It’s difficult to tug at the thread stitching together the incompetence and malice that make up Premier Doug Ford’s political garb. The twin characteristics seem to be so intertwined as to be inseparable and indistinguishable from one another.
I’m thinking in particular of the Ford government’s current Bill 5, its latest proposed Godzilla legislation stomping its way through the legislative process. How can you spot a piece of Godzilla legislation? The oxymoronic name. Try this one on for size:
PROTECT ONTARIO BY UNLEASHING OUR ECONOMY ACT.
It’s essentially, You get a Special Economic Zone! You get a Special Economic Zone! Granting the government and certain cabinet ministers free reign to override, nope, sorry, ‘streamline and accelerate’ approvals and projects deemed as strategic components to the ‘national mineral supply chain’. Basically, Getting ‘Er Done while steamrolling as much of the legislative process as they can possibly get away with. All in the name of dealing with the ‘economic headwinds’ created by the country’s biggest and now unstable and least reliable trading partner, Donald Trump’s America.
Any opportunity to undermine democracy is a good one for Doug Ford.
Of course, Doug Ford being Doug Ford, there’s no bold, brazen foot forward without an almost immediate stepping into it, a big, steaming pile of shit.
One of the first targets for a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) is the northern Ring of Fire, an area chock full of all those ‘critical minerals’ Ford kept summoning forth during the February election campaign. “Together we need to build a stronger, more resilient and self-sufficient economy,” Ford told a mining conference in early March. 
It wasn’t entirely clear who the premier included in that circle of togetherness. Certainly not the Indigenous communities, it seems, whose lands these ‘critical minerals’ were buried under. “These are not ‘Ontario’s minerals’,” Grand Chief Alvin Fidler replied, “they exist within our territories… The unilateral will of the day’s government will not dictate the speed of development on our lands, and continuing to disregard our legal rights serves to reinforce the colonial and racist approach that we have always had to fight against.”
Cue:
Government mad scramble, proposed amendments to the bill, meaningful consultations. Of course, of course. It was never the government’s intention to exclude and sideline Indigenous and First Nations voices, all the while scraping the poop from the bottom of their shoes.
Pretty much par for the course for this government, a government with three unassailable mandates under its belt, unyoked to any notions of collaboration or consultation. Only when running into a wall of resistance that could threaten its polling numbers does it stop to reflect on its actions while attempting to clean up whatever mess it’s created. Five steps forward, one step back.
And while all this is going on, another desperate stab at reconciliation (for economic gain) by oblivious or indifferent elected officials, a news story comes out that, after 5 years in the dark, the Ford government is planning to unbox the Queen’s Park Sir John A. Macdonald statue and put it back on for public display. Yeah. That Sir John A.
“We cannot run away from our history,” Speaker Donna Skelly said.
OK.
But now?
Right now is when you want to confront our history, our history of residential schools, of which Sir John A. was an architect? Those same residential schools that serve as symbols of Indigenous and First Nations oppression, displacement and cultural eradication? Those residential schools. That Sir John A.
Now?
When you’re trying to de-escalate tensions you’ve already created with Indigenous and First Nations communities over your unilateral bid to abrogate and ignore treaty rights and start digging up critical minerals and resources from their lands? Trying to avoid mass protests that could result and slow down any notion of ‘fast-tracking’ our way to the most competitive, resilient economy in the G7 or whatever other hyperbole you want to use.
My first thought when this news broke was to marvel at the possibility that there wasn’t one person within the inner sanctum of government decision-making who didn’t raise a red flag at the timing of this. Now, guys? You want to make this an issue now?
So, that’s the incompetent thread.
Then it struck me that the Ford government is nothing if not rigidly on message and focus-grouped into shape. This couldn’t possibly have gone unnoticed to everybody, could it? Seeking partnership with Indigenous and First Nations peoples in order to access vital mining interests while, at the same time, reviving the Sir John A/residential school firestorm.
Bringing me to thread number two.
Malice.
Is it possible that Ford wants to pick a fit on that front, fire up his base, his Sir John A/Father of Confederation loving base, in order to create a degree of antagonism between the two sides, recharge some antipathy toward the Indians (they’re Indians in this scenario—see Mike Harris and Ipperwash) and their statue desecrating supporters? Make them seem unreasonable and unyielding and obstacles in the way of a brighter future for all us, reflected brilliantly off all the critical minerals we’ll be digging up from the earth.
It seems an outrageous scenario as I write it out in full. The easiest explanations tend to be the correct ones, Occam’s Razor and all that. Just chalk up the coincidence to a bumbling ineptitude. A lot of moving pieces, lots of things going on all at once. You can’t catch every oversight. Bureaucratic clumsiness.
Still though,
Doug Ford didn’t get to where he is, his capable handlers didn’t get him to where he is based on his Aw, shucks! Folksy charm alone. 
Mask your go-for-the-throat maliciousness in a bubble wrap of comic incompetence and give yourself plenty of wiggle room for plausible denial. Of course we’re not picking a fight. That would be counterproductive. We’re trying to make a deal here. The two matters are entirely unrelated.
Incompetence and malice.
The perfect fit for the times we live in.