“Teaching Doug Ford how to use a laptop” could mean teaching him how to work remotely on the VPN, for example. That might not be as bad as it sounds.

It’s more troubling to know that Ford hasn’t worked remotely until now. That means he’s spent a lot of the pandemic not working.

Remember the early days of the pandemic? When Doug Ford was uploading videos from his kitchen?

He was at home during the day. You can’t work remotely for the government without secure devices. If he didn’t have a laptop and/or didn’t know how to use one, then he wasn’t working.

If Ford is only now getting his hands on a government laptop and learning how to use it, then Ford hasn’t yet worked remotely during a pandemic that has included multiple stay-at-home orders.

And Ford had one of the worst attendance rates when he was on City Council, so...

And yes, it’s entirely possible that Doug Ford also just doesn’t know how to use a laptop at all. But that’s a problem on top of another, much bigger problem.

It didn’t even occur to me to ask why Ford hasn’t had a government laptop at home since March of 2020 just in case, and I guess that’s because we’ve all gotten so used to Ford and his team waiting until after something has become a big problem to do something about it.

I can only speculate, but it’s very tough to imagine that nobody working in IT at the provincial public service thought “We’d better get the Premier a laptop” back in March of 2020. Did they reach out to Ford’s office, only to be told not to worry about it?

Almost undoubtedly yes, especially since we now know that he’s so committed to his 2014 BlackBerry that he’s got a stack of refurbished spares.

Yeah, you know what? Doug Ford doesn’t know how to use a laptop. And like any capable leader, he’s been determined not to learn.