Notwithstanding

Someone testing how long balloons will stay inflated on Charles Street east of Church, 15 September 2018.

I spent Tuesday this past week trailing in the wake of a late-stage luminary of the public service. Richard Dicerni is the chair of a panel tasked with reviewing the Ontario Energy Board. My team supports the panel. 

Because I was with him practically the whole day, I heard the same things many times.

A favoured pearl of wisdom, told to every fresh audience, was the tale of the perilous period of "transition" - that three to six month window - and Richard's seen plenty of these -  when a spanking new government is all of full of itself, saturated in hubris, ignorant as a newborn and firing on all cylinders. 

Like the guys we have now.

Richard told his story perhaps to reassure his several audiences that things are ever thus; the wild ride will eventually be over and things will settle down.

Maybe.

There is, as an exemplum of the proclivities of the new guys, this whole changing the number of ridings in Toronto in the middle of a municipal election thing.

The judge who handed down the decision finding parts of Bill 5 unconstitutional said the Bill was motivated by "pique not principle."

There was a dog pile on the judge for using that phrase; some commented that there was no evidence of the Premier's pique.

No evidence until later that day that is, when Doug Ford doubled down on his imagined solution to an unproven problem.

So here we are. A special session of the legislature will start in about 50 minutes as I write this to see the reintroduction of the Better Local Government Act. 

I don't have to turn on the news to know that there are crowds of protesters on the lawn in front of Queen's Park. 

I don't doubt for a minute that the Bill will pass.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen