Against the People: How Ford Nation Is Dismantling Ontario

The election of the Doug Ford-led Progressive Conservatives unleashed an aggressive and undisguised market fundamentalism. Ford’s government has taken the assault against the social welfare state, labour and environmental protections to new and unprecedented heights. Maintaining a permanent era of austerity has not only steadily reduced the public sector as a proportion of the provincial economy but has also reduced the social protections available to Ontarians.

Ford’s deregulatory agenda has explicitly degraded the quality of social provisioning and eroded labour rights to the benefit of business. From undermining the fiscal capacity to fund program expenditures adequately to reducing public sector employment and service levels, Ford Nation has reordered an array of ministries and agencies to boost business and development in general and the resource-extraction and investment sectors in particular. Tens of billions have been put back into the pockets of the business community, often directly out of public coffers. Few ministries and programs have been left unscathed. Most people have not benefited.

Against the People is the first book of its kind to provide an in-depth look into the devastating policies of the Ford government across a wide range of public policy issues: from health care, municipal, education and judicial restructuring, to economics, arts, labour, environmental, housing and Indigenous lands. Written by on-the-ground experts and focused on the Progressive Conservatives since coming to power in 2016, this book showcases the politics of dismantling a province.

Carlo Fanelli is an associate professor of Work and Labour Studies, York University. He is the author of Megacity Malaise: Neoliberalism, Labour and Public Services in Toronto, co-author of From Consent to Coercion: The Continuing Assault Against Labour, and editor of Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research.
Bryan Evans is a professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration, Toronto Metropolitan University, and is a member of the Steering Committee for the Ontario office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. His research focuses on political economy and public policy.