Today's lament: "Doug Ford is dumbing down Ontario" by Max Fawcett

Today's lament: "Doug Ford is dumbing down Ontario" by @maxfawcett 

'There’s fierce competition in the unofficial race for Canada’s most dangerous premier, with Alberta’s Danielle Smith deliberately destabilizing her province’s health-care system and Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe literally breaking the law so he can thumb his considerable nose at the carbon tax. But with the most recent demonstration of his own unique brand of politics, Ontario’s Doug Ford just snuck back into the lead. 

"At an announcement for a new medical school at York University, Ford suggested that he wanted to get rid of all the province’s international post-secondary students. It does not appear to have occurred to Ford that those students currently make up 18 per cent of the student body at Ontario’s colleges and universities or that they’ve helped keep these institutions afloat after Ford’s government cut tuition by 10 per cent in 2019 and kept it frozen there ever since. “I’m not being mean, but I’m taking care of our students, our kids first,” he said. “I want 100 per cent of Ontario students going to these universities.”

"This is the sort of narrow-minded parochialism you might expect from Quebec’s government, not Ontario’s. But then, even describing Ford’s remarks as parochial gives them credit they don’t deserve since it presumes he’s at least thought about the issues at play for more than a few seconds. As The Canadian Press reported, “Ford then lamented the fact that some kids and parents have said some Ontario students study abroad and then do not return home after they meet someone.”

"That’s right: Ford is willing to risk bankrupting his province’s post-secondary institutions because sometimes people leave Ontario to study and don’t return. And while Ford will walk this back in due course, it’s just the latest demonstration of his monumental intellectual shortcomings that are turning the province he governs into a second-rate echo of its former self..."

Today's tonic: "Why do so many ignore facts, like the carbon tax works? Because we’re hard-wired to follow the pack"

Today's tonic: "Why do so many ignore facts, like the carbon tax works? Because we’re hard-wired to follow the pack," by columnist Andrew Phillips of the Toronto Star.   

This piece is a great reminder about how most people choose to think and approach the issues of our time. 

Here's an excerpt: 

"I’ve been thinking a lot about thinking — about how we come to believe what we believe and the tendency of people to cling to their beliefs in the face of a mountain of facts that contradict those same beliefs.

"This is hardly a new issue. We’ve been lamenting the fact that people lock themselves into self-reinforcing communities of belief for years now, especially since the advent of Donald Trump and his world of “alternative facts"...

"...Does this imply just giving up in the face of mass resistance to the “facts?” Not necessarily. But it does imply taking more account of where people are coming from and not automatically dismissing their views as irrational or badly motivated.

"It also implies examining your own beliefs with a bit more humility. After all, it’s not just all those other people whose brains are wired for social thinking. It’s you and me as well."