Cutting red tape doesn't always lead to efficiency

There's an astonishing realization that comes from reading a Star story this week from my colleague Noor Javed, about how despite years of close attention from Premier Doug Ford including special Ministerial Zoning Orders and special legislation aimed at getting housing built on a particular plot of land in Vaughan, construction has still yet to begin, and does not appear imminent.

- EDWARD KEENAN

There's an astonishing realization that comes from reading a Star story this week from my colleague Noor Javed, about how despite years of close attention from Premier Doug Ford-including special Ministerial Zoning Orders and special legislation aimed at getting housing built on a particular plot of land in Vaughan, construction has still yet to begin, and does not appear imminent.

The provincial government has spent years ramming through legislation and barking orders aimed at getting housing built. Anti-democratic strongmayor powers. Orders from the minister. Suspensions of all kinds of fees and applications and tribunals. Democratic processes dismissed, accountability mechanisms disregarded, checks and balances crushed.

Because the mantra is: "Get'er done."

But after all that, it ain't getting done.

I think a lot of people expected that Ford's display of a heavyhanded, authoritarian approach should have yielded results. Many tend to think getting things done efficiently is the benefit of authoritarianism, and too much democratic stuff is what gets bogs everything down. After all, as the cliche says, "Mussolini made the trains run on time."

Except he didn't. Mussolini did not actually make the trains run on time.

People say it all the time, that the early 20th-century Italian fascist, for all of his many terrifying faults, had the railroads moving on schedule.