Why Bill 5 Isn’t a Policy—It’s a Pattern
MZOs, the Greenbelt, Bill 28, and the Ford government’s broader authoritarian toolkit
This is the final entry in the Bill 5 series. If you’re just joining, start with the index
Doug Ford has always preferred shortcuts to strategy. When courts push back, he reaches for the notwithstanding clause. When cities resist, he rewrites their maps. When workers organize, he legislates them into silence.
And when none of that works—he builds a new system entirely. One where the laws don’t bind him, the courts can’t stop him, and consultation is optional.
That’s what Bill 5 offers. Not reform. Not recovery. Not growth. Just immunity—from the consequences of losing.
This installment traces how Ford’s history of legal override, political retribution, and contempt for due process all converge in Bill 5. It’s not a detour from his usual playbook. It’s the final move.
The Game Doug Ford Can’t Play
Doug Ford used the notwithstanding clause for the first time in 2018—not to protect anyone’s rights or defend the public interest, but to settle a grudge. In the middle of Toronto’s municipal election, he cut the size of city council in half. The courts said it was unconstitutional. He overrode them.
Why? Because he could. Because he wanted to be mayor and wasn’t. Because Toronto didn’t back him. Because power, to Doug Ford, isn’t a tool of governance—it’s a personal instrument of retribution.
He isn’t a strategist. He’s not even particularly effective. Truth be told he isn’t very smart, he was a mediocre student at Scarlett Heights, more athlete than academic, born to privilege, who chose to deal drugs as a distraction. If you’re looking for more you’re searching in vain. He lacks the imagination for diplomacy and the patience for consensus.
He’s a checkers player who isn’t very good and keeps losing, even with a stacked board of his own design, so he knocks the board over and declares himself champion. That’s what the notwithstanding clause is to him: a shortcut for people who never learned the rules. The most complex statesmanship becomes simple when you simply ignore the other side's position and impose your own will.
Then in 2021 the Ontario Superior Court struck down parts of Bill 254, which limited third-party political advertising (e.g. unions) for a full year before elections — calling it a violation of free expression. So Doug dusted off the notwithstanding clause and pushed it through anyway to silence the collective voices of Ontarians in the democratic process.
He didn't want a level playing field. He didn't want coordinated groups like unions amplifying their voices in an election, so he waved his magic notwithstanding wand and made it disappear.
Then in 2022 Ford’s government preemptively invoked the clause in Bill 28, which banned education workers (represented by CUPE) from striking and imposed a contract on them — before they had even walked off the job.
They were walking off the job because they had been subject to a wage wage controls that kept their increases to 1% per year for over a decade, shaving about 16% off their buying power over that time, with an average salary of $39,000 a year (19.50 an hour).
They were looking for an increase of $3.25 (16.66%) which would have brought them back to parity. That was way too rich for Ford's blood so he invoked the clause... briefly, until he was faced with a general strike this time. (Using the same argument he was against when the education workers used it, Ford just gave MPPs a salary increase from $116,550 to $157,350 (35%) because their salaries had been frozen since the 2008 recession. So 16.66% was too high an increase but 35% makes sense to him. Parity comes easier to politicians than education workers I guess.)
He’s used it three times. And he would’ve used it more if it didn’t come with political blowback. That’s where Bill 5 comes in.
The Shortcut That Writes Itself
Bill 5 isn’t a piece of legislation. It’s a blueprint for evasion. A workaround for every barrier he’s ever encountered—courts, consultation, science, Indigenous law, municipal planning. He’s knocked over every checker’s board he’s sat down at, and this time, he brought blueprints to install a table that only seats his friends.
We’ve seen it all before:
MZOs (Minister Zoning Orders), used to override local planning laws, often on behalf of connected developers.
Bill 28, used to preemptively criminalize a legal strike by education workers.
Greenbelt carveouts, gifted to insiders, reversed only after exposure.
Ontario Place, stripped from public control and handed to a luxury spa operator for 95 years.
Bill 5 doesn’t fix any of this. It formalizes it. It makes every past abuse a future authority. What was once scandal becomes structure. Is it still against the law, if you change the laws to suit your whims?
A Pattern of Control, A Culture of Disregard
Ford may not be bright, but he was raised in politics. He knows how to give out his phone number, throw a barbecue, promise cheap beer, and call it good governance. He sells himself as the people’s premier, but governs as a premier for the privileged.
Sometimes—perplexingly—he gets it right. His early handling of COVID was competent and clear. He responded forcefully to Trump’s steel tariffs, defending Ontario’s workers with urgency and resolve. He even manages the occasional rhetorical hit when the moment calls for a tough and forceful tone.
But then the well runs dry.
He is, after all, the same man under RCMP investigation for the Greenbelt scandal—a scandal that arguably wouldn’t exist if Bill 5 had already been law. The highway would be going in, his billionaire friends would be grateful, the greenbelt would be developed.
He’s still pushing for dollar beer in gas stations, as if that’s the social contract Ontarians are desperate to renew. And maybe it is—for some. But it’s also a tell. That’s not a move for his constituents. That’s the level his mind operates on. That’s where his priorities lie.
They don’t lie with serious housing reform. They don’t lie with the long, expensive, broken approval process for new housing. He can slash Toronto’s city council in half, but can’t or won’t fix a system where the approval of a single housing unit takes two years and $160,000 in red tape. That money isn’t padding—it’s catch-up: cities trying to build the infrastructure Ford refuses to fund.
Toronto knows it’s zoning. It can predict and even dictate where new housing units will be built, but can it develop infrastructure to accommodate that growth proactively? That’s a bridge too far. Why build out sewage treatment decades in advance when you can lag years behind? Why have reasonable Market value assessments that actually pay for existing and needed infrastructure when you can download the burden onto each new unit developed and wait three years until infrastructure planning is approved? Proactive and predictive development is the purview of qualified and thinking leaders.
That kind of long-term thinking—planning ahead, not just cleaning up—is far beyond Doug Ford. But burying the 401? Sure. Banning bike lanes? No problem. Selling off the public trust that he is supposed to be a steward of? All day!
Doug Ford is not a complex man. He’s a simple one. With simple moves. And a very self-centered, power-focused agenda. The only thing he’s interested in building is immunity—from consequences, from opposition, from the future.
Because once Bill 5 ensures that the public can’t sue, can’t speak, can’t stop, and can’t be heard—governing becomes very easy.
And very quiet.
