Let me run this one up the flagpole for you.

Regardless of where he lands in terms of a 2024 Olympic bid for Toronto, after his agonizing to watch, behind-the-scenes deliberations, the only firm conclusion you can come to is Mayor John Tory has arrived at his Rob Ford ‘Transit City is Dead’ moment.

You remember that one, right? On the day of his swearing in as mayor back in 2010, Ford stepped up to the microphones and unilaterally declared that the previous administration’s massive transit plan, one of the projects already well underway, was dead, finished, over and out. Just like that. No debate with his council colleagues. Rob Ford was now the mayor, the big cheese. What he said, goes. End of discussion.

Of course, it wasn’t. That particular discussion was far from over, is far from over. It lingers on still.

But Rob Ford, in that single utterance, made with no consultation outside of his small gang of vandals, drew a line in the sand, daring anyone to cross. Few did, initially, at least. For about 18 months or so after that, Rob Ford’s primacy as city council alpha went unchallenged.

Now listen to Mayor Tory’s most recent utterances about a possible Olympic bid less than a week before the deadline for making a decision.

I’m engaged in a very extensive consultative process with groups and individuals and I continue to do that. I will make what I hope will be a considered decision — that people will respect as being considered — when the time comes.

What groups or individuals? We’re only getting dribs and drabs of that information. But we can be pretty much assured it doesn’t include many other members of city council. Mayor Tory has brushed aside a request from Councillor Anthony Perruzza for a special council meeting to discuss the city putting in a bid letter next Tuesday.

I just felt in the circumstances that the decision as to whether to even send a letter or not expressing interest was one that I could make, in consultation with my colleagues and a lot of other people. So I’ll be held accountable for that decision.

“I just felt…the decision…was one that I could make.”

Like Rob Ford, this mayor single-handedly feels he can make a monumental decision on his own. Don’t get side-tracked by his weasel assurances that this is just a letter ‘expressing interest’ in a bid. There’s no evidence anywhere that I can find that next Tuesday’s deadline is anything other than a ‘commitment to bid’. It says so right in the International Olympic Committee’s very own 2024 bid document, page 20 to be exact.

As for Mayor Tory being ‘held accountable’ for the decision he makes on this? I say, sure, starting right now. Let’s hold him accountable for his arrogant disregard for our local democratic process. If the Rob Ford years taught us nothing else, we should be well aware of what happens when one man and his small coterie of advisors and hangers-on tries to steamroll city council, and city council allows itself to get rolled over. Nothing good.

And if your response to that statement is to jump to John Tory’s defense, to point out that he’s no crackhead, that he shows up to work on time, that he’s no dummy like his predecessor, that he’s reasonable, sensible, prudent, you’re missing the bigger point. He shares Rob Ford’s point of view that as mayor he gets to call the shots, and city council’s backing simply comes with the territory. A mayor is just one vote but it’s the only vote that counts.

You like your mayors strong, if not in statute, in practice. I don’t. I think a mayor of Toronto has as much power as he needs, and if he’s unable to use it to push an agenda through city council, that’s on him not the system.

As the clock clicks down to the bid decision deadline next Tuesday, and more and more information leaks out about the backroom maneuvers that have been going on – through Freedom of Information access to e-mails, the mayor’s been forced to admit there’s an unofficial bid ‘working group’ operating to assist him in “planning his consultations” – and the names of the people he’s been consulting with, largely unelected names – revealed, city council should realize that its authority is being usurped by the mayor’s office. He ignored a request for a council meeting to debate a possible bid. He has not been forthcoming in providing information to the public about how any decision is being made.

Whatever decision Mayor Tory makes next week, the city council cannot let this moment pass without making some sort of stand. That’ll be easier, obviously, if he decides to proceed with a commitment to bid and needs council approval for any money the city might need to come up with (and there will be money needed). But even if the mayor declines to proceed, city council needs to make it clear, in the strongest way possible, that this was never a mayor’s decision to make alone, that all the behind-the-scenes, Freedom of Information access only deliberations were unacceptable and undemocratic. If Mayor Tory’s doing all that on an Olympic bid, what else is going on back there?

City council needs to nip this mayor’s imperious inclinations in the bud now. It needs to show the mayor exactly who the boss is here. Like Rob Ford before him, Mayor Tory seems to have claimed a mayoral mandate as some sort of executive fiat. He’ll keep thinking that until city council shows him otherwise.

— advisingly submitted by Cityslikr