Tag Archives: John McGrath

The Results Are Not All In

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I’d love to vote for him but he’s not going to win.

This was said, more than a few times, about Mayoral candidate David Soknacki after what was, apparently, lostcausea very strong debate performance (I didn’t see it) on Tuesday night.

It’s July. The election’s still more than 3 months away. This is what you would call a self-fulfilling prophecy.

More embarrassingly, I think of it as a very passive participation in the democratic process.

You have an incumbent. You have a former high profile city councillor and a federal M.P. until just recently. You have a frequent candidate for office, a former leader of a provincial party and a long time A.M. talk radio show host.

The fact that these 3 candidates sit atop every poll taken should hardly be a surprise to anyone. While not purely a recognition factor (if it was, the mayor would be sitting at 98%), these are all recognizable names to even the most casual of political observers of City Hall. manoflamanchaWho would I vote for? Yeah. I’m going with the one there I’ve never, ever heard of.

“If a few of the people lamenting the fact that Soknacki can’t win started telling pollsters they intend to vote for him…” John McGrath suggested, post-debate.

Maybe if I just clap a little harder, for a little longer, the Soknacki campaign won’t die. Cross my fingers. Pray. Send it my mental best wishes.

A successful candidacy doesn’t simply materialize as if by magic or run the race fueled by good ideas and noble intentions. It takes work. Lots of it by lots of people over a long period of time.

I’ve written about this in terms of city council races but it’s equally true at the mayoral level.

By reputation or experience or a good network or access to a shitload of money (maybe all of them together), favourites for the mayor’s office quickly emerge in any race. They are granted or have gained a certain degree of institutional support. This gets them even more exposure, more air time and print space. People see them as serious contenders. wishfulthinkingSo they then lend their support, money, time, resources.

It’s a closed, feedback loop that is very, very difficult to break into if you don’t gain access quickly. Soon, the ‘fringe’ label sticks and you get deemed unelectable. I love your ideas and your platform but, really, voting for you will just be throwing my ballot away.

But we’ve been down this road before, people. Democracy is about much more than voting. To sit and observe, and then stew about the choices you’re being given is unproductive and lazy. Agitate. Make noise beyond your Twitter bubble. Get a campaign going to harass broadcasters to include the candidate of your choice in the next debate it’s hosting.

Better yet. Organize your own mayoral debate. Find a free space somewhere in your neighbourhood. Print off a few flyers. Invite the candidates you want to see to come out and debate. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the turnout.

If that’s too grandiose, host a BBQ for 20 or 30 friends. Invite the candidate to come over and speak for a few minutes, introduce themselves. highhopesThen pass the hat around for some campaign donations.

It’s what makes municipal politics so accessible and user-friendly. You can have a direct impact on the outcome far and above just your one vote. (Two if you count mayor and your local councillor. Three, actually. Mayor, councillor, school board trustee.) But you have to get active.

It’s at this point in the post where I have to obligatorily write about how, back in 2003, David Miller was still polling in the single digits on Labour Day, less than two months before that election. It was just assumed to be a two-way race between John Tory and Barbara Hall.

During Tuesday’s debate, the fact was being bandied about that at this time in July of 2010, a no-name candidate, Naheed Nenshi, found himself sitting at about 2% in the polls for the Calgary’s mayor’s office. 6impossiblethingsThe very same Naheed Nenshi who got re-elected mayor last year with about 74% of the popular vote.

So can we stop with the tortured anguish of entrapment to pre-determined election outcomes already? Those leading the pack in the summer don’t always cross the finish line first in the fall. It’s anybody’s race still to win, and anybody’s to lose too.

You want to vote for David Soknacki as the next mayor of Toronto, and want him to be in a position to do so in order to vote for him? Chip in. Do something about it. Donate. Volunteer some of your time. Ditto Morgan Baskin. Ari Goldkind. Richard Underhill. Robb Johannes.

Election victories don’t emerge from best wishes and wishful thinking. Hard work, long hours and, frankly, something of an indomitable spirit are all that matter really. That, and a boatload of volunteers who are prepared to put some effort into the campaign beyond remarking and complaining from the sidelines about how all the good candidates don’t have a hope in hell of winning.

— chidingly submitted by Cityslikr

Too Far Gone

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Another Friday, another less than flattering photo making the social media rounds showing fingerinthedikeMayor Ford painting the town red. And then there are rumblings that one of the city’s newspapers is sitting on another mayoral scandal. A non-contested stay granted for the mayor on his conflict of interest conviction pending an appeal; an appeal John McGrath exhaustively assesses and concludes does not look overly strong. News from the Ford For Mayor 2010 campaign finance audit waits ominously in the wings.

Such bad boy/cowboy behaviour would all be so riveting if Rob Ford was, I don’t know, the professional football player he always wanted to be, or a rock star. It would be gripping fodder for the yellow pages of tabloids if he was a member of the royal family. Right proper grist for the infotainment mill.

Unfortunately, he’s the mayor of our city. His Worship and all that. Instead of providing leadership, he’s simply proving to be a major distraction.

And hey, that might not be too great a blow to his own cause, given the news trickling out of this week’s Budget Committee review of the staff’s proposed 2013 operating and capital budgets. badnewseveryoneWhy just today, word emerges of the cuts to the city’s Fire Services. A Swansea Runnymede Road firehouse closed, reduction in trucks to others. It can’t possibly help already worrisome response times in the city. I wonder if Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong plans on alerting insurance companies to that fact, see if they can scare council straight like he did with the plastics lobby and the bag ban.

Councillor Janet Davis has suggested this is the year the city will eliminate some 41,000 shelter beds. A fight is a-brewing over budget reductions for the Toronto Police Services. The Planning Department remains woefully under-staffed. TTC rider subsidies shrink again with another fare increase and a flat-lined budget from council.

This is nothing like the easy finding of efficiencies and gravy that the mayor promised during the campaign in 2010. It is the slash and burn scenario all his opponents promised. No service cuts, guaranteed is a broken pledge much harder to dismiss than any onslaught of personal foibles.

Especially if you can blame those kind of setbacks on others, that ever growing list of far left enemies who’ve spent nearly 3 years now trying to discredit the mayor and nullify his election victory. Mayor Ford’s just trying to do his job, looking out for the little guy and respecting the taxpayers, hediditif only bullies like Adam Vaughan, Gord Perks, Shelley Carroll and their cabal of sore loser whingers in league with unelected and activist judges would stop trying to subvert democracy. Who hasn’t occasionally slipped up and fallen afoul of the rules and regulations? Everybody knows everybody does it. Buried bodies will be unearthed.

The amazing thing is, we wouldn’t accept such shirking of responsibility from a wayward teenager, trying to blame their failing grades on the distraction of classmates. Yet plenty of voices are still willing to give Mayor Ford a pass on his growing pile of transgressions. It’s not his fault but the fault of the fault finders. If a mayor breaks the rules but there’s no one around to see him do it, does he really break the rules?

Every time he digs himself out from under some sad spectacle or sideshow he’s served up, he vows to forge ahead, get on with the job he was elected to do and [fill in meaningless campaign slogan here]. But increasingly, there’s nowhere for him to go. He’s the kid at the back of the room, disrupting class. Teacher! Teacher! Look at me! I don’t have the answer but let me crack wise and make fart noises!

Whatever happens with his appeal in January and a possible by-election as a result of it, it already seems as if we’ve passed the point of no return where redemption seems even beyond a faint hope. Rob Ford has become a punch line not a mayor. overthefallsHis edict from afar to hold the budget line at 0 and keep taxes low is making him no new friends while even once steadfast allies are lining up behind each other to keep their distance from the toxic cloud billowing from his office. It’s hard to see how he can take control back of the wheel at this point.

The question at the end of another roller coaster week is why does Rob Ford even want to try?

— wonderingly submitted by Cityslikr

The Reckoning

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Cast yourself back, if you dare, to the late summer of 1939. Germany invades Poland and Great Britain declares war on the Nazis. Canada, pulled by its colonial, Commonwealth attachment to the U.K. is compelled to jump into the fray but something holds it back.

This war thing is going to cost a lot of money. Taxes will have to be raised to fund it. Rationing may become a thing. Oh yeah. And a lot of people are going to die.

Now, I am not comparing fighting the scourge of fascism to building public transit because that would be fucking stupid. Weighed against waging a war that ultimately ended up costing some 60 million deaths worldwide, figuring out a way to spend $100 billion to bring the region’s public transit up to 21st-century speed should be a piece of cake. A no-brainer, really.

But yet, here we are.

It’s embarrassing that we have become so stingy of pocketbook as well as imagination to be caught up in this decades’ long struggle to meet a growing, prospering city and region’s transit needs. Engulfed as we are in minimizing our obligations to living in Toronto, we’ve insisted on passing the buck and avoiding tough decisions. The Greatest Generation At Shirking Our Responsibilities.

“So granddad. What were you doing when everybody else was building transit?”

“Come here and sit on my lap, boy. See all that crumbling infrastructure out there? Those crowded buses on the gridlocked choked roads? That’s what I did for you, sonny jim. To keep your taxes unreasonably low.”

“Geez… thanks, granddad.”

John McGrath’s article on taxation and transit in this weekend’s National Post is a conversation we needed to be having 30 years ago. Maybe we did and it just didn’t gain much traction. One thing is for certain, if we’d put at least some money where our mouths were back then, it would’ve cost a lot less than we’re going to have to pay now. A lot, lot less then it will if we push things off another 20 years or so.

“The question we’re left with is,” TTC Chair Karen Stintz tells McGrath, “What transit does Toronto want, and what are we willing to pay for?”

We want it all, councillor. Subways without density. Free roads and parking for our cars. A jetpack too, maybe, if you can swing it.

All for the low, low price of no new taxes or increases. Those P3s have us covered, right? Who says you can’t have something for nothing?

By standing pat, we not only do a disservice to those needing better transit now, we bury future residents that much further. We’re also giving the middle finger to earlier generations who delivered all the elements of a livable city for us to benefit from. There’ll never be enough tax savings to pay everyone what we owe.

— enlistingly submitted by Cityslikr