Doug Ford has seen the enemy and it is not himself.

First, he fired Vic Fedeli — faulting his finance minister for the worst budget rollout in recent memory. Leaving the premier faultless as usual.

Next, he parted ways with Dean French — blaming his once-powerful chief of staff for the most pungent patronage appointments in recent memory. Leaving the premier blameless as usual.

Now, Ontario’s master of disruption is running out of scapegoats to dismiss. Which puts the spotlight back on the self-styled premier of the people, even if he’s still busy trying to find more enemies of the people.

When you’ve dumped both your right hand man and left hand man, why not man up? Not in his nature.

Ford doesn’t do introspection nor retrospection, not even recognition of where he’s gone wrong. It’s always someone else’s fault.

Read more:

Doug Ford pressed to expand review of appointments

Opinion | Bob Hepburn: Doug Ford: A year of living stupidly

Opinion | Martin Regg Cohn: The day Doug Ford blew up his cabinet to save himself

Previously he pilloried his predecessor as premier, Kathleen Wynne, profiting from her unprecedented unpopularity. Yet today, Ford has set a fresh historical precedent by achieving perhaps the fastest decline in public esteem for a rookie premier ever seen by pollsters in Ontario.

How did Ford fall so far so fast?

To comprehend the pox that has befallen Ford’s Tories, let us set aside the stench for just a moment. Hold your nose over the latest patronage pork doled out by the premier’s office as we try to figure out who did what when.

The official line is that Ford saw no evil, heard no evil, spoke no evil. Never mind the bizarre appointment of a 26-year-old French family friend to be Ontario’s handsomely paid envoy in New York — a posting shut down decades ago but revived by the supposedly parsimonious PC government.

Was Ford truly blind to French’s faults, oblivious to the scheming of his lifelong comrade in arms whom he plucked from obscurity in an Etobicoke insurance broker’s office? The problem with this narrative is that Ford is no longer the fresh-faced rookie politician who solemnly took the oath of office at Queen’s Park on June 29, 2018.

Back then, basking in his honeymoon, Ford proclaimed a new era of transparency and fidelity: “To the people of Ontario, I stand before you today, truly humbled by the trust you have put in me.”

The newly empowered premier promised an Ontario “not just for the privileged few… You have trusted us to govern, to respect your tax dollars, to recognize that every dollar the government spends belongs to you. We will never take this responsibility lightly.”

A speech is just a speech. But after a year on the job, the premier’s performance is not so easily purged from our memories.

Never mind the New York posting that Ford belatedly cancelled when word got out. Former PC party president Jag Badwal, a realtor, is still being rewarded with a sinecure in Dallas as a new trade representative to promote investment in Ontario. If that patronage plum — a pretend job — still passes Ford’s smell test, he needs new nostrils.

And have we forgotten the Washington patronage pigginess that the premier proclaimed with evident pride last October? “I am so happy to announce,” Ford boasted back then, that PC loyalist Ian Todd would be Ontario’s new trade representative at an annual salary of $350,000 a year — a hefty $75,000 more than his predecessor Monique Smith, a former cabinet minister appointed by Wynne, and considerably more than Canada’s full-fledged ambassador to Washington, David MacNaughton (whose pay band is $248,000 to $292,000).

Emboldened by his own hubris, Ford arranged for a job to be created specially for his longtime Etobicoke crony Ron Taverner, a 72-year-old cop, at the Ontario Cannabis Store for $270,000 a year plus bonus — a pay hike of nearly $90,000 over his police job. When Taverner had second thoughts, the premier’s office paved the way for him to become commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police at $275,000 (the original job qualifications were lowered, allowing him to apply despite lacking the required rank).

The uproar prompted a three-month probe by the legislature’s integrity commissioner, laying bare the shamelessness in the premier’s office that scandalized the province. A chastened Taverner withdrew his name, but Ford remained unrepentant, insisting that the final report amounted to “complete — I repeat a complete — vindication.”

This is the same premier who once thundered against “Liberal insiders getting rich off your taxes,” while solemnly promising to “put the people ahead of insiders and elites.” What about Tory insiders getting rich off our taxes?

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

At his swearing-in, Ford promised to do politics differently and pledged to do patronage transparently. A year later, with his popularity and credibility in tatters, the premier’s oath has ossified.

Ford’s imagines himself blameless, while finding fault with everyone else — diminishing his communications team, shooting any media messengers, firing Fedeli and losing French. But there are only so many bogeymen and bogeywomen, real or imagined, who can take the fall for Ford.

The premier of the people insists he has clean hands. He needs to look within.

Read more about: