Tag Archives: Metro

Honeymoon? What Honeymoon??

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So yeah, tell me that one again about John Tory the progressive minded moderate. You know, that natty-nat-natter during the past municipal campaign, assuring us not to get all tied up in knots about his blue, blue, dark blue Tory leanings. canthearyou1Think Bill Davis, David Crombie. Forget his participation in the Mel Lastman years. John Tory was too red for the provincial Progressive Conservatives. He said he’ll march in the Pride parade. What more do you want?

I’m sorry. I can’t hear you over the grating, unintelligible noise once again coming from the Speaker’s chair. Or the glowing radioactive smugness of the newly appointed deputy mayor of this city.

Look. I’m fine with the notion Toronto went nearly 3/4s in favour of right of centre candidates in the mayor’s race. I think it’s a fair assessment to question if we live in as progressive a city as many of us like to think we do. Some 17 years in from amalgamation, it’s not unreasonable to wonder if David Miller was the anomaly rather than norm to our politics here in town.oneofthesethings1

Mel Lastman. David Miller. Rob Ford. And now, John Tory. One of these is not like the others.

There it is.

Clearly, Tory and his campaign team felt that this could provide a winning edge, blasting Olivia Chow as the ‘NDP candidate’ as soon as she entered the race, thereby distinguishing himself as the not far left alternative to Ford Nation. Progressive, but reasonably so. A moderate answer to the radicalism of the past 4 years.

With his choices yesterday for his Executive Committee and various other appointments, it’s equally obvious that his aversion to anything left wing was more than a mere campaign tactic. The Great Uniter. Seeking to heal the divisions between 75% of the city. So ideologically driven were these decisions that Tory felt comfortable under-representing the most populous former municipality of the city around the table of his Executive Committee. upyoursNo single chair of a standing committee. A couple of at-large pats on the head and a ceremonial fluffing of little meaningful significance.

John Tory, the uniter, the great undivider, has proven to be so partisan that he couldn’t even reach out to perhaps the most stellar of council performers last term, Kristyn Wong-Tam who is really only a raging far leftie in the narrow minds of the most ardent supporters of our previous mayor. Given the ward she represents, one of the epicenters of growth and development in the entire city, she would make for a great chair of the Planning and Growth Management Committee. But our new mayor couldn’t even bring himself to do that, opting instead to give that position to the empty shell of a dinosaur, Lastman era, expressway loving David Shiner.

Again. There it is. The mayor’s prerogative. But along with that, the first flashes of his true colours. (Hint: more blue than red.) Mayor Tory had the opportunity to signal bipartisan consensus and didn’t even feel the need to give it so much as a passing nod. backtothedrawingboardSo, I’ll just roll up the welcome mat because it’s pretty much now been declared business as usual at City Hall.

But perhaps the real take away for those of us feeling snubbed as much by the new mayor as we did his predecessor is this, my friends: it’s the norm not the exception. Stars aligned radically for the Ford Administration but Toronto seems to like its local politics right. That’s the reality we have to accept. Want to change it? We’re going to have to work to change it. As John Tory has just shown us, nobody else, including self-proclaimed social progressives like our new mayor, will change it for us.

— nothing newly submitted by Cityslikr

Hudakery: Not A New Cocktail

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Leading up to tonight’s provincial election debate, Progressive Conservative and Opposition leader Tim Hudak laid bare his empty(and presumably his party’s) approach to governing and government in an interview with Metro newspapers. And it ain’t pretty, folks. In fact, I’d call it completely and utterly devoid of substance, intelligence and imagination.

Oh yeah. Let’s not overlook a fundamental lack of understanding of how exactly our democratic society operates.

“Look, why do we pay taxes in the first place?” Hudak told interviewer Jessica Smith Cross. “We pay taxes because we’re generous Ontarians and we want to make sure it helps the most vulnerable populations. People who may be sick, people with disabilities, seniors.”

Taxation as a charitable donation.

Look, my heart bleeds for the unfortunates in our society. The sick. The disabled. The elderly. pleasesirWhat taxpayer wouldn’t give up a little bit of their hard-earned money to help out the needy?

Everything and everyone else, apparently, goes about their business, fueled by the absence of government and magic beans.

“Leadership is about setting priorities,” says Hudak. “And I think we’re going to be looking for a politician who’s going to be straight-up and say, we can’t fund every project with this amount of money.”

You want transit improvements or full day kindergarten? Tell that to your ill, wheelchair bound grandmother. Government is a zero sum game. There’s no room to help the disadvantaged and build a healthier, more equitable society. How do we continue to cut taxes and deliver more services? The answer is, you can’t. Tim Hudak knows that. He’s an honest broker and a trained economist. Facts and figures are his forte.

And about that 1,000,000 Jobs Plan, Tim?

“I stand behind our numbers and I think that it’s been justified by other economists [or not] who say that’s the ballpark of what this will create.”

gullible

Ahhh, ballpark numbers. The stuff master’s degrees in economics are made of, evidently. When his claim of creating 120,000 new jobs with further corporate tax cuts was called into question by the Conference Board of Canada – the Conference Board of Canada, people – Hudak blithely responds, “Whether it’s 80, 112, 120 or 150 thousand, [the CBB says 15-20 thousand, but whatevs] I think we agree it’s going to create jobs.”

When you’re also pledging to cut 100,000 public sector jobs, the actual number of jobs you’re promising to create does matter. badmath3Twenty thousand minus one hundred thousand equals minus eighty thousand jobs. Kinda puts you in a hole as you build toward that million jobs mark you’ve set for yourself.

Tim Hudak’s hidebound attachment to questionable economic theories seems to be matched by his dubious grasp of democracy.

Like many of his federal conservative brethren, Hudak has an abhorrence of the idea of a governing coalition in a minority government scenario. “I think that’s cheating voters…” Hudak said. “My position is clear — no coalitions. We will follow whatever the voters tell us they want.”

And if the voters tell you they want a minority government again on June 12th, Mr. Hudak? Regardless of plenty of parliamentary precedent being in place for coalitions, in fact, there’s one operating right now over there in Westminster, I do believe, it’s still cheating in your mind? “I say no to coalitions, let the voters decide.”

You might think that, given his inability to come to terms with traditional aspects of democracy, Hudak might be open to opportunities for it to evolve with the changing times. Like ranked ballots and proportional representation. playthecardsyouredealtYou might think. You’d be wrong, of course.

“I think that voters should decide who they want to be elected, whoever gets the most votes wins.”

But Tim, voters would still decide who they wanted to elect under a different form of ballots, it’d just be…

*sigh*

Never mind.

Look, I’m not stumping here for either of the other two parties currently occupying space at Queen’s Park. The ruling Liberals don’t appear to have learned anything during their transition from Dalton McGuinty to Kathleen Wynne, and seem determined to continue putting politics before policy. And the NDP, I’m at a loss to explain anything they’re doing at the moment.

But Tim Hudak and the Progressive Conservatives have a fundamental disconnect to what I believe is the role of government in our lives. texaschainsawmassacreThey see it as alien and an imposition. A beast to be tamed and shrivelled down to irrelevance. A lonely outpost for the destitute in a world governed by laissez faire free markets. Collaboration and co-operation take a back seat to competition.

Tim Hudak refuses to make the distinction between bad governance and government. It’s one and the same for him. He’s not someone we should put anywhere near the levers of power.

— submitted by Cityslikr