Dec. 23, 2019
St. Catherines Standard
Ford began the year warning of storm clouds ahead. "I can tell you that a carbon tax will be a total economic disaster," he declared in a keynote speech last January. A "job-killing tax" would devastate the country: "I'm here today to ring the warning bell that the risk of a carbon tax recession is very real." Bank economists laughed off the premier's reckless hyperbole, and even Ford ultimately renounced his hysteria. By year's end he reverted to boosterism, boasting of Ontario's steady economic growth and an unemployment rate at the lowest level in a generation, both inherited from the previous government.
As spring beckoned, the premier exhorted motorists to fill up before their pocketbooks were drained on April 1: "Today's the last day to fill your gas tank before the federal carbon tax makes life more expensive for your family," Ford warned. "We'll keep fighting to stop this terrible tax with every tool at our disposal." In fact, average Toronto prices soared from 114.7 cents a litre to about 130 cents that month — due mostly to global oil price swings that dwarfed the 4.4 cents a litre attributable to a federal carbon levy. Indeed, by June, prices were right back at about 114 cents a litre — even with the levy factored in — later falling to as low as 110 cents a litre in September and again this month (before rising again before the Christmas holiday).
https://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/opinion-story/9788027-doug-ford-s-top-7-flip-flops-of-2019/