Several of Doug Ford’s key pandemic decisions were swayed by business interests, Star analysis suggests
On Nov. 23, 2020, with Ontario still climbing the face of a devastating second wave, a tired-looking Doug Ford appeared before the media for his then daily press conference. The premier looked ashen and sounded worse. His voice barely projected, like someone had set his volume too low.
That week, Ford had imposed a new set of restrictions in Toronto and Peel Region barring most retailers from selling anything in store, just as the lucrative Christmas season was kicking off. The shutdowns were aimed at curbing the pandemic's runaway swell in the province. New cases per day, which had fallen into the thirties in August, had exploded past 1,500 in early November. They would eventually peak at more than 4,000 per day, leading to thousands of deaths public health experts said then and still believe now were preventable with stronger action.
But for small business owners, the new restrictions landed like a second stone on Atlas's back. For Catherine Choi, who co-owns Hanji Gifts, a small chain in Toronto, the announcement was devastating, even if she understood why it was necessary. At Christmas, our stores are normally packed," she said. It's a gift store. Obviously Christmas is our most important time of year."
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Adding to the stress was the fact that not every store in the city was shutting down. Ford and his government had decided to keep a lucrative exception in place for some retailers, including big box and discount stores. Those stores were allowed to stay open to sell food and other essential items, like diapers and detergent. But the new rules also allowed them to keep selling just about anything else - including toys, clothes, video games and wrapping paper - in person, during the busiest shopping season of the year.
It was a decision that did what had previously seemed impossible during the pandemic: it united epidemiologists and the small business lobby - in outraged opposition.
It's too dramatic to use the word criminal for this, but that is so irresponsible. That is so irresponsible," said Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. It was bad health policy, in other words; it also alienated Ford's most beloved constituency. That's the moment when this turned into anger," said Dan Kelly, the president and CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, anger at the Ford government, anger at Doug Ford personally. And that has lasted."
For public health experts, the big box carve-out was inexplicable on a policy level. But it was something else too: a bright peak in a pattern that has quietly shaped Ontario's pandemic response. At crucial points large and small since Ontario first declared a state of emergency in March of 2020 the government has made decisions that align with the interests of lobbyists - many of whom have close ties to the premier, his party or both - and the businesses they represent. Those decisions have often favoured certain sectors over others and have, at key moments in the pandemic, gone against public health advice, delaying or fracturing lockdowns.
The Star sent a list of 18 questions to Ford's office for this story. His spokeswoman, Ivana Yelich, replied with a statement that did not address any of them in detail. As we have said from the very start, Ontario's response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been driven by public health and based on the advice of the chief medical officer of health - something Dr. Williams himself has publicly acknowledged many times over the past 15 months," she wrote.
But the Star's reporting suggests there's more to the story. Using provincial records, the Toronto Star created a database of all registered lobbying activity at the end of the second wave in Ontario. A Star analysis of that data, as well as interviews with dozens of lobbyists, political, industry and medical insiders, shows that, again and again during COVID, lobbyists were able to deliver for their clients - in industries like film, construction and long-term care - in ways that sometimes warped the COVID fight. They pushed for legal indemnities that were provided, contracts that were signed, and lockdown exemptions, like the big box carve-out, that were granted.
Honestly, right from day one, all the way back to last March, I have not understood much of the logic of the rules," Furness said.
I wondered," he added, who was pulling the strings."
***
COVID-19 presented Ontario with a generational crisis in politics and business. But for the industry that operates at the intersection of business and politics - known to insiders as government relations" and to the rest of the world as lobbying" - it's been a boon. That's especially true for provincial lobbyists with ties to the Progressive Conservative Party, the Ford government or Doug Ford himself.
An analysis of more than 3,000 individual entries into the lobbyist's registry from the end of March reveals a clear pattern. Out of the 12 lobbyists with the most registered clients at that point, when Ontario was rapidly reopening, 10 had clear conservative ties and an 11th had helped raise money for the PC party. Among lobbyists with 10 or more active registrations, almost two-thirds had worked on conservative campaigns, for conservative ministers or were open about their conservative links.
Lobbying is not new in Ontario. Nor is partisan lobbying unique to the province, to conservatives or to the Ford administration. It also isn't illegal. And not everyone agrees that it's been all that effective during the pandemic. Nothing's malicious," said one conservative lobbyist, there's just difficulty in moving the ball forward."
Some insiders also view Ford as being less susceptible to the influence of lobbyists than he is just prone to trying to help anyone who gets in his ear. He wants everyone to like him," said one political strategist and lobbyist who has known Ford for years. So he tends to be a little bit all over the map. It's part of the problem with him, but it's also a little bit, quite frankly, part of his charm." That, more than lobbying, some believe, explains Ontario's erratic COVID response.
But not everyone agrees with that interpretation. Many lobbyists and political insiders, including some conservatives, argue that what has happened under Ford goes far beyond the normal interplay between business, partisans and government. I will say this, they listen to lobbyists, the ones who are connected. That's how you get stuff done with this government," said a second conservative lobbyist.
And regardless of who was representing them, it's undeniable that during the pandemic, the government made decisions, again and again, that tacked with the interests of well-connected businesses. And while it can be hard to say in any specific case why the government made one choice over another, the correlations between what those businesses asked for and what the government did were often striking.
***
Just days before Christmas last year, with case counts soaring, the government announced a new province-wide shutdown" to begin on Boxing Day. The order meant new restrictions on shopping malls, retail stores, short-term rentals, libraries, sports facilities and more. It also, in a move that drew little notice at the time, included a significant change for the film and television industry.
Movie and TV crews had been back to work for months in Ontario at that point. But the regulations dictated that, as of Dec. 26, a maximum of 10 performers could appear on set in the province at one time. Compared to restaurants that couldn't open and schools that remained closed after Christmas, the tighter film and TV rules seemed like a footnote. But in the industry, they were a huge deal. Toronto competes with a host of global production hubs for movie business. None of its competitors at the time, the outraged industry argued, had a similar limit.
Just weeks after the new rules came into place, Toronto's Cinespace Film Studios, which operates one of the busiest film lots in the world in Etobicoke, hired a new lobbyist to make that case: conservative pollster Nick Kouvalis.
Kouvalis's goal with Cinespace was unusually explicit for a lobbyist. (Most entries in the lobbyist registry are broad, vague or both.) Kouvalis wanted the set restrictions changed. The 10-performer limit, he wrote in his registration, is not practical." Most of the studio's Hollywood clients cannot practically continue filming within this new limit," he continued.
Kouvalis was also, very quickly, successful. Less than 50 days after they were imposed, the new film and TV rules were quietly updated. On Feb. 10, the province increased the on-set cap by 400 per cent, to 50 performers. The cap remained at 50 when Ford announced a new province-wide shutdown to begin on April 3 and when he imposed a new state of emergency and provincial stay-at-home order on April 7. They remained untouched throughout the entire third wave, even as schools were closed, golf courses shuttered and outdoor tennis courts barred.
To some medical experts, that was troubling. It's alarming to me to allow a gathering of 50 people in any circumstances during a wave," said Furness. That's asking for trouble. My understanding is ... that they're being genuinely careful. This is not a meat-packing plant or a (warehouse) situation. But 50 is eye-popping."
It's also just not consistent with other rules, according to Ashleigh Tuite, an infectious disease epidemiologist and mathematical modeller at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. I think the reason that there is so much frustration and lack of compliance with the various policies that are in place is because there's not a lot of logic to it," she said. The decisions seem to be made on a case-by-case basis. And I think that leads to a lack of public buy-in."
That's not to say that everyone disagreed with the new edict. Film industry advocates, including Cinespace, argued throughout the pandemic that they could and were keeping crews safe. At Cinespace, studios imposed thrice-weekly COVID tests for key technicians, employed work bubbles and bought mountains of PPE, Cinespace vice-president Jim Mirkopoulos wrote in an email. By doing all of that, he said, they managed to keep the industry's test positivity rate to a minuscule 0.0006 per cent.
Cinespace is more than satisfied with Nick Kouvalis's ability to help us make our best arguments (to both the city and the province) and save tens of thousands of jobs in Ontario," Mirkopoulos said.
For his part, Kouvalis said he does not comment on client matters. I carefully follow all laws and regulations related to my work at all times, including requirements to file public registrations when necessary," he wrote in an email. I provide opinion research results without bias or favour to a multitude of organizations including your own, the Toronto Star."
In any case, for Kouvalis, it's now a moot point. On June 2, a month after the Star first wrote about his lobbying work, Kouvalis deregistered all his existing lobbying clients in Ontario.
Kouvalis's long-time business partner, Richard Ciano, a former president of the PC party, took over one of his lobbying files, for the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario (RCCAO). The RCCAO was part of a group of companies and industry organizations that successfully fought back or had repealed almost all restrictions on construction during the pandemic. (Even a very partial ban on new residential projects that was introduced Jan. 14 was yanked back less than a month later.)
But while some sectors, like construction, were very successful in getting what they wanted, so too were some individual companies, including many that had a Ford lobbyist on their side.
***
In early April 2020, in the heart of Ontario's first COVID wave, package and delivery giant Purolator hired two PC insiders to lobby on its behalf. The Purolator team, from Enterprise Canada, included Jason Lietaer, a well-known conservative who Ford named to his election readiness committee in 2020, and Melissa Lantsman, who directed Ford's war room in 2018. Later that spring they would add David Tarrant, who co-wrote Ford's platform in 2018 and served as a top official in the premier's office, to the group.
As with Kouvalis and Cinespace, the Enterprise team had an unusually specific goal. They were lobbying to make sure construction on Purolator's massive new national super-hub, a $330-million project in the heart of the premier's riding, wasn't held up by the pandemic. The Purolator hub was designed to mass multiply the company's ability to receive, distribute, store, ship and deliver packages in Canada. And when pandemic shutdowns began to hit Ontario in March 2020, work on the facility, which was then in the pre-construction phase, was suddenly at risk.
On April 4, 2020, the province barred all non-essential" construction projects. By that point, though, Lietaer and Lantsman had already started lobbying for Purolator. And within weeks, a new exception to the shutdown order had appeared in the regulations.
As of May 4, 2020, construction projects designed to provide additional capacity for businesses that provide logistical support, distribution services, warehousing, storage or shipping and delivery services" were explicitly exempt from the order. Purolator, in other words, was fine. And it has remained fine ever since. When Ontario introduced new, limited restrictions on construction in early 2021, the logistics and delivery clause came back.
Lantsman says she was not involved in the push for the exemption. She's now running for the federal Conservative party in Thornhill. Lietaer did not reply to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for Purolator, meanwhile, said that construction on the super-hub has moved forward with minimal COVID impacts" over the past 15 months and that all the company's advocacy work is in full compliance with all lobbying rules.
Purolator wasn't the only logistics company with a stake in the exemption. DHL Express Canada hired longtime PC insiders Carly Luis and Leslie Noble to lobby on its behalf in April 2020. Their goal was to make sure work could continue on DHL's new $100-million hub at the Hamilton airport.
(Last fall, Luis left the lobbying business. She's now Health Minister Christine Elliott's director of communications. She did not reply to a request for comment. Noble and DHL did not reply to requests for comment.)
The logistics and distribution clause, though, was just one of a host of carve-outs to the shutdown order focused on construction alone, what Furness described as an almost Monty Python-like" list of exemptions. It was almost funny," he said. It's like if a hammer is involved (it wasn't being closed)."
The government wrote in hyper-specific exemptions for projects with niche completion dates or narrow goals, like adding to Ontario's data storage capacity (a lobbying aim for at least large two companies building data farms).
But it wasn't just construction. By the middle of April last year, less than a month into the provincial emergency, the roster of businesses considered essential" in Ontario had already grown into what one senior PC staffer described as a monster." Everyone started asking to be part of that list," she said.
Peter Van Loan, a former federal cabinet minister and president of the PC party, lobbied to make sure at least five clients could continue to do business during the pandemic, including a toy company, a housing developer and several manufacturing interests. (Van Loan did not respond to a request for comment.)
But the essential-business roster wasn't the only hot spot for lobbying. Pharmacies lobbied, successfully, for the right to perform COVID tests, and later offer COVID vaccines. Private lab companies pushed for a larger share of the lucrative test-processing business and for the chance to offer testing to private clients, like the NHL. Fruit and vegetable producers lobbied to keep temporary foreign workers flowing into the province. Food delivery apps lobbied fiercely, and successfully, with the help of well-connected lobbyists, to limit the scope of a bill to cap the fees they charge restaurants. (Torstar, this paper's parent company, lobbied for the right to operate an online casino.)
Lobbyists were on scene for some of the most high-profile moments of the pandemic. On March 12, 2021, Peel's medical officer of health, Dr. Lawrence Loh, ordered an Amazon warehouse in Brampton closed due to a COVID outbreak. Within a week of that date, on or after March 6, 2021, a new group of lobbyists, all from Rubicon Strategies, a firm co-owned by Ford's campaign manager and top political adviser, Kory Teneycke, began advocating for Amazon in Ontario.
Among Rubicon's goals for Amazon: to consult on vaccine rollout in the province. And on the night Loh ordered Amazon closed, a provincial official called him to personally offer 5,000 COVID vaccines. (Loh declined the offer.)
A spokeswoman for Amazon said the company never asked the province for those shots. She added that the company's contract with Rubicon was signed weeks before the shutdown and wasn't related to that event.
Patrick Harris, Rubicon's managing partner, declined to comment on the firm's relationship with Amazon. Teneycke, who never personally lobbied for Amazon, is currently on leave from Rubicon. He retains his financial interest in the firm. (Rubicon has also done work for NordStar, the owner of Torstar.)
The list goes on. Testing and vaccine startups lobbied for research and development grants. Landlords lobbied to end eviction moratoria (and more successfully to bar the recording and public dissemination of eviction hearings). Manufacturers lobbied for help pivoting into the PPE game. On June 30, Michael Diamond, who led Ford's 2018 leadership bid, registered to lobby on behalf of the Beef Farmers of Ontario to discuss the need to address" the provincial Risk Management Program (a kind of government subsidized insurance for farmers). On July 16, less than three weeks later, the government announced a $50-million increase to the annual program.
(Diamond, who was not the only conservative to lobby for an increase to the risk management program, did not reply to a request for comment).
And then there was the long-term-care industry. Despite being the epicentre of the COVID pandemic in Ontario, for-profit nursing homes, from a business point of view, did incredibly well over the past 15 months. The Ford government indemnified them against liability from lawsuits, paid them out at full capacity no matter how many residents they had, and even offered them subsidies for other lost revenues. In fact, many of the investment-backed, corporate players in the nursing home industry will emerge from COVID-19 in better shape than they entered it, thanks in large part to the province's aggressive and generous plan to refurbish old homes and build new ones.
No one has been fined. No one has been charged. No one has lost their job. No one has lost their license," said Gary Will, a lawyer currently involved in a class-action lawsuit against a major long-term-care chain. Instead, the government is rewarding them by giving them increased licenses so that they can make more money at what they're doing."
To critics like Will, there's a good reason for that. Virtually every major corporate long-term-care company in the province has employed at least one, and in some cases three or more, lobbyists with direct ties to the Ford government during the pandemic. The only thing that the government is doing is immunizing these homes from their own negligence," Will said. It's definitely the wrong thing to do. But it's understandable when the people that are writing the laws and the lobbyists are so closely tied together."
***
On that day in November, after his announcement was over, a quiet Ford opened the floor to reporters. From the first question, he came under fire for his new shutdown plan.
Ford admitted the policy was unfair to small businesses. But limiting the big box stores to essential items would be a logistical nightmare," he said. Sure, Manitoba had made its retailers block off shelves of non-essential goods, but that plan wouldn't fly in Ontario. It's creating massive problems out there," he said. How did he know? The CEO of Walmart Canada had told him so personally.
Lobbying, as much as anything, according to those in the business, is about making sure your client gets a chance to make its case. And before the Christmas shutdown, Walmart hired two high-level conservative lobbyists to do just that.
Until May 2019, David Tarrant was Ford's executive director of communications. By his own account, he oversaw all messaging for the government, from speeches, to advertising, to narrative. During the 2018 election, meanwhile, Melissa Lantsman was the public face of the Ford campaign. She was Ford's chief spokeswoman and the director of the PC war room.
Between them, Tarrant and Lantsman had what amounted to a PhD in Doug Ford: how he talked, who he listened to and why. And as of late summer 2020, they were using all that knowledge on behalf of Walmart.
Tarrant and Lanstman both registered to represent the American superstore just as the second wave was kicking off in Ontario. In the lobbyists' registry, they wrote that one of their goals was to arrange meetings for their client. And ahead of the most crucial retail policy decision of the pandemic, the president and CEO of Walmart Canada got an audience with the premier himself. It was brilliant inside lobbying," said a lobbyist who was not involved in the file. I was amazed the way Walmart and Costco got that reprieve."
Lantsman said she was not involved in setting up that meeting. She added that she strictly follows all lobbying rules. (Tarrant did not reply to requests for comment.) A spokesman for Walmart Canada, meanwhile, described any suggestion that Walmart lobbied directly or indirectly for exemptions or special treatment" as completely inaccurate and misleading."
On the contrary," Adam Grachnik wrote in an email, throughout the pandemic, we've stated publicly and privately our belief that all retail businesses - including our biggest and smallest competitors - should be open with proper capacity restrictions and safety protocols in place."
Not everyone believes lobbying played a decisive role in Ford's decision to carve out a niche for the discounters and big box stores. For his part, Kelly thinks it was more about votes than influence. I did have one politician courageously tell me that this was entirely political, because they sensed that families would not like going to Costco and Walmart and not being able to buy a new pair of boots for their kids," he said.
Walmart also wasn't the only retailer lobbying. In late November, Chris Froggatt, an adviser on Ford's leadership bid and the vice-chair of his 2018 campaign, started advocating on behalf of Dollarama, a Montreal-based discount empire. Froggatt's firm, Loyalist Public Affairs, is one of a handful that other lobbyists point to as having significant and unusual influence with the Ford government. And on Nov. 20, when Ford announced the shutdown, Dollarama and other discounters were, like the big box stores, allowed to keep selling non-essential goods in-store.
Froggatt did not respond to specific questions about his work. A Loyalist spokesman said the company's lobbying activities are fully transparent and in compliance with the Lobbyists Registration Act." A spokesman for Dollarama, meanwhile, said the company has been in regular communication with governments across Canada, often with the help of firms like Loyalist, throughout the pandemic.
In any case, in the aftermath of the carve-out, the focus and the fury from small business owners, especially, was on Walmart and the premier. Doug Ford just lit the match with these groups," Kelly said.
According to one source close to the premier's office, after the big-box blow-up, mollifying small business owners, and the local MPPs fighting for them in caucus, became a fixation for the government. Inside cabinet, the voice of the small business lobby took on added weight, bolstering a level of access that was already out of the ordinary, according to Kelly. I've been doing this for a while," he said. And I would say that they have been more accessible, certainly, to me and my constituency, than most governments."
That need, to keep small business owners if not happy then at least happier, played a role in two crucial policy decisions critics believe helped the third wave spread nearly out of control in Ontario, according to sources. First, it contributed to the premier's hesitancy to bring in a provincial paid sick leave plan, a policy long hated by the small-business lobby. Whether rightly or wrongly, I think the perception of small business owners was that those days were being abused," said one party source.
It also informed Ford's decision to keep moving forward with a provincial reopening plan at the end of February, a choice critics believe contributed to a long and unnecessarily painful third wave in Ontario - one that has so far seen more than 1,700 people die in the province.
***
On Feb. 11, 2021, with the end of Ontario's stay-at-home order looming, Dr. Steini Brown, the gravelly voiced head of the provincial science table, gave a presentation to the media that laid out, in stark terms, what would happen if the province didn't step on the brakes. Afterwards, John Michael McGrath, a reporter for TVO with an encyclopedic knowledge of provincial policy and pandemic data, sounded utterly baffled.
I confess, Dr. Brown, that I'm a bit confused by this presentation," he said. Am I missing something here, or is this presentation actually predicting a disaster?"
Brown un-looped the white mask from behind his ears. He kept his head down and answered briefly. No," he said, I don't think you're missing anything."
The modelling was clear. If the province went ahead with a plan to end the stay-at-home order, case counts would begin to climb by the end of February. By early March, they could be bounding out of control. Within weeks, intensive care units would be overwhelmed, and deaths would, inevitably, begin to rise.
The problem was that, by that point, the premier was under severe pressure from parts of his caucus to at least give businesses and restaurant owners a chance to reopen. It's a constituency many of them are familiar with, and historically, conservative governments have always been open to small business owners," a party source said.
Indeed, the most influential lobbying happening at that point wasn't the kind that gets captured in the registry, according to multiple party sources. Instead, it was the kind that happens every day in politics: local business owners, many with long-term ties to the PC party, were leaning on their MPPs, urging them to open up the province faster. Those MPPs in turn were increasingly vocal in caucus, and in some cases in cabinet, pushing the premier to end the stay-at-home order.
On Feb. 12, the day after Brown delivered his report, the province did just that, pushing 27 local health units back into the colour-coded reopening framework, allowing retail stores to reopen in much of the province.
Through the rest of February and into March, Ford kept the province moving forward, mollifying the lockdown critics in his party and his base. On March 8, he moved Toronto and Peel, the epicentres of the pandemic in Ontario, into what was then known as the grey zone," opening all stores in the province. On March 19, his government announced that patios in the grey zone could reopen the next day. The next week, they revealed a plan to allow hairdressers and outdoor fitness classes to reopen, too.
By that point, as the science table had predicted, cases had begun to spike. From a seven-day average low of about 1,000 per day in mid February, Ontario had leapt to more than 2,000 daily cases by the last week of March. The lobbying, too, kept up, through both informal and formal channels. Inside government, a large and loud faction of caucus kept pushing for a faster, more aggressive reopening. Outside, the retail sector had stepped up its own public push.
On Feb. 26, 2021, Michelle Wasylyshen, a long-time PC organizer who worked in Ford's office until February 2020, registered to lobby on behalf of the Retail Council of Canada. The council's goals were explicit and understandable: they wanted more stores open, sooner. And for the first month of Wasylyshen's tenure, they had remarkable success. Even as case counts climbed in March, Ontario kept reopening stores, pushing health zones up the colour-coded ladder toward higher capacities and fewer restrictions.
Wasylyshen said it should come as no surprise that the Ontario government sought out the opinions of the retail sector during the pandemic. But she denied the industry had any undue influence. (A)s the government's track record on reopening timelines has clearly shown, decision-makers have not been excessively responsive to lobbying efforts," she wrote in an email.
But even as case numbers began doubling out of control in late March and critical care doctors began begging the province to slow down, the openings kept coming. By the time the government did bring in new restrictions, on April 1, it was almost too late. ICUs were overwhelmed. Critically ill patients were being hopscotched from hospital to hospital in search of open beds. Rather than a gentle easing, what the province needed then was a dramatic halt.
In the first week of April alone, Ford moved the province from an emergency brake" into a new state of emergency and a stay-at-home order in an effort to curb the mushrooming spread. But by that point, there were so many exceptions to the non-essential business list, so many individual carve-outs to the rules, that Ford and his team did not have many options, at least when it came to shutting down businesses. So what they did, in a move that would prove politically calamitous, was try to shut the people down instead.
***
On April 16, in a baffling press conference, Ford announced that police in the province would soon be enforcing the stay-at-home order with random stops and hefty fines. He announced no new limits on manufacturing or distribution, no curbs on construction, film sets or warehouse work, and no paid sick leave. But he did close playgrounds and golf courses and promised checkpoints on the Quebec-Ontario border. The new restrictions came after days of heated meetings with the PC caucus, cabinet and senior advisers, including political strategists Kory Teneycke and Nick Kouvalis.
According to multiple sources with knowledge of the calls, Kouvalis's polling data pointed to a strong public desire for more action, fast. But few in caucus had much appetite for shutting down businesses beyond the retail limits already in place. The feeling on the ground, confirmed by research, was the government needed to do more," said the party source. And this was Ford and Elliot, and everyone else, in their perspective, doing more among the smallish square that they had to work with."
The new plan was, to put it mildly, a public relations disaster. The reverse Goldilocks nature of the lockdown (too strict in the areas that didn't matter, too loose in the ones that did) provoked a massive backlash from left and right. Within days Ford had apologized. He backed down from the idea of random police stops and promised a limited form of provincial sick leave. And then, for weeks, he mostly disappeared.
For public health experts and epidemiologists, though, all of that was a sideshow. What mattered was that, once again, the province had acted too slowly. As he had before Christmas and in the fall, Ford had waited too long to crack down, leading many to wonder, once again, who exactly had his ear.
There's certainly a lot of talk of Why is ... Amazon still open?' Why is film production still being allowed?' " said one conservative lobbyist. And I mean, when you have lobbyists for something, or someone who owns a company that lobbies for proponents in that industry, on the call briefing caucus, I suppose that sort of answers itself."
The new rules did have at least one major change from those imposed during the second wave. After taking months of public fire from small business owners, and from Dan Kelly's molten Twitter account, the province quietly eliminated the big box exemption to the shopping rules. Blocking off aisles of toys and clothes, apparently, was no longer such a logistical nightmare.
***
It's important to note that a policy isn't bad just because someone lobbied for it. All kinds of interests lobby. A small charity run by a group of Catholic nuns, for example, recently hired the former executive director of the Ontario PC Party to lobby on its behalf. Nor does lobbying usually happen the way it does in political thrillers. Virtually every lobbyist - liberals, conservatives, independents and more - who spoke to the Star for this story agreed that the business is not, at its core, about trading favours, not even in this administration. It's about persuasion.
The whole trick to lobbying is convincing the government that your client is perfectly aligned with where the government is going," said one lobbyist. It's not, in other words, You worked for me, so I'll do this for you.' It's more like, I worked for you, so I know how you think; I can make you believe that what I what is what you want too.' That's why access and connections can matter, especially with this government. These guys, maybe I shouldn't say this, but they are so responsive to requests from particular lobbyists," said one conservative strategist and lobbyist. Their agenda is very lobbyist driven."
Part of that influence may stem from the fact that many of Ford's closest political advisers, including Kouvalis and Teneyke, are lobbyists, own lobbying firms or were lobbying up to the moment they joined his team. It also has to do with the sheer number of former and current Ford and PC insiders who are now actively lobbying the province. But it also, some believe, has something to do with Ford's own unique Ford-ness, the sometimes baffling, sometimes charming always undeniably Ford-y compass that makes him who he is.
Doug likes to help a buddy," said John Filion a Toronto city councillor who wrote a book about Ford's brother, Rob. Doug would do me a favour if I asked him for one, even though there's a part of him that doesn't like me.
Once, when the two were on city council together, Doug Ford tricked his own brother into selling Filion an autographed bobblehead when he didn't want to. Why? Because Filion asked him to. So the bottom line for me is that I'm quite sure he would, if it's a lobbyist that has some connection to him especially, just want to do them a favour," Filion said.
Many insiders and even some critics and rivals believe that Ford's desire to help is very real. They also say his respect for Williams' advice was no act. They see Ontario's herky-jerk COVID response as more the product of an inexperienced premier trying to please too many people, too often, than they do of excess lobbying influence. I think you're seeing what was essentially a junior city councillor walk into a premiership and (try) to learn on the job," said one political strategist who has known Ford for years.
But what is also true is that on some defining issues and linchpin moments during the crisis, the government has made decisions that line up with the desires of conservative lobbyists. And the lobbyists themselves have been able to cash in. It can be very lucrative," said one conservative lobbyist. Let's just assume Ford only has (one) four-year-term. That will translate into hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars for folks like Kory." (Teneycke had no comment on that estimate.)
In some cases, the effects of those choices have been small and isolated. An exemption here. A contract there. At other times, lobbyists have won concessions that were, almost certainly, in the broader public interest (The Ontario Hospital Association uses lobbyists. So do many non-profits and medical associations.)
But it's also true that, by any measure, other choices, to delay or water down lockdowns, to avoid paid sick leave and to let the list of essential" businesses bloom, made the pandemic worse in Ontario. They meant steeper, harsher waves. They meant more cases. They caused more suffering and, inevitably, more deaths.
Lobbyists aren't responsible for all of those choices. (Nor are lobbyists movie villains. Most of them are just normal people doing a job.) But when it came to many crucial decisions in the pandemic, the evidence is clear: lobbyists, especially those close to the premier and his party, had a seat at the table. The premier listened to them. He heard them. He often acted on what they said.
For Daniel Gold, a political scientist who conducted one of the few in-depth academic studies of Canadian lobbying ever published while doing his PhD at the University of Ottawa, that's a real problem. It means the winners in the pandemic - and make no mistake, there have been winners - will have been the ones with the most connections, the most resources and the most cash, not the ones who needed the help most.
It's the elites making decisions and the rest of society just has to live with it," Gold said. And they may or may not be the right decisions. They may or may not be favourable to you. But they are definitely not lobbying because they like you.
They are spending a lot of their own money to make sure things go the way they want it to go."
Richard Warnica is a Toronto-based business feature writer for the Star. Reach him via email: rwarnica@thestar.ca
Andrew Bailey is a freelance data analyst for the Star