Monthly Archives: October 2011

Manning The Lifeboats

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Yeterday, 24 hours or so before his first anniversary of being elected mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, decked out in Ticat black and yellow, pushed through council yet another solid plank of his election platform, that of contracting out curbside waste collection between Etobicoke and Yonge Street. There was a certain grim determination to it. Although there was much back slapping and handshaking after the vote among some of the 25 councillors who sided with the mayor, it was absent the gleeful triumphalism that had accompanied such successes earlier in his tenure.

Mayor Ford better be right this time. Eyes shut, ears plugged, fingers crossed. There’s no longer really much wiggle room.

In less than one year supporting the Ford agenda has gone from being an absolute must for councillors looking to occupy the space anywhere near the middle of the political spectrum to something not far from a liability. The mayor’s approval rating has dropped startlingly low startlingly quickly owing to the fact that much of what he campaigned on turned out to be a solid combination of bunk and hokum. There wasn’t nearly the amount of waste (or ‘gravy’ to use the tired, tired turn of phrase) he promised there would be to find and it has become apparent that, in fact, city hall does have a revenue problem more than it does a spending problem. So the mad rush to eliminate the Vehicle Registration Tax and freeze property taxes has created a wider gap in the budget than there needed to be which has put cuts to services front and centre. Something the mayor guaranteed would not be necessary.

Despite all that, Mayor Ford still had his way with council yesterday.

But I’m guessing that, if not a pyrrhic victory, it set the clock ticking on the ultimate fate of his administration and those who have thrown in their lot with him. Because if the contracting out of waste collection to GFL does not translate into $11 million in annual savings to the city, if there’s any sort of hiccup in the delivery of the service, if the public aren’t happy with the change in providers, it will turn out to be yet another boondoggle from the mayor and his team. Fool me once, shame on you and all that.

The significance of this vote is all in the timing. The change won’t take place until next August. To be fair, it’ll really take a year to be able to assess the performance which will be 2013, just a few months before the next election cycle kicks into gear. By August 2014, two months before the election, the success (or not) of private waste pickup west of Yonge Street will be a major issue. If it’s seen as a success, all those who supported it will have something to crow about. If not, well, it’ll all be scurrying for cover.

Which goes a long way to explaining the rather tepid defence put up at council during Monday’s debate.

Yes, the hardcore ideologues and true believers sang the praises of contracting out, with all the improvement in services and millions of dollars saved being touted. (Remember this, people. $11 million per year. Guaranteed.) They were joined by the union haters and everyone who suffered mightily during the horrible summer of 2009. And, of course, the doomsayers of inevitability, featuring the hangdog hysteria of Budget Chief Michael Del Grande. If we don’t do this, we will be sued. Sued, I tells ya!

The rest, however, just seemed to want to be done with it. No discussion. Let’s get `er done and move on. In no way did they want to go on record in favour of proceeding.

Why?

There were too many questions about the true worth of the move. There always are when it comes to contracting out or privatizing waste collection. For every claim for the upside of such a move, there’s a counterclaim of a city or municipality taking things back in house. While Deputy Mayor couldn’t say enough about the 16 years of non-city worker trash pickup in Etobicoke, it comes with asterisks. Less diversion. Easier routes.

And the GFL proposal council approved is additionally fraught with questions. How was the bid so low? Do the numbers actually hold up? Who knows. Since it was just a Request For Quote process, the bid wasn’t assessed against the others. It came in lowest. That’s all the city needed. Even the outside consultants brought in to look at the bid, Ernst and Young, weren’t asked about its feasibility, leading me to wonder what exactly their role was. Yep. We can confirm those are numbers.

Most of the mayor’s supporters didn’t want to know the answers to any of those questions. Only Councillors Gloria Lindsay Luby and Josh Matlow expressed any concerned about how low the GFL bid was, saying it might be too good to be true and that you ultimately get what you pay for. Still, they both fell dutifully in line.

But if, like so many of Mayor Ford’s ill-thought out schemes go south on him, if this move to contract out waste collection does indeed turn out to be too good to be true, those two councillors along with their silent cohort, will have provided themselves cover. We thought something was fishy but the mayor, the deputy mayor and the chair of the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee assured us it would all be fine. ‘A win-win for everybody,’ I believe Councillor Minnan-Wong said. So don’t look at us. We’re just as a surprised as you are that things didn’t turn out like we were told they would.

A distancing embrace, let’s call it. Fence straddling might be another way to look at. Diligently delivering deniability when the cows come home to roost rather than doing their due diligence. Not only is the bulk of the mayor’s support softening, it’s also shirking its responsibility. That’s bad news for him and, more importantly, bad news for the citizens of Toronto as a disturbing number of our elected officials have gone on record as now looking out for themselves rather than for those who put them in office.

— harbingerly submitted by Cityslikr

A Cry For Help

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So there I was, minding my own business, reading an article about David Miller in the Globe and Mail, wondering if there was anything to his assertion that Transit City could be revived from its current deadness when I was hit in the face with a bucket of cold water by current TTC Chair, Karen Stintz.

Any talk of a Transit City resurrection was just ‘a distraction’ claimed Councillor Stintz. “At some point, you just need to make decisions and move. I’m at the point where we are about to dig Eglinton. Let’s just get started, before we go changing more plans.”

Absolutely. Enough with the talk. We need action. Somebody toss me a shovel. I’ll get the digging started.

Oops. Wait. Hold on there for a second. Seems like not all the kinks have been fully ironed out on the mayor’s plan to bury the Eglinton Ave. LRT.

“Unresolved technical issues,” according to the TTC Chair.

Pray. Do go on…

“For one, the change of plans championed by Mayor Ford could trigger a new environmental assessment – a costly and time-consuming proposition.”

So, Councillor Stintz, when you make the claim of — let me just jump back a couple paragraphs in the article — being “at the point where we are about to dig Eglinton”, that might not actually be the case, yeah? Depending on whether or not yet another environmental assessment is needed on what is, ostensibly, a change in plans. Which you hate, those pesky and distracting change of plans.

But wait, Councillor Stintz ain’t done yet. Apparently, that land formation, carved out by retreating glaciers or forged by the erosion of a river making its relentless way to Lake Ontario (I’m not really up on the whole geology explanations), the Don Valley ‘also is a problem’.

“You can’t tunnel there,” Stintz says. “It’s just not possible. So what are the other options? That work is still under way.”

Jesus Fucking Christ.

When are the adults finally going to step in and resume control of this conversation? How long do a majority of councillors continue to let Rob Ford play at being mayor? He makes grand pronouncements which are treated as gospel, as done deals, with no eye on any possible negative implications to such whims and passing fancies, and everyone sits back and says, oh well, he’s the mayor, he has a mandate. Onward and tally ho!

And I’m not letting the province off the hook here. It is their money after all. Shouldn’t they insist on it being spent wisely or, at least, not wastefully? While I hate the idea of another level of government stepping in and mucking about with the city’s business, it is what they do, right? We are their creatures. Doesn’t ownership confer a certain degree of responsibility to ensure your pet is behaving properly?

There are all sorts of yellow flags being waved here. First and foremost, a lack of a concrete plan. We want to take all that money that was assigned for Transit City and use it to bury one line and cancel all the other ones. OK, well, one. All due diligence has been done on this, right? Prepared for any new contingency or any unforeseen snag that will inevitably arise? Like say, crossing the Don Valley? I know how much everybody hates streetcars on the roads but how do you propose to cross the valley?

And secondly, all this has council approval, yes? I know you, Mayor Ford, were elected with a mandate but so were the 44 councillors. We’re assuming at least 22 of them have signed on to your transit plan, what’s it called again? Transportation City? Yes? Yes?

There are ways the province can meddle in our municipal affairs without being patronizing, bullying or overstepping. Ensuring more public scrutiny of this change of plan would be a start. We can bemoan more delays all we want because of further discussions but the TTC Chair, Mayor Ford’s chosen representative, has brought up a couple scenarios that could well be even more detrimental to progress if they came to pass.

I mean, Councillor Stintz is basically begging people to stop the madness. In a newspaper article where she starts out intending to put the talk of a Transit City revival to bed, the TTC chair takes more ink describing the problems facing the new plan than she does dismissing Transit City. Forget Transit City, people. We’re good to go. Except for a couple tiny but possibly HUGE obstacles that could set things back years, decades.

Every time I hear Counicllor Stintz speak lately, I get the impression she’s been taken prisoner by Team Ford. In carefully constructed statements that contain high levels of plausible deniability, she’s blinking out code for us, screaming for help. This one, she seems to be signalling that the mayor’s transit plan is a mess, ill-thought out and very possibly facing much higher costs than advertised. (New environmental assessment=additional costs). We’re already to go. Let’s start digging. Unresolved technical issues be damned!

I’m sorry. Did the TTC Chair just say ‘unresolved technical issues’? That’s our safe word. Time to move in, people. We need to free the hostage.

Commence Operation Rescue Transit City.

— SWATly submitted by Cityslikr

We Are Still Here

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A week into Toronto’s ‘failed copycat protest’ (aka #OccupyTO) and the vultures are circling. Everyone needs to quite loafing around, dye their hair back a normal colour and go get a job. It was all so unnecessary, you see. There are no problems in Canada that need fixing. The banks here have all been model citizens, never once asking for any help from the government. I mean, what’s a little liquidity injection between friends?

Besides, the national editor of Macleans magazine, Andrew Coyne, has informed us that ‘Occupy Wall Street Has It All Wrong’. All wrong. None of it right, apparently. What were we thinking?! Maybe, just maybe, agitators in the U.S. have something to complain out, what with their higher level of unemployment and diabolical financial institutions. Coyne grants them his sage nod of approval. But here, north of stateside? Everything’s as it should be. Go back to your pods, protest people. Nothing to see or complain about here.

The mind reels at just how blinkered those framing our national narrative are. As if there’s no connection between this and that. Our banks are fine, proper regulation and oversight is in place and, technically, no bailout was necessary. It’s all good.

But the occupy movement isn’t just about bank bailouts and regulations. It’s about the whole corporate agenda that has subsumed our national interests. The placement of capital above citizens. Tax cuts and infrastructure deficits. Business before democracy.

Banks are not the only targets to be ‘occupied’. Toronto is home to the country’s non-renewable resource industries that continue to hamper any serious climate change discussion in this country. Mining companies that besmirch our country’s already tattered reputation at an international level. What’s good for Bay Street has become less and less good for Main Street.

So it’s never just been about the financial sector and bailouts. To think so seems like a deliberate attempt to compartmentalize and wish our problems away. Deriding and writing off the occupy movement smacks of shutting down an uncomfortable discussion you don’t want to have. Never mind those crazy, feet smelling, bongo playing deadbeats hanging around in the park. They don’t realize just how good they’ve got it.

— steadfastly submitted by Acaphlegmic