The Doug Ford government just passed Bill 60, the Fighting delays, Building Faster Act, 2025, a gigantic omnibus bill, a bill that gives corporate landlords more power to evict tenants.
Rammed through with no public consultation and no legislative transparency. There are some very troubling parts of this bill, the taking over Exhibition Place for one and that is just one of the hidden issues in Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Omnibus bill, that will benefit private corporations.
People will be very alarmed to hear that hidden in omnibus Bill 60 is a new law called the Water and Waste Water Public Corporations Act. This legislation will enable the privatization of water. In a time of the affordability crisis, this Bill will allow private corporations the control to raise water rates to maximize profits. Will public safety be a concern when profits are involved?
This Conservative government has not learned the lessons from Walkerton, where in 1996, after water testing was privatized, at least seven people died. More than 2,300 became very sick, many were hospitalized and many had to go on dialysis, for the rest of their lives. Worse, Ford has already passed Bill 56 which removed local autonomy from local water systems and gave the minister in charge the power to make changes without any public input or oversight.
Since the time of premier Mike Harris’s tenure from the mid-90s to the early 2000s, Conservatives have used gigantic pieces of legislation called omnibus bills to avoid legislative transparency, public input and democratic oversight.
Harris’ first bill was the omnibus Bill 26 in 1996, which was 200 pages long. Hidden inside that bill was the removal of a law requiring a binding public referendum anytime a public asset was to be sold.
We have already seen what happened to another necessity of life when electricity was deregulated and privatized, by 2018 rates had quadrupled. Ford just raised electricity rates by 29 per cent and raised the taxpayer funded subsidy for electricity to 23.5 per cent to hide it. Electricity privatization was a terrible mistake that we are still paying through the nose for. Water privatization is a much worse mistake. Hiding things from public input and democratic oversight is Ford’s standard operating procedure.
Ford’s quest for authoritarian power is shown by his concentration of power in the Premier’s office. Since 2018, Ford has severely reduced parliamentary scrutiny with gigantic omnibus legislation, attempting to overwhelm the opposition, reduced time allocation, invoking closure allowing the government to conclude debate and force a vote on any matter.
Since first being elected Ford has continued an unprecedented transfer of power to the premier’s office.
Homelessness has increased because of Ford’s Bill 184 The Protecting Tenants and Strengthening Community Housing Act. It was called “the eviction bill” because it gave investor corporations more power to evict tenants so they can increase rents.
As a result of Ford’s legislation child poverty, which was supposed to be eliminated by the year 2000, has increased.
Ford’s dismantling of democracy started quietly in his first term and is accelerating. At every turn, Ford has eliminated public hearings and all public input.
Ford has marginalized, regulations in every public policy area, from protecting the public to the environment, as “red tape” and has worked to remove them.
Ford’s omnibus Bill 57 made changes to 56 existing laws affecting almost every government department. Bill 57 also eliminated three offices of the legislature, The Ontario Child Advocate, the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario and French Language Services.
Ford is privatizing healthcare with Bill 74, Bill 175 and Bill 60, giving the minister the power to privatize healthcare in Ontario.
We must not forget that in the pandemic, in April 2022, Ford tried to order police across the province to stop motorists and pedestrians to show identification and ask where they were going. Every police force across the province refused.
Water privatization in the UK has forced the poor and marginalized to get their water from public washrooms with adverse health problems. Authoritarian Ford’s water privatization is only “getting it done” for wealthy corporations.
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