All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Our Mystery Mayor

Posted on September 29, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

At a party Saturday night, municipal politics was very much a front and centre topic of conversation. Perhaps my sample group skews that way, biased because of what I do on a daily basis. Hey! So what do you think about the election? Do you think candidate X is going to win?

Or maybe I’m just a single-minded social bully, forcing my conversation on anyone I can trap in the corner of a room. That’s some election going on, eh? You know what I think? Here’s what I think…

Four separate conversations I had during the evening — count `em, 4 – revolved around the strategic, fearful vote for John Tory in order to prevent Doug Ford from winning. There was no passion for the candidate. No seeming attachment to him except for the perception that only he could ensure that no Ford would be mayor come October 27^th.

“What if I told you there was no way Doug Ford was going to win this election?” I push-polled them. “Any way you slice it, his numbers just don’t add up. You can vote how you want. It doesn’t have to strategic.”

To a person, John Tory was an anti-Ford weapon of choice. Nothing more. A firm belief that nothing, not even John Tory, would be as bad as Ford More Years.

Such a sentiment is hardly surprising. That’s been the Tory tactic all along. He, and only He, can keep the Fords at bay.

The fact that no one I spoke to on Saturday night could articulate any reason to vote for John Tory aside from that speaks volumes to the blind path were heading down currently. When we should be asking what values a candidate represents, whose voices they are seeking to empower at City Hall, we’re only focussed on ridding the mayor’s office of our Ford shame. What comes after? Doesn’t matter. There’s only one battle to win right now.

John Tory. Because, It Could Be Worse.

But with exactly four weeks to election day, with the inevitability of a Mayor John Tory staring us hard and cold in our face, shouldn’t we be asking deeper questions of the candidate? What are his core values? (Why does he want to be mayor?) Whose interests is he running to represent?

We get Doug.

Like his brother before him, it’s all about the ‘little guy’ and ‘the hardworking taxpayer’. The angry. The disaffected. The disenfranchised. Those who see City Hall as the enemy, the source of the city’s dysfunction. The disillusioned and the delusional.

Those refusing to see that at every opportunity, Doug and Rob vote against their interests. Vote to cut taxes. Vote to cut services. Stoke divisiveness and promote resentment.

Many things can and have been said about this base, Ford Nation. But whatever it is, whatever you may think about it, it isn’t imaginary. It’s real, made up of real people.

Who does John Tory speak for?

Never forget that John Tory was an ardent supporter of Rob and Doug Ford in their respective runs for mayor and city council in 2010. So much so, he donated to both their campaigns. In his role as radio talk show host, Tory continued his vocal support of the mayor during the first couple, tumultuous years of his administration. toryandthefords Until the crack scandal broke, there was little daylight between the politics the Fords and Tory espoused.

So what does that say about the kind of mayor John Tory will be? Who will he advocate for? If John Tory becomes mayor who do you think will have a seat at the table of power?

As limp and as lifeless as Olivia Chow’s campaign has been at times (and do not get me started on the just completed Toronto Arts Vote debate stunt), it’s clear about what her priorities are. A push for increased bus service because a solid majority of transit users, especially in the city’s inner suburbs, depend on buses to get around. After-school recreation and nutritional programs for children, more affordable housing because the city is facing an unconscionable rise in childhood poverty. The disaffected. The disenfranchised. The voiceless.

Disagree with her all you want. Take issue with her policy ideas and platform. Same for Doug Ford. Chop his candidacy to bits. But at least with both of them, we know where they stand.

Can you truly say that about John Tory?

What does he stand for? Who’s he going to represent as mayor? What is the one word defining principle of a John Tory administration?

What does a Mayor John Tory’s Toronto look like?

Those might be the type of answers we should be looking for over the course of the next month instead of all needlessly fear rushing to a candidate who, so far, steadfastly refuses to respond to those questions.

— questioningly submitted by Cityslikr

The Tory In Us

Posted on September 24, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

I arrived back home last night after just over a week away prepping some soul-searching about the expected mayoralty of John Tory. The late night snapshots I’d picked up out on the road pointed to not only a victory for Tory in next month’s municipal campaign but, if his numbers held up, a kick-ass win. What did that very real possibility tell us about the mindset of voters in this city?

Of course, I dropped back in right in the middle of the York South-Weston debate that featured the debut of candidate Doug Ford for Mayor. While a campaign of this duration will hardly turn on one debate, Tory’s wobbly performance should probably set of some minor alarm bells in his camp, given his historical electoral inability to close the deal. Being the clear frontrunner now, the presumptive favourite, Tory will be the main object of attack and, with whatever remains of the Ford machine lurching back up onto its hind legs, and with absolutely nothing to lose at this point, the attacks will be vicious, mindless and unrelenting.

That could play into Tory’s favour, serving as a useful bogeyman to scare more voters his way. Do you really want this guy running the city? You think Rob was bad? Come in under the big Tory tent for a warm, protective hug.

Which brings me back (conveniently) to my original intent.

In post-Ford Toronto, why is it to John Tory a plurality of voters are turning?

“A safe set of steady hands.” No wait. “A safe, steady set of hands.” No. “A safe set of steady hands.” Hmm. “A safe, stead set of hands”? Nick! Run that by a focus group, would you? See what people prefer, what’s the easiest way to say that.

John Tory wants to be the next mayor of Toronto but can’t really tell us why. His whole approach to date has been to generally riff on the theme, he’s not that guy or that guy or that NDP candidate. Toronto wants John Tory because it doesn’t want either of the Fords or Olivia Chow.

It’s a campaign of negative space. John Tory is the least worst, basically. Rally round, troops! Together we will… hunker down and hope the storm passes without leaving too much damage behind. Hunker down, troops.

Not that he’s alone in failing to fill the electorate with hope and create a wave of forward-thinking can-doism. That ‘vision thing’, as another largely negligible politician sniffed at back in the day. The amazingly disheartening thing about the 2014 mayoral campaign is just how lackadaisical in public spirit it’s been. If nothing else, the mugging the city has been subjected to over the past 4 years exposed many of its weaknesses, and not just the obvious infrastructure fault lines but how it’s failing too many of the people living here.

Yet, here we are, haggling over keeping to the rate of inflation with tax increases or still talking about finding efficiencies. We continue to talk the Ford talk despite the fact that with every passing day such blather gets exposed as pure fantasy and unfiltered bullshit. Clearly, John Tory doesn’t think so. The messenger’s the problem not the message.

And collectively we seem to want to believe that. That all the city’s problems and needs can be wished away and dealt with by somebody else or with fanciful plans on a map that won’t somehow cost any of us a cent. Pander to us, John Tory. Tell us what we want to hear. Fill our minds with delusion. The same trite shit we bought into 4 years ago.

Having surfed that nonsense into a firmly established lead with more than a month to go now, we should expect the Tory Turtle. Duck and cover. Make no mistakes. Engage only as needed in order to keep up appearances. John Tory has told us as much as he’s going to (or as little as he’s had to) about how he will serve this city as mayor.

We seem just fine with that. John Tory has more than met our lowered expectations. So we can now just get on with ignoring the problems at hand.

— grumpily submitted by Cityslikr

Old School

Posted on September 13, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

It’s not like I haven’t been rendered speechless before by the antics, let’s call them, at City Hall over the course of the past 4 years. I mean, crack smoking and having more than enough to eat at home? And those two just immediately spring to mind.

But yesterday at candidate registration/withdraw deadline day, it was just, well, wow. Just wow.

As you’ll probably know by now, an ailing Rob Ford declared himself unfit to seek re-election as mayor of Toronto but healthy enough to try and reclaim his old council seat in Ward 2 Etobicoke North. His brother Doug, having declared his intention not to seek re-election in the ward he’d inherited from his brother back in 2010 and an overwhelming desire to get the fuck away from City Hall, decided to stick around and run in his brother’s place for mayor instead. Nephew Mikey who had mutely held down the Ward 2 fort as city council candidate while his uncle(s) worked all the logistics was moved into the local school board trustee race. musicalchairs1

Yeah. A Ford running for school board trustee and somehow that’s not even the most redonkulous of this campaign’s ridiculousness.

Frankly, the whole fucking day felt like a setback. A setback and a rollback, a throwback to an earlier era. Not only are we now facing the prospect of a return to Councillor Rob Ford (a much more likely scenario than a Mayor Doug Ford regardless of how ill or incapacitated Rob may be at this point) but look at the artefacts who joined various council races yesterday.

Chris Stockwell, Ward 4 Etobicoke Center. (Last in municipal politics 1988.) John Nunziata, Ward 12 York South-Weston. (Last in municipal politics with an unsuccessful mayoral race in 2003.) Toss in Doug Holyday’s sound-a-like son, Stephen, recently registered to run in Ward 3 Etobicoke Centre, and, you know, we can start partying like it’s 1999. turnbacktheclock

Councillor Ron Moeser, mostly absent and/or devoid of contribution to city council for the entire last term decided, why not give it another kick at the can in Ward 44, deliver another 4 years of little more than confusing questions to staff and grumpy outbursts about ice cream trucks.

I don’t want to sound alarmist at this juncture. Name recognition and incumbency doesn’t guarantee victory come election but both certainly offer an advantageous leg up on the competition. Even the notion of any of these candidates becoming city councillors (or remaining one in Moeser’s case) sends chills down my spine however. They represent the political zombification of the 2014 municipal campaign.

I don’t think I’m too far off the mark to say this represents a crisis of governance.

Toronto’s at something of a crossroads. Having done little more than tread water (at best) for the past 4 years, problems have continued to pile up. Transit and congestion. State of good repair for a lot of our infrastructure needs, not least of which Toronto Community Housing. Deep, deep political divisions.

The last thing this city needs going forward is a bunch of past timers, good ol’ boys talking and acting like it’s the good ol’ days. Old men (in spirit if not in age) with old ideas. The very ideas that got us into our current civic state.

What’s really frustrating is that there are a lot of interesting and exciting new voices out there already campaigning. The likes of a possible Councillor Rob Ford or Stockwell or Nunziata, another fucking Nunziata, Holyday the Younger, Moeser just smacks of regression and retrenchment. Yet another step back when we need to be looking forward.

If it wasn’t clear to everybody before Friday, this is not a campaign anybody should sit out and watch from the sidelines. This is going to take everything the city has to try and staunch the flow of reactionism that appears to be gathering steam. There’s all sorts of dead wood already occupying space in council chambers. We don’t need to be adding to that burn pile.

As the campaign now kicks into high gear, I implore you. Get out there, knock on doors, pick up the phone, donate some cash. The zombies are on the move and they want to eat our civic brains.

— frightfully submitted by Cityslikr