justices of the Peace Appointment Advisory Committee.

Though he ultimately resigned, Suboch’s appointment to such a powerful position should have raised eyebrows in the first place given that he was previously found to have engaged in professional misconduct and acted “without integrity” by the Law Society of Upper Canada (now the Law Society of Ontario) in 2012.

There can be no trust or goodwill when it comes to the Ford government and any appointment process.