this is actually breaking a campaign promise; he said he wasn't going to do that.

i mean, you would have been daft to believe him, but nonetheless.

it's disappointing, but it was obvious, and there's no use in feigning dismay over it: we elected a conservative government, and this is the kind of thing conservative governments do.

at least i know what they're doing, for the next year or two.

it remains to be seen whether the immigrant voters that elected ford are getting what they expected or not. we know they lean a little right on a swath of issues. they like the market rhetoric, and they don't like the gays. but, cuts to social services isn't one of those issues; i'd suspect that this actually comes out unpopular in the 905, where a good number of voters didn't have the cultural understanding of british toryism to know better than to believe ford when he said he'd "take care of people". he really didn't campaign on cutting services - the opposition tried to get the point across, but it may have been interpreted by what you might call naive voters as smears. they don't have the cultural hubris in opposing conservatives, they weren't raised in it, so they may have been easily misled.

i think that what these people voted for was a pro-business government with a social conscience. these people take their religions seriously. and, that's going to piss me off most of the time, but the thing i'm going to agree with them on is social assistance for the poor - because their mosque or their temple insists on it.

for me? right now? knowing that cuts are not imminent is helpful.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/lisa-macleod-announcement-1.4768626