Western Standard - July 27, 2026


Protesters at Queen’s Park cite healthcare, autism supports and privatization as top Ford failures


Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

172.93

Word count

2,011

Sentence count

75

Harmful content

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 He's utterly corrupt. 0.99
00:00:02.000 He's taking revenge on the city of Toronto. 0.96
00:00:04.220 I want him to step down.
00:00:05.760 Whole-scale resignation of starting with Ford
00:00:08.220 and then turning himself over to the OPP would be a good start.
00:00:11.480 That would bring some more credibility.
00:00:24.400 I'm here in downtown Toronto, Queen's Park,
00:00:26.360 where the Fight Ford protests are in full swing.
00:00:28.580 This is just one of many protests happening province-wide as the Ford government's popularity continues to slide.
00:00:34.020 Recent polls like this Liaison Strategies poll show a sharp decline in approval,
00:00:38.200 with the Ontario Liberals leading the Progressive Conservatives by five points.
00:00:42.060 This is a stark contrast to last year's election, where the Ford government won in an overwhelming majority.
00:00:47.380 We're here to find out what went wrong, what are people's biggest problems with the Ford government's handling of Ontario,
00:00:52.240 and if they think there's any way he can turn things around.
00:00:54.920 Let's find out.
00:00:55.580 We're going around asking people what are their biggest problems with the way that the Ford government's been running Ontario.
00:01:15.040 Where do I start?
00:01:16.940 I'm mostly here because I have a son who has Down syndrome and severe autism.
00:01:22.340 And I find that the support for people with disabilities is just abysmal, and it's getting worse.
00:01:33.520 The Ontario Autism Program in and of itself, there's still children waiting five years on the wait list for support and treatment, funding for support and treatment.
00:01:43.240 My son is about to age out of that program now, so we're dealing with the transition to adulthood, which, as bad as it is for children, is even worse for adults.
00:01:52.340 The Opsu strike that has gone for nine weeks now, where people like my son have lost all their support because the workers are on strike and this government is not budging on any kind of negotiation with that union.
00:02:06.460 It's really frustrating and that's probably my biggest issue with them right now.
00:02:11.200 They talk about how much funding they're giving to the Ontario Autism Program,
00:02:15.540 yet there's no way that any of the parents can get any accounting of that money
00:02:20.640 when there's still a five-year wait list.
00:02:23.740 How is that money actually...
00:02:25.560 It's obviously that that money's not actually getting to the people that need it.
00:02:28.940 It's no secret that his popularity's been in sharp decline recently.
00:02:32.240 If there were one thing that his government could do to turn that around,
00:02:34.680 do you have an idea what that would be?
00:02:37.540 I think he's got to be more open,
00:02:39.760 He's and he's got to be more transparent. I think you know the actions in all sorts of
00:02:46.660 Areas like what's happened in Ontario place the Ontario Science Center the the Green Belt the airport 0.99
00:02:53.980 All of these you know people aren't dumb like not they're not stupid. It's really pointing to a 0.98
00:03:01.180 real emphasis on
00:03:03.980 prioritizing the private sector
00:03:05.980 and supporting the private sector supporting corporate agendas rather than for the people
00:03:14.520 and he keeps saying like he's for the people he's protecting Ontario and no it doesn't you know
00:03:19.700 people are not seeing that I don't think on the ground I think especially if you live in the north
00:03:23.880 of Ontario like above his cottage north of his cottage I don't think you're seeing that
00:03:30.300 and he's got to understand that he is the premier of the province and not the mayor of Toronto.
00:03:38.000 The climate is disgusting. They're letting the north burn so that they can get access to the minerals.
00:03:44.720 It's sick. It's sick, and that people would have even had to deal with the no-jets. It's disgusting. 1.00
00:03:53.700 I'm glad that it's resolved. Now I want them to give back the other land like Wasaga, Muskoka,
00:03:59.520 all the other places do you think he's done an all right job handling the Trump
00:04:05.040 tariff situation no he's he's trying to out bully a bully they're pals they work
00:04:12.840 together no I don't I think he's done a terrible job crazy about what Carney's
00:04:18.780 doing either do you think there's anything that you would say the Ford
00:04:22.260 government's done right in this since he's won the election I'm a retired
00:04:26.220 teacher he's been cutting education since he got in and the funding and the
00:04:32.160 universities no no I don't think there's there's nothing that stands out to me
00:04:37.100 frankly I want him to step down biggest problems with the Ford government's
00:04:41.040 handling of Ontario underfunding health care with the aims of privatizing it and
00:04:45.360 also education and about the tariff situation with Trump on the border and
00:04:51.620 everything do you think he's been doing a good job of handling that no he's only
00:04:54.720 it for himself he doesn't care about anybody except himself he's probably trying to line up
00:04:57.760 a nice job for himself in the states after all this is done that's what i think is there anything
00:05:02.080 that you think that the ford government could do to turn things around and maybe get a bit more
00:05:05.120 support like he's been kind of cozying up to carney a little bit more praising him a lot at
00:05:08.480 the first minister's meeting i would say whole scale resignation of starting with ford and then
00:05:14.240 turning himself over to the opp would be a good start i don't think they're having many big
00:05:18.160 problems in running the government of ontario because they're doing what they want to do
00:05:21.760 Every now and then, Mr. Ford steps back because he hears the public opinion.
00:05:26.620 And I guess the airport issue, he's saying, well, you know, the doors are still open.
00:05:33.600 But I don't think he really listens to public opinion on a lot of these issues.
00:05:39.360 I was just saying to my friends that I think he has such a heavy Etobicoke hate on for the city of Toronto because of his brother.
00:05:48.200 And I think he's taking revenge on the city of Toronto.
00:05:50.640 So and he's going to do that with the rest of the province soon, I think.
00:05:54.520 So I don't I don't think there's anything stopping him.
00:05:57.140 So since 2025, when he won with a pretty overwhelming majority of the for the election, do you think there's anything he's actually done right?
00:06:06.440 He's back down occasionally.
00:06:08.920 I think that was right.
00:06:10.860 But I don't know if he's actually when you have a majority that large, right, you can do whatever you want.
00:06:18.100 So I think he's just doing exactly what he planned to do.
00:06:22.100 Some things are going to please a few people.
00:06:25.100 Some people are going to be pleased about his emphasis on law and order.
00:06:28.100 The new ads of the government scare me, quite frankly, because they're reactionary.
00:06:33.100 So I don't know what he's done right.
00:06:35.100 He wants to privatize. I mean, I think everything he does is he tries to find public areas in the province
00:06:43.100 province that he can somehow privatize or turn into profit so there's health care that he's
00:06:50.300 slowly eroding and aspects of it that he's trying to privatize there was the green belt obviously
00:06:57.340 the corruption around the green belt there was the um billy bishop airport which had he not been
00:07:05.300 stopped he would have he would have given that over to jp morgan i believe they were the ones
00:07:10.940 financing, right, to have debts go there. My understanding is that he's sitting on like a
00:07:18.280 billion dollars that was allocated to education, but he hasn't actually put it into the education
00:07:23.760 system. Everything he does is to Americanize us. He kind of sees Ontario as how can I create profit
00:07:31.380 for business, whether they're his friends or, you know, people who are lobbying him.
00:07:38.620 um the forest fires he he keeps cutting the budget and then we'll have a bad summer and
00:07:47.180 then he adds in money after the fact but the problem is is that you can't plan properly to
00:07:53.720 be able to deal with the fires if the money isn't there up front so we didn't have enough helicopters
00:08:00.480 we didn't have big enough helicopters so this the union uh who are the firefighters they had to
00:08:08.240 put in requests to get the helicopters. Some of them were on the other side of the country.
00:08:14.040 They weren't large enough to be able to bring the workers or the responders with enough responders
00:08:23.300 with their equipment. So we had a slow start to responding to the fires. I'm also worried about
00:08:29.420 the glyphosate that we're spraying in the forest, which I think is adding to the forest fires,
00:08:33.920 which clearly he is supporting.
00:08:37.780 So I think really if you look across anything,
00:08:40.160 the question is where isn't there a problem with Ford?
00:08:43.240 Do you have any thoughts on how he's been handling the tariff threats from Donald Trump?
00:08:46.760 He's had some pretty strong words.
00:08:49.240 I'm a little mixed on that because I do think that we need to stand up for ourselves.
00:08:54.200 But on the other side, Trump is the type of person
00:08:58.340 that I don't think he's going to respond well to that.
00:09:00.520 So I work in a field where you kind of, you know, you have to do de-escalation, right?
00:09:08.320 So sometimes you want to think before you speak.
00:09:12.440 So I also think that he uses this as an opportunity to try and put himself on a larger stage
00:09:18.640 because I think he has aspirations to run for the leadership at the federal level.
00:09:22.940 And I think that's why there's issues between him and Polyev.
00:09:26.400 I don't think he supports Polyev because I think he wants his position.
00:09:30.840 Yeah, well, we think the Ford government, it mainly serves billionaires.
00:09:34.800 You know, we're facing a massive housing crisis and we received news that Doug Ford has developers
00:09:42.960 showing up to his stag and dough party with huge, huge envelopes of cash for him.
00:09:49.800 So we know exactly who he serves.
00:09:51.480 It's not serving working people, no matter what kind of like impression he tries to create.
00:09:55.680 apart from that like talks about you know he gave a five billion dollar bailout or he gave a five
00:10:03.820 billion dollar payments to the beer store to end the contract early with them so that alcohol can
00:10:10.180 be distributed in convenience stores we think his priorities are completely wrong it's it's to give
00:10:15.540 corporate welfare and yeah it has nothing to do with the interest of working people which is the
00:10:20.020 majority of Ontarians. So the majority of Ontarians did vote him in in 2025 and so do you think that
00:10:26.160 there's a reason for that? Like do you think since then he's actually done anything right for the
00:10:30.420 province? So Doug Ford I think he received or the Conservative Party, Progressive Conservative Party
00:10:35.640 received 40% of the vote on 40% voter turnout. Some of the lowest voter turnout we see in the
00:10:41.340 developed world. It shows people are not politically engaged really because that makes about 20% of
00:10:47.140 of the population voted for him yet he has a majority government and he's uh ramming through
00:10:51.940 all all all types of uh all types of unpopular legislation and uh yeah you see you see it in
00:10:58.120 many places the the campaign against bringing jets to toronto island too and the massive
00:11:03.280 environmental damage that that would cause i haven't really seen any legislation from doug
00:11:08.140 ford that i've seen that's like uh popular amongst people really well there you have it folks clearly
00:11:13.100 there's a lot of people in toronto who have a big problem with the way that the ford government has
00:11:16.680 been running Ontario.
00:11:18.060 We heard people mention health care, the Billy Bishop
00:11:20.280 Airport, and the way that Ford has been handling the Trump
00:11:23.280 tariff threats.
00:11:24.920 We're going to stay on top of events like these 0.56
00:11:26.620 so that we can bring you the latest updates.
00:11:28.200 But I also want to ask you, the viewers at home,
00:11:30.060 what do you think are the biggest problems with the way
00:11:31.940 that Ford's been running the government,
00:11:33.160 and what do you think he can do to improve?
00:11:35.300 For Western Standard, I'm Jeff Knight, signing out.