In the mid-‘80s, Bruce Hornsby wrote an unlikely hit: a jazz piano anthem about systems of oppression called The Way It Is. The song begins with a man in a suit passing a welfare recipient when, “just for fun he says, ‘Get a job.’” The lyric’s casual cruelty resonated. The song climbed all the way to No. 1, and has been sampled by dozens of artists, from Snoop Dogg to The Script.

Today, it could be the anthem of Doug Ford’s Ontario. We witnessed the cruelty again Monday, when Conservatives rammed through a bill eroding tenant protections with no public consultation. As the vote concluded, protesters chanting “people over profits” were cleared from the public gallery. A member of the tenants’ group Acorn shouted, “You’re putting people on the streets.” Ford fired back, indecorously: “Go f

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