Tag Archives: Dalton McGuinty

Election? What Election?

Posted on by
5

Admittedly, I did not spend much time in Mayor Rob Ford’s head. The discomfort was too bearable. It was all blindingly red, the colour of rage and perpetual indignation. At times so intense as to render me unconscious, only to be revived by the sweet smell of chicken wings.

So, I was never able to figure out just what is going on in the mayor’s mind that keeps him so mum about the ongoing federal election campaign. Here he has this bully pulpit which he’s not been shy to use to come down on his particular pet peeves like councillor spending, social housing, public transit and yet on pushing forth a municipal agenda, Mayor Ford’s been L’il Miss Demure. ‘Respect for Taxpayers’ has been as much as he’s managed to type out, allowing a grand opportunity to pass him, and us – and by ‘us’ I don’t mean just us in Toronto but the overwhelming majority of us who live in metropolitan areas throughout the country — by.

The need for such proactive measures has not been greater. Municipalities in Canada are facing increasingly dire circumstances, symbolized by a four year-old estimate of an accumulated $123 billion infrastructure deficit. This cannot be handled individually by nibbling around at discretionary spending corners and stopping the gravy train. As we heard at yesterday’s Who Cares About 15 Million Voters? (h/t @_john_henry @MartinProsperiT), Canada’s 19th-century governance structure does not enable cities to deal with the problems they face on their own. The numbers simply don’t add up.

And the timing could not be more propitious for our mayor to step up to the plate. His political stripe is no secret. The federal finance minister is a family friend. If polls and opinions are to be believed, there are actually some seats in Ford Nation that are in play for Conservatives. (NOW has 5 possibly up for grabs that could turn blue from red.) These could be the difference between a win and a loss, majority versus minority for Stephen Harper. So why isn’t the mayor leveraging this opportunity to highlight urban issues? More specifically, imagine the oomph behind his ask for help in building the Sheppard subway from the feds if he helped secure the Conservatives even 1 or 2 416 ridings for them. It would go a long way to re-election in 2014.

Could it be his silence is, in fact, very tactical? By pushing an urban agenda is there some concern about alienating the even more important 905 region? That urban-suburban divide that politicians in Ottawa (and Queen’s Park) so love to exploit to their advantage might flare up against them if they’re seen to be catering to the bigger cities. Perhaps the Conservatives have asked the mayor to remain on the sidelines and let them have it in the greater GTA. If things fall their way, then maybe there’ll be a little something in it for him afterwards.

Of course, it may be worth considering that the vaunted Ford Nation that the mayor threatened to unleash on Premier McGuinty earlier this year – and it will be interesting to see if Mayor Ford maintains his disengagement during the provincial election in the fall – may not be as vaunted as he hopes. What would happen if the mayor got all involved in the campaign and had little to no to negative impact on the outcome? It wouldn’t diminish his abilities to run the city certainly but it might poke a hole in the invincibility suit he’s been wearing since his election. And if the Conservative horse he backed didn’t win? His ability to bargain at the federal level might be lessened down the road.

Setting partisan campaigning aside, and wondering why Mayor Ford has refused to pick up the urban banner during this election, it may just be more ideologically based than anything else. To step up and demand federal government action in helping cities meet the burdens put upon them would repudiate everything that brought the mayor to power. Echoing the sentiments made by Calgary’s Mayor Nenshi admits to what the mayor refused to admit to his entire political career. Cities do have a revenue problem. If Mayor Ford gives voice to that idea, then everything he ran on, all the damage he’s inflicted on the city right now under the rubric of fiscal responsibility could be seen as unnecessary, mean-spirited and nothing more than pure politics.If that’s the case, if that’s reason for the mayor’s continued absence from the federal election scene, well, it’s as damaging as anything he could by being more involved. It suggests he’s looking out for his own best interests rather than those of the city. Respect for the taxpayers indeed.

— questioningly submitted by Cityslikr

It’s About More Than Subways Vrs. Streetcars

Posted on by
2

A Sunday mea culpa.

In the battle over Transit City, we here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke have been as guilty as anyone in just talking about the numbers. We all love subways. In a perfect world, we’d just build subways. But they’re too expensive. We don’t have the money. We don’t have the density to justify spending the money even if we did have the money which we don’t.

This reduced Transit City to little more than a compromise. It suggested we simply settled. Given our druthers, we’d prefer the other thing but this is just going to have to do. Less inspirational and more m’eh.

Easy pickins for mindless demagoguery which now seems to be what passes for a transit plan at City Hall and Queen’s Park. “People want subways not streetcars.” As simple as all that. Build it and they will come. Clap your hands and Tinkerbell won’t die.

On cue, we started yelling about the facts of the numbers and claims. Nothing adds up. Subways would be great but this… and this… and this.

Matt Elliott over at Ford For Toronto took a different and much more effective approach on Friday. If you haven’t read it already, I highly recommend that you do. Right now. Seriously. Stop reading this. Click on the link. And read it. I can wait. In fact, I’m going down to heat up some tea…… If the mayor is allowed to carry out this ill-conceived dismantling of Transit City, the city faces much more of a loss than routes and passengers served although neither of those is anything to sneeze out. The simple fact of the matter is Mayor Ford is pitching the idea of less transit for more money. Your new fiscal conservatism at work.

No, if the mayor succeeds in trying to inflict his transit vision on Toronto, we are also passing over the opportunity for inspired neighbourhood revitalization and renewal and a reimagining of streetscapes that can only come from street level transit. That was an integral part of Transit City. Burying transit lines is a different approach. It increases density but not necessarily enhances life on the street above it. Witness vast stretches of Yonge Street and Bloor-Danforth.

Transit City was not only intended to bring better transit to areas of the city that have had none but it also aimed to bring new life to streets like Finch Avenue. A transformation the buses that now run along there simply don’t deliver and not one the vague ‘enhanced’ services appears to factor in either.

Only now are commuters and businesses adversely affected under Mayor Ford’s plan starting to wake up to the sad reality of their situation.  (And I think we’re in for a whole lot of Wait, what? The mayor’s doing what? over the next 4 years.) Much of the blame for this should be placed at the feet of the original proponents of Transit City. They did not sell it to those who were going to benefit, allowing its critics like the mayor to distort and misrepresent it, and cowards like Premier McGuinty to use it as a political football, to be leveraged for his re-election fortunes against the needs of the city’s most transit needy.

A tactical error, for sure, but is that how we really want to develop a transit strategy? Those who plot best decide? An argument could be made that’s how we’ve found ourselves playing catch-up with our transit system over the last 20 years. Politics has trumped good governance again and again.

The result, as Matt Elliott at Ford For Toronto so beautifully shows, is not just about subways versus streetcars or whatever it is that’s really at the heart of the mayor’s cockamamie scheme, it’s about transforming a city. Creating new urban spaces and designs that offer more opportunities for those who’ve been long marginalized by outmoded urban thought and planning. It seems too important an issue to let slip through our fingers (again) for no other reason than crass political gamesmanship.

— not yet begun to fightily submitted by Cityslikr

When Unprincipled Meets Foolhardy Populism

Posted on by
3

With a provincial election looming this fall and the pitter-patter of little PC feet slapping all around him, Premier Dalton McGuinty has become compliant, let’s call it, in the face of demands from those claiming to have some political influence. Influence that, if unleashed, could spell a world of pain on the Liberal government come October. Premier McGuinty is nothing if not responsive to the winds of electoral change especially if they look like ill winds.

Now, you might not recognize this new acquiescence in the premier because it may look a lot like the old acquiescence. There is rarely a cross breeze he does not bend in the face of whether or not it’s sex education in schools, green energy or, now, a massive restructuring of a transit plan at the behest of Toronto mayor, Rob Ford. Looking over Liberal seats in Toronto and the GTA, the premier chucked both common sense and the democratic system over board to de-escalate the possibility of having to face the wrath of Ford Nation come election time.

I wouldn’t call it a capitulation. McGuinty didn’t fork over any new money. In fact, in the long run, this could turn out to be pure, Machiavellian genius on his part. Let the belligerent mayor claim this as his plan which services far fewer people and is contingent on a highly dubious claim of tapping private money to extend the Sheppard subway line. When things don’t fall into place in a couple years for Mayor Ford, and public transit has not noticeably improved especially for those in the northeastern and western sections of the city, and construction along Eglinton snarls up traffic during his watch, well, if McGuinty is still premier, he may get to sit and watch the implosion.

As satisfactory as that scenario might be, it is just the latest example of pure politics trumping sensible transit strategy here in Toronto, setting back an already increasingly backward system years if not decades. Transit City was in place to deliver solid, affordable public transit to areas of the city that had none. Perfect? No. Point to one that is. But it was much more extensive and inclusive than the Mayor’s current plan. Even the mystical one that is based purely on his magical thinking of the private sector riding to his rescue to build us subways.

“People want subways,” the mayor said.

Yeah. I want subways too, Mayor Ford. I love subways. I will go out of my way to take a subway wherever I am. With no particular place to go, I pushed into a Tokyo subway car at rush hour on a Friday. Just to see what it was like. While I can’t be entirely sure if it was on purpose or not, I was groped on a subway in Caracas. I have spent an inordinate amount of time traveling around Paris by subway just because.

But I also love streetcars, trams, LRTs. Sitting on the tram and watching Prague go by is… yeah, I’m going to say sublime. Taking the El from downtown Chicago out to Oak Park to do the Frank Lloyd Wright tour is a fantastic way to see parts of the city you never would usually. Or how about when the subway from Manhattan goes above ground on its way out to Coney Island, passing by neighbourhoods you only hear about in the movies? Forgettaboutit!

What I really want is a transit system that utilizes the most sensible technology for the money and numbers of riders available. That reaches the widest number of people and neighbourhoods possible while removing the most cars off the road. A transit system that works.

Mayor Ford’s plan does none of these things. It is driven purely by his dislike of streetcars and the perception that they get in the way of cars, his car. Think it a coincidence that the mayor arrived up at his meeting with the premier this morning for their transit announcement in his own private vehicle?

Premier McGuinty didn’t have to rebuff the mayor outright in his request to reallocate Tranist City funds and risk facing the bad mood of an enraged Ford Nation in October. He could’ve said, OK, Mayor Ford. You were elected with a mandate, some of which consisted of putting an end to streetcar construction. But since we’re not really talking about streetcars, and since we put up the $8 billion for the Transit City design that was in place, and since you’re asking to use a quarter of that, two billion dollars to substantially alter that design, we think it behooves you to take it to city council for a vote. If you can garner 23 yeas, then we can confidently give the go-ahead on your plan, secure in the knowledge that the city is behind you and it’s all not just bluster and chest-beating on your part.

The premier could’ve done that and shown some courage and a vision for public transit in this city. Instead, he put his own political career ahead of the best interests of Toronto. Let’s not forget that come fall and show him there are repercussions to giving the finger to the anti-Ford Nation as well.

— irately submitted by Cityslikr