Tag Archives: Councillor Peter Milczyn

Why One City’s Flaws Are OK

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(Our 2nd favourite City Hall watcher — come on, seriously, who can top the Toronto Sun’s Sue-Ann Levy? — David Hains deigns to grace our pages with his thoughts on the new proposed transit plan, One City. Every now and then we do like to offer up some actual clear-headed analysis. Thanks, David.)

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When it came time to discuss how to fund the Sheppard subway plan, Doug Ford knew how he felt. As is his talent, he put it simply, “All taxes are evil, as far as I’m concerned.”

With this statement, the councillor for Ward Two made it clear that there was no discussion to be had. His was an absolutist belief, and it is one which says nothing is worth having unless it is free.

Of course, that is not the world most of us live in, the one called ‘reality’.

The reality of the situation is Toronto needs massive investment in transportation to be economically competitive and make the city more livable. With an average commute found to be the worst in North America, the current ‘Big Move’ strategy is projected to only maintain current levels of congestion, and focusing on a cars-only strategy won’t deliver the progress that’s needed.

Which brings us to One City, the supposed antidote for Toronto’s transit ills. It’s massive in every dimension: investment, scope, and ambition. And for a city that is preternaturally risk-averse and provincial when it comes to realizing its stated visions, this actually seems to have political support.

Council’s newfound pluralism, as left-leaning councillor Joe Mihevc (Ward 21, St. Paul’s) put it, is the direct result of the necessity of leadership created by a mayor lacking vision, moral authority or a solid attendance record at city hall.

Into that void steps Stintz, fulfilling her role as TTC chair with a plan and some staggering numbers. $30 billion. Six subway lines. 10 LRT lines. 5 bus and streetcar lines. $180 per year in property taxes for the average household over the next 26 years (phased in over four years).

Naturally, there are flaws and this process will have immense obstacles.

It needs equal investment from the federal and provincial governments, hardly sure things when their word of the year is ‘austerity’.

The map, already a very political document (of course) will have councillors try to graft on further squiggles that will lead to further squabbles.

Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby (Etobicoke Centre, Ward 4) will insist on the Eglinton Crosstown to be underground from Scarlett Rd. to Martingrove. Councillor Peter Milczyn (Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Ward 5) asked today where the western leg of the downtown relief line and western Bloor-Danforth extension were, adding that he prefers to wait until October to hear from staff.

Councillors Gord Perks (Ward 14, Parkdale-High Park) and Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27, Toronto Centre) will wonder whether too much of this is an expensive sop to suburban councillors.

Shelley Carroll (Ward 33, Don Valley East) will use the occasion to advocate for a sales tax, and Norm Kelly (Scarborough-Agincourt, Ward 40) might even join her.

People will worry about all sorts of things: paying for the unfunded operating costs, the most effective funding methods (like parking taxes), the wisdom of building a subway between Yonge and Spadina along Sheppard when geologists say that’s not possible and how Toronto can pull all this off without the mayor’s support.

While these concerns are well placed, One City is not meant to be immutable. Like a constitution, it speaks more to a framework of aspirations than a detailed model going forward. In this case dissent to that plan is the entropy of progress; the healthy and messy part that demonstrates why the process is worthwhile.

Despite all this, the key is Toronto has something to talk and get excited about. It finally has a holistic vision for the TTC that has an attached funding model (albeit just for capital). And it got to this point in spite of the mayor, not because of him (Yesterday the mayor toured a beer factory, looked at a caterpillar, and didn’t go to Pride’s police reception.)

So here we are, at the start of a transit journey and not entirely sure what the destination will be. And that’s OK, because unlike Doug Ford’s earlier statement, we finally have a conversation on how to get there.

— guestily submitted by David Hains

Dreaming Of A True Ford Nation

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Hey.

Did everybody see that? At the NDP federal leadership convention this weekend, councillors Karen Stintz and John Parker, locked arm in arm, cheering the radical left crowd on, belting out Le Internationale.

Yeah, me neither. But apparently that’s exactly what Councillor Doug Ford and his brother mayor witnessed. “You’re on our side or against us,” Mayor Ford said yesterday on his radio show. “You’re on the taxpayer’s side or against them. There’s no mushy middle. It’s left or right down there.”

In what must be the most ridiculous case of repositioning ever, Team Ford is desperately trying to cast the world of municipal politics here in Toronto as a simple binary system, a black-and-white world of simplistic right-versus-left, us-versus-them. You’re either with us or you’ve been brainwashed by the vile and manipulative NDP. The mushy middle has drunk the koolaid.

Councillor Karen Stintz, a dipper. That must be news to the previous incarnation of Councillor Stintz who stood in strong opposition to former mayor David Miller. She was a chartered member of the Responsible Government Group. The other Councillor Karen Stintz speaking out passionately if misguidedly against a motion to reclaim about $19 million in service and program cuts in the 2012 budget.

And former Progressive Conservative MPP and Mike Harris backbencher, Councillor John Parker. Another member of the anti-David Miller Responsible Government Group, now suddenly a left leaning councillor, his blue hues changed overnight to that bilious orange.

Let’s not forget fellow Etobicoke councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby, a long time foe of the Ford family, clearly because of her political stripes. You see, way back in 1999, she had the temerity to oppose Doug Ford Sr. in a political nomination showdown for the… wait for it, wait for it… Progressive Conservative party. Clearly, a lost cause left wing wingnut. So much so that she was a member of Mayor Miller’s Executive Committee before resigning. “I never felt part of that small inner circle”

In the magical world that exists in the Ford family mind, bona fide conservatives become evil socialists the moment disagreement emerges. There is no middle ground, no third way. Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon, in her 2010 race to unseat David Miller Speaker, Sandra Bussin, endorsed by former provincial Progressive Conservative leader John Tory, is now a left winger. Councillor Ana Bailão ran in the 2003 municipal election against very left leaning Adam Giambrone and then won the ward in 2010 by beating Giambrone EA, Kevin Beaulieu. Councillor Josh Colle, offspring of Liberal MPP Mike Colle, and up until the recent rash of transit votes, sided with the mayor more than 40% of the time. Councillor Chin Lee, another member of the Responsible Government Group back in the day, backed Mayor Ford more than half the time.

Now, because of their disagreement with him over transit plans have all been hopelessly lost to the dark side, left wingers all.

There was a reason some of the more outspoken critics of the mayor and his brother began calling them ‘radical conservatives’. Actually, two. One, because the Fords are radical right wingers. Despite the election promise not to cut services and programs that’s exactly what they’ve done. They want to make government smaller under the banner of efficiencies. They are endeavouring the smash the unions. They want to privatize everything not nailed down.

That is, in fact, a radical right wing agenda.

The other reason to colour them with this label is to differentiate the Fords and their hardcore supporters on council from actual moderate conservatives. Despite what the brothers will try and tell you over the course of the next 2.5 years, city council is made up with a fair rump of moderate conservatives, those who are able to reach out and form a consensus with a majority of council members. That is what occurred on the transit vote. A consensus of 24 councillors from the moderate right to the left (29 when it came to assuming control of the TTC board) to take  the transit file from Mayor Ford when he failed to bring forth a workable plan to build a Sheppard subway that would almost get to Scarborough.

But the mayor and his brother see such cooperation as nothing short of betrayal and treachery. In their us-versus-everyone else who disagrees with us on any issue worldview, true conservatives march in lockstep. Since they are conservatives, you can’t vote against them and still be a conservative.

So now they’ve pledged to run a slate of candidates against any councillor that dares to defy them. This isn’t new. They did it on a limited scale in 2010. They nearly unseated Councillor Lindsay Luby as well as Councillor Maria Augimeri. Councillor Peter Milczyn similarly had to fight for his political life with a Ford backed candidate in the race. He, unlike councillors Lindsay Luby and Augimeri, has largely turtled and become a pliant supporter of the mayor except for some of his recent votes on transit.

In Ward 1, the Fords did manage to boot then councillor Suzan Hall, locking in undying fealty at city council from one Vincent Crisanti. Councillor Crisanti immediately assumed the position as a largely silent deadwood paper weight rubber stamp yes man for the incoming mayor. When he does rise to speak, he invokes the babbling oratory of councillors Frank Di Giorgio and Cesar Palacio. In the debate over transit and the Sheppard subway, Councillor Crisanti insisted busses ran faster than LRTs and endeavoured to ensure Etobicoke would not see improvement in transit in our lifetimes.

That, folks, is the slate of candidates the mayor wants to put together. Team Ford and Vincent Crisantis in 2014.

— sirenly submitted by Cityslikr

The Bubble Boys

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There seems to be a correlation between a lessening grip on power with a diminishing grip on reality for Team Ford. While for most of us that would be seen as a problem, they appear to like it that way. Reality has a way of refuting most of what they say and claim.

So they move about in an operational bubble that is permeable only to views and opinions they agree with and remains unassailable to everything contrary. The Toronto Sun. Friendly AM radio. Scarborough malls and Tim Horton’s full of well-wishers and 100% stay-the-coursers.

Having assumed control of Newstalk 1010’s Sunday afternoon municipal politics radio show, The City, brothers Mayor Rob and Councillor Doug have had two weeks of pretty much uninterrupted airtime to crank up the rant to eleven. Naysayers were few and far between on their first show, entirely absent the next. It was a whole lot of high-fiving and ‘I couldn’t agree with you mores’ all round. All Ye who enter, leave your facts and figures at the door.

Last Sunday, during what appears to be a regular weekly St. Clair right of way has been a disaster segment, Councillor Ford claimed that the streetcar had been shut down a few days earlier because of two inches of snow. A quick check of TTC service notices couldn’t actually pinpoint the incident. The best guess was that some slippery driving conditions had caused an automobile accident at Yonge and St. Clair which blocked up streetcar traffic.

So, using the councillor’s logic, since cars had trouble navigating inclement weather, maybe we should take them off the roads?

No. Since the brothers believe any form of public transit running down the middle of the street is a streetcar, a trolley when they’re feeling particularly disingenuous, and streetcars are nothing more than a weapon in the war on the car, congestion and all other traffic problems are to be blamed solely on them. Case closed. Fingers in their ears. La-la-la-la-la-la-la! I can’t hear you. What are you saying? Streetcars suck? I agree. La-la-la-la-la-la-la!

After this week’s drubbing at city council where Mayor Ford was relegated to mere observer status at the TTC, his brother went on the PR offensive not so much to preserve the mayor’s transit vision as to salvage his own reputation. Fingers were pointing in his direction as the main culprit in driving a further wedge between the mayor and any sort of face-saving compromise. Councillor Ford’s ‘all taxes are evil’ tirade last week only further alienated the mayor from even normally reliable allies like Councillor Peter Milczyn who, on transit, has stepped noticeably away from Team Ford. “Councillor Ford has had a tendency to continually add fuel to the fire when others of us have been trying to douse the flames,” Councillor Milczyn said on Metro Morning.

Now, a reasonable, rational politician would step back and reassess the situation. Hell, what good businessman would suffer a setback and not listen to advice from people generally thought to be on his side? Not Councillor Doug Ford, nope.

“I guess their game plan over the last couple of days is to try to silence me until I don’t tell the public what’s really going on,” Mr. Ford said in a radio interview. “We know what the public wants. The public wants subways.”

No retreat, no surrender!

None of this is the councillor’s fault, you see.

“The print media, they’ll twist it any way you can and you can’t defend yourself.”

Poor, poor put upon rookie councillor Doug Ford. Media types and devious, backstabbing politicians criticize him and there’s no way he can defend himself. Except on his own radio show and every other talk radio station in the city. But that’s no match for the pages of say, the Toronto Sun, who, as we all know, have been absolutely savage in their treatment of Team Ford.

In the little bubble world the Fords have created, only they know what ‘the people’ want, constructive criticism is nothing but political treachery, one unfriendly newspaper chain constitutes the print media and subways reign supreme as first and world class.

Unfortunately for them, their reality has banged up hard against the other, bigger, grim reality of facts and informed opinion that the rest of us exist in. It turns out in the real world you have to actually pay for the subways you want and, even then, subways aren’t always the best use of public transit money. There’s the very real possibility of them not being first class at all but out and out money sinkholes that inhibit healthy neighbourhood development rather than enhance it.

It also turns out in the real world bullying and bluster will only get you so far. Their effectiveness is directly proportional to the power you wield. Threats suddenly become idle. Former cowed allies start to find their own independent voices. You find yourself more and more alone inside your bubble until, finally, it doesn’t so much burst as collapse into itself.

— pokingly submitted by Cityslikr