Tag Archives: North York

Democracy Only Happens Every 4 Years

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What’s the right wing’s beef with democracy?

They win an election and think debate and opposition ends there. Witness the assault on parliamentary practice by the Conservatives in Ottawa since 2006. A dubious use of prorogation or two, an utterly absurd denigration of the concept of a coalition in a minority situation, all under the tight rein of a highly centralized, secretive and paranoid PMO that, if it had a human face, would be Frank Burns of M*A*S*H fame.

Here too in Toronto, right wingers newly installed into power have shown contempt for all those who dare stand, opposed. The attitude is most on exhibit if you can muster the courage to fight through one Sue-Ann Levy’s Toronto Sun screeds. (The Ford administration’s court jester and loyal stenographer screeds in person too, as I witnessed at last Wednesday night’s special city council meeting.) To Ms. Levy’s mind, such as it is, those displeased with the moves the mayor is making are “gravy train-enabling, public teat-sucking, union-loving…”, “shilling” for this or that, “leftist hangers-on and despicable leftist hypocrites”, the lot of them.

No, no. They couldn’t be principled, honorable or at all justifiably concerned in their disagreement with Mayor Ford. Merely self-interested fat cats, only in it for themselves unlike the mayor who is just looking out for the little guy. In fact, why can’t they simply be quiet and let Robbie straighten this city out? That would be the selfless thing to do. Why do we even have to waste all this time with debates? City council should be run more like a business, as Sue-Ann scribbles down the thoughts of the mayor’s brother, Councillor Doug, himself no big fan of anyone with the temerity to challenge his views. When the gallery failed to fawn over his common guy schtick at Wednesday night’s meeting, he called them ‘whiners’. “It’s a three-ring circus,” he said of the council meetings to date. “We debate five or six hours when we all know the end result.”

When we all know the end result…

It’s as if they, having won the election last October, think everyone should just roll over and go back to sleep until 2014. Resistance is now not only futile but bordering on anarchy. Maybe in this mayor’s case that kind of thinking makes perfect sense. He spent his decade as a councillor out on the political fringes. Now it’s their turn. And by ‘their’, the mayor means anyone who doesn’t fall into line behind him.

While this winner-take-all view of democracy has, much to its detriment, historical traction in a parliamentary system, city hall doesn’t work like that. The mayor is one vote of forty-five and on every issue that comes before council to be voted on, he must marshal 22 others if he wants to pass a motion. So no end result can be taken as a given. Yes of course there is a lot of backroom (and not so backroom) arm twisting that goes into securing support but debate just comes with the territory. As do the crowds in council chambers when important matters surface that stir the public’s emotions. Diminishing them or the manner in which bylaws are brought into being reveals a disturbing anti-democratic sensibility.

During the TCHC debate on Wednesday night, Councillor Ford estimated that there were about 300, 400 tenants in the gallery. To him that meant there were still nearly 160,000 tenants who supported what they wanted to do with the board. Absence equals support. At two different heated debates this year, the mayor claimed that of all the feedback he’d received, 99% were supportive. 99%, really? You see? Not only are they with us. God too must be on our side. So get with the program and stop your whining.

The more forceful the attempts at diminishing opponents with personal invective, the less likely your argument will stand up in the sunlight of reason. Quote all the questionable polls you want, Sue-Ann Levy, but let’s see some of that support with boots on the ground. Give me just a tiny show of that 99% of the city that’s behind you, Mr. Mayor. Where are all those folks, coming out to council meetings, exhorting the mayor and his followers to stay strong and persevere? And if you even reflexively were about to say, we’ve got jobs, no, what you’ve got is the rhetorical skills of a child. You might’ve just as well said, ‘No, you shut up’ which is, essentially, exactly what Mayor Ford is telling those who disagree with him. No, you shut up.

I attended the budget deputations back in January up in North York, in the thick of the Ford Nation. If memory serves, of the 48 or so folks who I witnessed get up to speak, 3 were in favour of the budget draft the mayor was floating. That’s 1 in 16 or about 6%. A far cry from the 99% Mayor Ford likes to cite as being on his side. Where are they all? Sitting at home, firing off angry letters to the editor or online comments, while watching Celebrity Apprentice? Why don’t they think they have to do anything to actively support their views aside from vote every 4 years? Are reactionaries just lazy?

Or is it because their guy’s in power now? He’s already doing their bidding, so they can just sit back, relax and spend time figuring how to spend that $60 that came in the mail for the VRT rebate? If you feel the need to go out and protest in public or advocate for a cause, it’s just proof positive that your side has already lost. That’s basic, zero sum, modern politics, buddy. Deal with it.

— slothily submitted by Cityslikr

Deputations And Disregard

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Let it be a given that annual public consultations on City Hall’s proposed budget are, always have been and always will be an exercise in, if not futility, let’s call it pretense. The people talk. City councillors (at least, those with a hand in crafting the budget) pretend to listen. A show trial of democracy without all the messiness of executions afterward.

So I hesitate to suggest that the consultations currently underway for budget 2011 are any more of a façade than previous ones but some councillors and the mayor seem to be jettisoning even the pretense of pretending. After hearing overwhelmingly from deputants telling him that they’d prefer no service cuts to tax cuts, Mayor Ford claimed that, “Obviously people want a zero-percent tax increase. I’ve heard it from all over.” Someone get the mayor a Q-Tip. Clearly he has some waxy build-up.

And after a particularly fractious and protracted process in East York, Budget Chief Mike Del Grande reportedly quipped that he “heard lots of numbers but at end of the day, I’m not sure it’s reflective.” Not reflective of what, Councillor Del Grande? The opinion of a vast majority of people who took the time to come out and have their voices heard? Or just not reflective of the opinions of those you agree with?

But, to be fair to the Budget Chief, he had endured what sounded like a grueling quarter of a day or so, defending the proposed budget out in East York. Me? I chose to attend the meeting up in North York as it was much easier to get to from downtown. I’m all about getting involved in the democratic process as long as it doesn’t put me out too much.

The proceedings in the council chambers at the North York Civic Centre were more placid than those, it appears, in East York. One might even call them somnolent. Presided over by a congenial even folksy Councillor Ford, deputants came and went, almost exclusively decrying the budget’s proposed cuts to both services and taxes without raising much of a stir from the other members of the budget committee. Councillors Milczyn, Parker, Shiner, Di Giorgio and Deputy Mayor Holyday rarely interacted with anyone other than themselves, asking few questions of the deputants or providing little to no feedback. Only when those stepping forward to speak heaped praise upon the proposed budget (I counted 4 of the 40 or so deputations doing so) did any of these councillors snap to attention or show even a lick of interest.

In fact, the four hours of deputations could’ve been completed in half the time if it hadn’t been for Councillor Shelley Carroll and, to a lesser extent, Anthony Perruzza. They, along with Councillor Ford, appeared to be the only ones from the council perspective who came to actually listen and react to deputations. Carroll did much more than that. Ask questions, tweet pictures, head up into the crowd to assist deputants who were having trouble figuring out the process. It was the Shelley Show, and when she finished up in North York, she made her way over to the East York location to pitch in there.

To be honest, these deputations are in many ways as much about Carroll’s time as budget chief as they are about the 2011 budget. While the proposed document sets out Mayor Ford’s plan for Toronto, it is also a complete repudiation of the previous administration. Tax and spend. A spending problem not a revenue problem. (Dis)respect For The Taxpayers. That which made The Gravy Train run. All of it (or at least the last 4 years) under Carroll’s fiscal watch.

She is the remaining face of the Miller administration’s power group. The mayor retired voluntarily. His Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone, Speaker Sandra Bussin, protégé Adam Giambrone, likewise all gone, less voluntarily. Carroll is the last one standing. She is doing so boldly and unwaveringly.

Carroll was at her best last night when she tangled with the few speakers who heaped praise on the budget for its attacks on spending and taxes but offered little in the way of helpful suggestions about which fat to trim. This includes the Board of Trade’s Carol Wilding who categorically refused to go on the record to say which services she would recommend cutting in order for the city to achieve a budgetary balance. Distancing herself from the dirty business of fiscal belt-tightening, all she would say when asked about cuts was that it was all in the presentation she’d handed out to the councillors.

It was especially invigorating to witness Councillor Carroll verbally pick up the representative from the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses by the scruff of the neck and point that, for all his squawking about tax relief for businesses, he had failed to inform his membership and the public at large about the special program the Miller administration had established to help smaller businesses offset property tax increases. Much blubbering and backtracking ensued from Mr. CFIB and no attempted assistance from Councillor Di Giorgio could rescue him. At least, I think it was assistance Di Giorgio was offering. It was never clear exactly what he was up to on the rare occasions he opened his mouth.

Councillor Carroll is emerging as the voice of sanity at City Hall in the face of the Ford juggernaut. She has been relentless in not only defending the spirit of the Miller administration but in insisting on reasonable debate and discussion, conducted in the proper manner using established protocol. She is standing firm in front of the bulldozer Ford and his boys want to take to our municipal government.

She is being assisted certainly by the likes of Councillors Vaughan, Perks, Davis and McConnell. The difference is, the mayor’s supporters will all dismiss these as downtown, pinko, left wing, elitist kooks. That’s a smear they can’t use on Carroll. Despite her high rank in the Miller administration, she has serious big L liberal pedigree (which we don’t hold against her) and represents a suburban ward, deep up in Ford Country. She should be one of them. She’s not. This makes her a formidable foe of the mayor which we should remember and hold onto when things begin to look bleak.

And there will be times over the course of the next 4 years when things will look bleak.

— fan boyishly submitted by Cityslikr

One Councillor And One Mayor Are Not Enough

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Early on at last night’s Ward 19 council debate, it became clear to me that Toronto’s post-amalgamated governance structure is woefully lacking in delivering us the representation we need and deserve. As the questions piled up (both prepared from business and residents association as well as the audience’s more free form stylings), most expressed concerns about purely local issues. The moratorium on restaurants and bars on Ossington Street. Park upkeep and organization at Trinity-Bellwoods. Traffic congestion in Liberty Village and parking at the CNE.

Undoubtedly, some of these have city wide implications concerning matters like density and park management, but it still felt awfully parochial, if I can use that term non-derogatorily. The debate was held in a parish, after all. So why not `parochial’?

Local matters should be the main duty of those seeking a council seat. To look out for the interests of their constituents. Councillors represent the peoples’ voice at City Hall.

But this leaves the city wide view in the hands of the mayor and the mayor only. Councillors sit on various committees that oversee municipal aspects for the entire city like transit, police, planning but they remain councillors first and committee members second. Leaving us with one voice in the face of 44 who must straddle the line between city building and ward defending. Sometimes these two roles not only don’t jibe but are in direct opposition to one another.

Which may explain some of the palpable anger and discontent at the debate last night toward outgoing councillor for ward 19 and mayoral candidate, Joe Pantalone. He was accused by many of non-responsiveness and unilateral decision making. Perhaps this was always the case but I can’t help thinking that as a high ranking official in the Miller administration, Pantalone stopped looking out for the concerns of those who had elected him while he was concentrating on the bigger picture of Toronto as a whole.

A city of this size and diversity cannot be properly represented by one official and a handful of councillors who are secure enough in their ward positions that they can attend to wider city matters. We need another municipal level of government (yes, I said another level of government) whose sole purpose is for the greater good of the city and to coordinate its place within the entire GTA region. A Board of Control, say, elected from the ashes of the former cities of Toronto, York, East York, North York, Scarborough and Etobicoke. Call it, oh I don’t know, Metro Council. But this thing with a mayor and 44 fiefdoms doesn’t really seem to be fully functioning.

It’s a dilemma I’ll be facing when it comes to deciding where to cast my vote for ward 19 councillor. On one hand, there’s Karen Sun. From her, I get a sense of someone looking to contribute to the building of a better city. That’s not to say she won’t stand tall for the people of this ward. She just seems to have a bigger vision. One that goes beyond the Trinity Spadina border.

On the other hand, there’s David Footman. Having just encountered him last night, it would be presumptuous of me to make sweeping generalizations about his campaign but what I saw at the debate (and read from his campaign literature) is a bull terrier in defense of ward 19 and the people living here. Mr. Footman very likely possesses thoughts about the city in its entirety. Upon first impression however, his strengths seemed to be very much local, on the ground.

Toronto voters should not have to make such a choice. Or rather, there should be a second option. To vote for someone like David Footman whose primary job is to look after our neighbourhood needs. And to vote for Karen Sun as our representative for matters encompassing the entire city. Such a system was in place back before we were all one city. Nothing about amalgamation has ameliorated the situation to the point where we don’t require a similar set up again.

— undecidedly submitted by Cityslikr