I’ve been looking forward to sharing this with the Acceptable Views audience, because it wouldn’t have happened without you.
I have a show on Juno News, titled “Not ‘Sorry’” with Alexander Brown, and the first episode is now live.
Last week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford dropped a bombshell: the Ontario Government would start issuing its own work permits for asylum seekers in the province.
The blowback – especially from conservatives – was swift, with many asking whether Ford’s move wouldn’t just encourage more asylum seekers of questionable legitimacy to flock to Ontario to get jobs.
Is this what Canada’s largest province, with growing unemployment and already overstretched social services, really needed? Who exactly was demanding this policy from Ford?
Just days later, Ford reversed himself (as he is so often prone to do). But why does this supposed ‘conservative’ premier keep pushing some very un-conservative policies?
In this first episode of ‘Not “Sorry,’” Host Alex Brown takes viewers through the whole debacle, and what we can learn about Doug Ford’s politics.
(Update: There’s an accompanying op-ed, for those interested.)
Very little is going to change here. I’ll still be writing weekly, podcasting where I can fit it in, and I’m still the Director of the National Citizens Coalition; but this is a neat opportunity, and I’m thankful to Candice Malcolm, Matt Wolf, and the Juno team (formerly True North) for noticing these columns, pods, comms, and advocacy efforts, and wanting in on the effort.
I always write with you in mind, and that won’t be changing as I spend more time in front of the camera. If anything, it’s an opportunity to bring your comments, concerns, and “what the heck is this country doing”(s) to a whole lot more people.
This Substack audience has already given me more than enough, but I come bearing promo codes. Take advantage of 20% off a Juno subscription at the episode link, or by first clicking on https://www.junonews.com/notsorry.
I’ll have columns over there too — and I’m in media a bunch this week after a broad coalition of beleaguered Ontarians brought Ford to heel for attempting to make his mass-immigration unemployment debacle worse — but I’ll try to limit the cross-posts and link dumps where I can. I’m seeing some summer email-list attrition given how busy this July ended up being in the Canadian political sphere, and I don’t begrudge anyone in this audience for going, “Hey, I’m on the dock with some pre-insufferable Neil Young playing, give my inbox a break.”
Thanks to all of you, and if I don’t carpet-bomb your email again before the long weekend, I hope it’s a good one.
Kick those feet up and pretend it’s 2014. You deserve it.
Love this for you Alex. ❤️ There are a few people in my social media sphere, you being one of them, Greg Brady another that keep me sane because when I think something is completely absurd you guys tend to think it is even more so. And that helps me to know I have not completely gone bat shit crazy so I regularly thank you for that!
I'd be curious as well Alex to hear who put that insane work permit bug in Ford's ear. But Dougie, being Dougie, also likes to distance himself, it seems, from these kind of ideas, by running them up the flagpole to see how well they might fly.
This asylum seeker work permit idea didn't even get a flutter out of Ford's base. Quite the opposite in fact. Ford was severely admonished for it.
It's dead-in-the-water.
Next!!!