Monthly Archives: March 2012

L’état C’est Moi

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Standing outside City Hall yesterday after the transit vote, I noticed a man holding a cardboard placard. I couldn’t read the sign at first glance, only noticing the person holding it. He was somewhat bedraggled, leaving me to assume he was one of those street corner religious types. John 3:16 or other words condemning those to hell who did not accept Jesus Christ as our lord and saviour.

When I finally did catch sight of the front of the sign, my assumption was proven only mildly incorrect. “The Will Of Council Does Not Supersede The Will Of The People”. Not religion as much as misplaced faith.

The schism is complete then. You are either with Mayor Ford or you are against the will of the people of Toronto. As the mayor stated after his latest council defeat on transit, “This is an election issue. Obviously the campaign starts now.”

You remember how that plays out. We just wrapped one up, less than 18 months ago. Rob Ford as the outsider, on the hustings, railing against a bloated, mismanaged and quite possibly corrupt City Hall with a spending problem not a revenue problem.

He kicked off Re-Election 2014 with a fiery speech yesterday, full of misplaced indignation and highly dubious claims that came across as little more than a temper tantrum. In the face of certain defeat – How certain? Team Ford QB and avowed LRT hater Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti didn’t alter previous plans in order to attend the vote. Why bother if you’re going to lose anyway? – Mayor Ford simply lashed out, burned bridges and delivered a big ‘Fuck You’ to his council colleagues and the democratic process.

Watching the speech, you’d think council members, regardless of political stripe, would slowly step back away from the mayor, smiling politely while maintaining eye contact as one does when dealing with any sort of raving lunatic. Surprisingly, 18 councillors stood with Mayor Ford to back his ill-thought out and unfunded subway plan. Sure, many bemoaned his lack of leadership on the issue but followed up by playing along and allowing the mayor to continue with the charade of having a sensible transit plan.

Councillor David Shiner took it one step further, greasily muddying the waters to suggest there was a lack of leadership by everyone on the transit issue. Actually no, Councillor Shiner, but nice try though. TTC Chair Karen Stintz led a coalition of right of centre, centre and left of centre councillors in assuming control of an issue the mayor could not get past empty campaign rhetoric on.

That’s how democracy works around these parts. A mayor is given a head start in setting the agenda, has a certain rump of votes to work with but then it’s up to them to cobble together 23+ votes. There’s no rule that a mayor has to win every vote, not even really important ones.

This isn’t about dysfunction at City Hall. The inmates are not running the asylum. It’s not a clown show or a farce. This is how municipal politics operates. We just don’t recognize what’s going on currently because this is our introduction to a renegade mayor.

In an excellent piece yesterday, John Lorinc pointed out the two remaining items of the mayor’s 2010 election mandate: repealing the Land Transfer Tax and cutting councillor numbers in half. With all the talk of new revenue tools that emerged during the transit debate, it’s laughable to think Mayor Ford could convince 22 councillors to junk a very important source of revenue for the city. If any consensus arose out of the transit battle, it was the need for more revenue not less. Repealing the LTT should be a non-starter.

Leaving the reduction of councillors from 44 to 22 as the remaining plank in his 2010 campaign platform to fulfill.

What I expect to happen in the next little while is an attempted conflation of this pledge with a demand for accountability to the taxpayers from city council. ‘The Will Of Council Does Not Supersede The Will Of The People’. Council’s out of control, folks. They denied you subways. Fewer councillors mean more control for the people, more respect for taxpayers.

Never mind the illogical of that sentiment. Logic has never been part of Mayor Ford’s mandate. Fewer councillors mean less representation for the people of Toronto. Yet it’s going to ring true to those who saw the triumph of LRTs over subways as proof positive of the meddlesomeness of council. Reduce the number of councillors and you’ll increase the power of the mayor.

Of course, it’s hard to imagine 22 councillors agreeing to put their jobs in jeopardy. There’ll be some support from the diehardest of diehard supporters of the mayor, and maybe a sprinkling of those not planning to run for office again. Even with the possible realignment of wards, a reduction probably won’t be done before 2014 election.

Which will be the point Mayor Ford attempts to capitalise on. They’re only in it for themselves, folks. Too many cooks in the kitchen. They denied me my mandate, your mandate, our mandate. Help me rid City Hall of these troublesome councillors. Re-elect Rob Ford in 2014 and I can finally get around to doing the job you elected me to do in 2010.

— clairvoyantly submitted by Cityslikr

Sheppard Subway Zombie Still Undead

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Procedural  manoeuvring, long-winded oration and a mayor largely lurking in the shadows while the fate of perhaps his biggest political file hung in the balance, yesterday’s Sheppard subway debate had it all. So much so, it lapped over into a day 2.

It still appears as if Mayor Ford won’t seal the deal. If I was reading the signs correctly, what they are realistically angling for is to maybe, hopefully, fingers crossed, just swing one or two votes back their way in order to lose a close vote and thereby declare another irrelevancy and continue beating the anti-LRT drum.

So, off we go again, the city’s immediate transit future unsettled, the mayor’s subway dream/nightmare not yet dead.

— to be continuedly submitted by Cityslikr

Give `em Enough Rope

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Here’s what I think.

I think council should give Mayor Rob Ford a reprieve. Let’s say 6 months, a year, to get a viable subway plan in place and then decide on the fate of transit along Sheppard Avenue.

You know why?

Because he’ll never come up with a viable plan. At least not without having to raise the spectre of tax increases, road tolls, parking levies, congestion fees. Even his pliant subway point man, Dr. Gordon Chong, has told him as much. Let the mayor face the cold, hard truth that subways don’t come for free as he assured voters they do when he was campaigning for the job in 2010 and when he cancelled Transit City in December of that year.

Since he declared his candidacy for mayor, Rob Ford has had 2 years to come up with a funding plan. What’ll change between now and the end of this year, say? What enticement can he possibly concoct to draw the private sector out of its current reticence that he hasn’t already tried? Who would be still waiting in the wings to swoop in and save the subway day for the mayor?

I’m thinking his bag of tricks is empty and any extra time he’s granted will see him dangle in the wind a little longer, his concern being which campaign promise he’s going to break. Subways or respecting the taxpayers? He can’t have both. Let him determine what’ll hurt him more come 2014.

Forcing a decision on the mayor will give him what he’s looking for most: a re-election wedge issue. That’s what this is about when all is said and done. Mayor Ford doesn’t give a shit about public transit planning beyond keeping the streets clear for cars. This is simply about political optics not good governance.

So, give him a deadline, a ticking clock, and send him on his way. Go, Mayor Ford, come up with a plan, a detailed funding scheme, and lay it all out for us at, why don’t we make it the December 2012 council meeting. Tell us how you propose to build your subways.

We all know how it’ll turn out. Without significant contribution from the public purse, there’ll be no subways. He’s already asking for $1 billion of public funds to get things started, a far cry from the completely private funded subway he promised previously.

And now his dwindling number of loyalists are slapping together a new tax and levy plan for today’s council meeting. “Be ready to be surprised,“ Councillor Michael Thompson said. “I think anything is possible.”

Anything’s possible. Mayor Ford may accept the reality that he has to raise taxes and introduce levies in order to get his subway built. But how does he square this with his base who have expressed no interest in paying anything more out of their pocket in order to have their beloved subways? It is the monster he created with his magical tales of a city with a spending not a revenue problem. He guaranteed we could have it all, low taxes and shiny new infrastructure. No money down. No interest payments. Ever.

Council should let the mayor disillusion his supporters instead of making him a martyr to the vagaries of democracy. He’ll take a defeat today and run with it for the next two-and-a-half years, setting up another go at the urban-suburban divide he so successfully exploited in 2010. He wants more time? Give him more time. He’s already blasted through his promise of extending both the Sheppard Avenue and Bloor-Danforth subways by 2015. Yeah, he really did say that. A few more months just gives him additional time to keep crossing those promises off his list, the ones broken not delivered.

Empty rhetoric and sloganeering begin to sound hollow over time. While the mayor and his supporters have gained some traction chanting dullard sound bites like 1st class transit, glorified streetcars and screwing Scarborough, it’s already grown as tired as it is shrill. Imagine another 9 months of it? Even the subwayest of subway supporters will demand a little more meat on the bone. Alright already! Put up or shut up, Mayor Ford.

So desperate has Team Ford become that it started handing out pictures of light-rail accidents and fatalities at Monday’s transit town hall in Scarborough. Yeah, I’m going with the obvious pun here. The wheels have already officially come off the bus.

For the sake of the city and its future well being, a fork should be stuck in, his transit plans are done. But the mayor hasn’t accepted that fact yet. It wasn’t a workable plan when he campaigned on it. It wasn’t any more workable when he tried to kill Transit City. It remains unworkable today and won’t get any more workable in a few months time.

Tomorrow start the countdown both time-wise and money-wise. Begin tabulating the costs for the mayor’s intransigence, add them to his bill, put the price on his head, hang the waste and delay around his neck, kick the last leg out from the already creaky chair of self-proclaimed sound fiscal management.

When Mayor Ford comes crawling back to council with either bupkus — a still unfunded subway plan — or one so laden with taxes and levies that his Respect For The Taxpayers cloak will be tattered beyond recognition but will serve as the necessary opening for the adult conversation to city finances that his campaign and mayoralty short-circuited, the landscape will have changed. It won’t be just about Scarborough versus downtown anymore. If we’re going to be paying higher property taxes or parking levies will it only be for a subway in Scarborough? What about Etobicoke? How about that downtown relief line we’ve always wanted?

There won’t be a wedge issue for the mayor to try and exploit. His revenue-versus-spending equation will have been blown to pieces. He will have either a subway to boast about but at the expense of the taxpayers’ pocket book or simply a wasted year, unnecessarily screwing with transit construction when shovels were already in the ground. As mayor I got you what you already had but a year and a half late. Re-elect Rob Ford!

Left to his own devices just a little longer, Mayor Ford will succeed in making himself irrelevant and then we can finally get back to start running this city with some semblance of normalcy.

— spitballingly submitted by Cityslikr