Will No One Rid Us Of This Turbulent Councillor?

I had to laugh. One of those chuckles really, a combination of knowing, disbelief and a dollop of self-loathing. Always a dollop of self-loathing.

“Minnan-Wong not running for mayor,” stated the headline of Don Peat’s Toronto Sun article on Thursday.

HeeHeeHeeHee, I chortled to myself. Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong running for mayor. Please. It’s a testament to the era of lowered political expectations we live in that anyone, and I mean anyone, including the councillor himself, actually thought for anything longer than a passing notion or fancy that Denzil Minnan-Wong could be considered a legitimate mayoral candidate.

Now, I know that after electing someone like Rob Ford as mayor, the reasonable response to that view is, well, all bets are off. If Rob Ford, why not, I don’t know, a chia pet? Clearly we’re comfortable scraping from the bottom of the barrel. Whatever else you might say about him, Councillor Minnan-Wong cuts an acceptable figure. His suits aren’t ill-fitting.

The difference is, Rob Ford wears the necessary populism any self-proclaimed far right conservative politician needs to win. I don’t get it either but he’s not trying to appeal to me. Enough of the folks believe he represents their values and views of local governance that a quarter of Toronto voters see him as one of them, always looking out for the little guy. Councillor Minnan-Wong is not that, not even close.

He’s more… ummmm, how would you describe the Minnan-Wong brand of conservatism? It’s most certainly not populist. You wouldn’t consider him a John Tory country club conservative. It’s just, I don’t know, loathsome? Along with the mayor, his brother, the speaker and maybe Councillor Mike Del Grande, no one is more divisive, petty and single-minded in their pursuit of small government and low taxes than Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong.

We’ve already written about Minnan-Wong as councillor in our Wards To Watch series but I think it bears repeating now that he’s officially registered to run for re-election in Ward 34 Don Valley East.

Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong is why we can’t have nice things in Toronto. His view of the city seems to come almost exclusively from behind the wheel of his car, out through the windshield. (Or standing, tending to his lawn, evidently.) It’s very telling that in saying why it was he was running again, the councillor said, “There is a lot to do in this city and I’m clearly engaged in gridlock and congestion and trying to make our roads better.”

Trying to make our roads better.

Now, I know it may seem like I’m playing semantics here. Roads could be seen as just a generic word denoting travel or a commuting route. But he didn’t say he was trying to make our commute easier or reduce our travel times in the city. No. The councillor’s attitude toward city building is as auto-centric as our mayor’s and just as stuck in the ‘70s suburban mindset of his youth.

He opposes anything that challenges the supremacy of cars to get around the city. Bike lanes. Open streets. Scrambled intersections. Expressway removal. He loves the view of Toronto from the elevated eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway!

Denzil Minnan-Wong has been a city councillor since amalgamation, having sat on the North York council before that, and I think it’s fair to ask for one positive contribution he’s made to life in Toronto in all that time. Since 2010, he’s been the chair of the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee, arguably the third most powerful position on council (4^th if you count whatever position it is Doug Ford occupies) and I’m hard pressed to think of anything on the plus side of the ledger he’s done. Even if it’s just saving taxpayer’s money, I’m thinking that for every dollar in contracting out waste collection and the collective agreement with other city unions, there’s a bunch of cash burned in torn up and rebuilt bike lanes and buried Environmental Assessments.

“In the interests of the public and the City of Toronto,” the councillor told the press after signing up for re-election, “I thought the interests of the people was best served by returning to city council as a councillor.”

Well, I beg to differ, Councillor Minnan-Wong. This city’s interests would be served a whole lot better, and our political discourse more civil if you took your low tax loving, government hating detrimental act elsewhere. Over the course of the next 6 months those running against the incumbent councillor in Ward 34 should badger him relentlessly with one line of questioning and one line of questioning only. What has he ever done for the residents of his ward or this city? Name one positive contribution he’s made during his time in office. One.

It’s a question Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong would be hard pressed to answer.

— demandingly submitted by Cityslikr