PAIN COURT, ONT. — Premier Doug Ford dismissed protesters who unfurled a banner and shouted “Don’t plow our charter” Tuesday as controversy over his attempt to shrink Toronto’s city council followed him to the International Plowing Match.“They hopped in their car from downtown, the NDP, and drove up here. That’s what it was about,” Ford charged at the annual farming exhibition west of Chatham on a sweltering late summer day.“Hopefully we’re going to move on over the next couple of days, get this done, run a more efficient government in Toronto, get transit built, infrastructure, housing,” he said.The shouting by three people, who held the banner with the same slogan, briefly interrupted Ford’s speech to several hundred spectators at the rural exposition, which continues until Saturday.“We’re not going to sit idly by while he stomps on the Charter,” protest leader Aliya Pagani of Toronto told reporters.Their slogan is a reference to the Ford government`s effort to invoke the rarely used notwithstanding clause from the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to override a judge’s ruling last week that it is unconstitutional for the province to cut the number of Toronto wards in the Oct. 22 municipal election to 25 from 47 in mid-campaign. Ford later took a turn at a Ford tractor to plow a furrow at the match and got a good reception from attendees, frequently stopping to pose for selfies with admirers. He hopes to use his Progressive Conservative government`s majority in the Legislature to pass Bill 31 — known as the Better Local Government Act — on the council cut Thursday.NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said it’s “disturbing” that Ford, who never mentioned slicing Toronto’s council during the June provincial election campaign, is blowing off opposing views on the plan. “To simply dismiss the voices of everyday people who have legitimate conc ...
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