Just a follow up on yesterday’s post here re: the Presto smart card and the resulting pissing match between the province and city.

In our comments section, a reader pointed out that a Mr. Tony Gaffney sits on the board of directors of the Toronto Board of Trade whose press release last week precipitated an ensuing war of words between the Minister of Transportation, Kathleen Wynne, and TTC chair, Adam Giambrone. The province wants the TTC to cease shopping around for an alternative or complementary form of payment for transit use outside of the Presto card that is already in use throughout the GTA and several TTC subway stations. The above mentioned Tony Gaffney’s day job is Managing Partner at Accenture, the company behind the Presto smart card.

Now, we are not suggesting that there’s anything untoward in this set up. Given the make up of the BOT’s board of directors – from banking and financial services to telecommunications and computer technology – private sector/public sector overlap just comes with the territory. But the vigorousness with which the Board of Trade pushes a product that is operated by one of its board of directors should be treated as not entirely unbiased. Rather than a dispassionate, objective analysis, it is the opinion of a special interest group and needs to be viewed as such. One of many, opinionated points of view that get bandied about during policy making debates. The democratic process at work.

That mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi so wholeheartedly embraces the Board of Trade’s view on this issue and has been slavish in his praise of the Presto card is what’s truly disturbing and unsettling to us. Yes, yes. His campaign has been built almost exclusively on a platform of discrediting the Miller Administration and anyone involved in it to generate a groundswell of anti-incumbent feeling in the electorate. This contretemps between the province and the TTC is simply just another hammer to use in his arsenal. George Smitherman did likewise.

But for Rossi it’s also another display of what seems to us to be his corporatist agenda. (Lifted directly off  his website: “Rossi is the only candidate with an extensive career as an executive in large corporations…”.) From his desire to sell off whatever he can of Toronto Hydro to contracting out city services, Rossi seems all about putting business before people. Presto may in fact turn out to be the best system of automated fare payment for the TTC and the GTA. There just seems to be some serious questions about that and Rocco Rossi might be better served garnering some of his information on the issue from the likes of an outside observer like Steve Munro and not exclusively from those with vested interest in the outcome like Toronto’s Board of Trade.

Otherwise, it just looks like Rossi’s running to be CEO of Toronto rather than its mayor.

— dutifully submitted by Cityslikr