Tag Archives: Sue Ann Levy

Seething In Scarborough

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About an hour and a half, an hour and three-quarters into last night’s rage fest at the Scarborough Civic Centre – TTC Chair Karen Stintz had been there for roughly half of that and was neck deep in bile and vitriol – a woman across the aisle from me out in the overflow seating in the foyer shouted at the screen that projected the meeting going on inside the chambers. Where’s your plan, Karen!? What’s the plan?!

Rattled like I usually get in the face of such unbridle, inchoate anger, I reflexively turned to the woman and blurted out: Shouldn’t you be asking the mayor that? Where was Mayor Ford? This was his gathering, his town hall. He is the one demanding that Scarborough get a subway. Why was he not here, answering the crowd’s questions?

Yes, Councillor Stintz had recently taken control of the TTC from him. City council had reversed his unilateral declaration to kill Transit City and voted to unbury parts of the Eglinton LRT and put 2 other LRTs on Finch and the Scarborough SRT. But a subway on Sheppard Avenue remained very much in play, perhaps a final decision to be made by council on March 21st. Shouldn’t he be here, pitching his plan to the people? This was his town hall meeting after all.

That’s how these things usually work. Councillor Stintz had held a similar transit meeting a couple weeks back with Councillor Matlow. They brought in a planning expert to explain why we should be going with LRT technology rather than subways. Somebody from the city was present to lay out the proposed implementation. They fielded questions from the audience in a similarly packed room. They made their case.

Mayor Ford conducted his town hall in absentia, leaving others to try and respond to questions there weren’t yet any answers for. It wasn’t so much an information session as it was swatting at the hornet’s nest, stoking the flames of resentment. What do you want? We want subways! When do you want them? When we figure out a tax increment financing scheme and start up a transit lottery… something, something.

Over and over and over again Councillor Stintz tried to explain that she’d very happily vote for a subway on Sheppard if there was a viable plan in place to build it. It’s been more than 15 months since Mayor Ford swept aside Transit City in favour of all underground transit, 16 months since he’d been elected with that as part of his platform. In fact, it’s almost two years since Rob Ford announced his intention to run for mayor of Toronto, and yet he still has no plan how to build a subway on Sheppard Avenue.

So of course the mayor wasn’t going to stand in front of even such a rabidly sympathetic crowd as there was last night and admit that. He wanted them angry. He just didn’t want them angry at him.

Instead there were his proxies in place. The Toronto Sun’s Sue Ann Levy played to the crowd, bashing the TTC, the disaster on St. Clair, former mayor David Miller. Of course we could build subways. How? Because Madrid did.

Former city manager John Morand was a proponent of casinos as a source of revenue for subways. He also uttered what might have been the least recognized bit of irony of the evening when he told the crowd that he had been fired from his position at the city for saying what he believed. Can I get a Gary Webster from the hee-ouse?

Dr. Gordon Chong started out as the voice of reason but when the audience didn’t take to his suggestion of new taxes, tolls, congestion fees, he changed course and turned his guns on the TTC Chair. When she expressed some disagreement with an aspect of his report, he called her ‘thick’ and proceeded to explain that public private partnerships were the way to go. Aren’t they always? A sole reliance on P3s is the last refuge of those without a plan.

Nearly two and a half hours later, we were pretty much right back where we started. People wanted subways. People were owed subways. World class cities have subways. Scarborough demanded their piece of that transit dream.

But there was no one there to tell them how that could happen. It was all vague notions, untested theories and a whole lot pie in the sky projections. I’d be plenty pissed too. I just think the crowd turned their ire on the wrong target.

Which wasn’t their fault in the least. The real target wasn’t in the room. He’d skipped the meeting, encouraging the anger while sidestepping any responsibility for it. Maybe he was busy preparing for his meeting today with the Prime Minister where, it seems, they’ll be announcing plans for a subway. Just not one in Scarborough.

He’ll get around to figuring out that one eventually. Until he does, just stay angry Scarborough. Angry at everyone else but the real culprit, Mayor Rob Ford.

— carefully submitted by Cityslikr

Democracy? M’eh.

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The modern conservative species (genus: WTF?!) has often been a subject of consideration for us here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke. Our overriding impression is one of a political philosophy that has, ironically, strayed far from its traditional path. In short, theirs is not their grandfathers’ conservatism.

There remains a strain of belief, however, that has survived the centuries relatively intact. It’s that unease with the messy aspects of democracy we can trace back to, arguably, one of the movement’s founding voices, Edmund Burke, although it does him a great, great disservice to lump him in with today’s crowd even on that score. His reaction to the excesses of the French Revolution is what I’m referring to on this point. One, I’m sure, our friend Sol Chrom will take the time to straighten me out on.

Conservatives tolerate democracy, I’m saying. Barely. They boil it down to the basic element of elections. The governance that goes on in between is little more than a nuisance, the vagaries inherent in a system that endeavours to accommodate more than one voice, one point of view is vilified, discounted and suppressed.

For example, the pre-stable majority Conservatives in Ottawa. Twice as a minority government they were faced with parliamentary non-confidence, they sought extraordinary measures to wiggle free from out under it and shut down democracy. Any notion of a coalition replacing them as the governing party was couched in terms of being illegitimate, anti-democratic, a nefarious coup d’etat.

As the Robocalls outrage shows, even their successful bid to form a majority is tinted with an anti-democratic impulse. Rather than endeavour to expand their appeal by persuasive arguments and reaching out for a broader consensus, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives sought to misinform voters and to disenfranchise them. Dirty tricks instead of bright ideas. It’s all in the game, yo.

Here in Toronto, conservative supporters are aghast at a mayor losing control of city council, utilizing similar terminology to their federal counterparts. A coup. Illigetimacy. Back stabbing. Treacherous betrayal.

In recent days there has been some very fine pieces written about the current entanglement at City Hall. Open File’s John McGrath got it started last weekend with his post, Rob Ford, the TTC, and the crisis of legitimacy at Toronto City Hall. Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler responded with a spirited rebuttal, An Informed Dissent on City Hall. After the TTC debate and vote on Monday, the Torontoist’s Hamutal Dotan weighed in beautifully, City Council is Supreme. The Grid’s Edward Keenan added his voice on the topic, So who’s running this city, anyway?, earlier today.

It is not my purpose to jump into that particular fray now aside from saying I don’t believe we’re witnessing any sort of crisis of legitimacy more than a crisis of leadership. Yes, there are probably some adjustments that could be considered to reduce the fractiousness that arises between the single so-called mayoral mandate and those of 44 councillors. Electing more citywide representatives might be a step in that direction but that’s for another post.

No, my concern here is the reaction of conservative voices to Mayor Ford’s diminishing position on council. The inchoate screeds from the Toronto Sun’s Sue Ann Levy are to be expected. Any reversal of fortune the mayor encounters will always be the devious, underhanded work of pampered left wing, kooky socialists to her mind, such as it is. It only begs for schoolyard nicknames.

But such baseless outpouring of drivel from Marcus Gee of the Globe and Mail is far more troubling. Messy political infighting plunges City Hall into chaos screams the headline of his article on Tuesday. ‘Low rent borgias’, ‘a power-drunk left-wing opposition’, he labelled those who took control of the TTC from the mayor on Monday. He states: The mayor is badly hobbled, but who runs the show in his place? before concluding As fascinating as it is to watch all this ad hocery, it leaves Toronto with a drifting, leaderless government at a time when it needs firm direction more than ever.

I’ve never met Mr. Gee but, from a distance, he seems like an amiable enough chap. While I think it safe to call him conservative leaning, he hardly comes across in his writing as some sort promoter of authoritarianism. Yet, here he is predicating the successful, smooth running of a city with the powerful leadership of one person, the mayor. Without that, well, we’re plunging into the darkness of chaos. Oh my god, the PTA is disbanding!

Such a sentiment is not only highly anti-democratic but it also suggests a very blinkered view of the workings of our municipal government. And to promote the notion that the 29 councillors voting to assume control of the TTC from the mayor who has badly fumbled the transit file are driven by nothing more than left-wing ideology is, well, pure fabrication. Since when did Councillor Karen Stintz become left wing? Or councillors Gary, Crawford, Peter Milczyn, Cesar Palacio, John Parker, James Pasternak, Jaye Robinson, Gloria Lindsay Luby, Chin Lee, Josh Colle? By making such a claim, Mr. Gee is simply propagating the left-right storyline that the mayor regularly spouts.

Aside from the increasingly potent opposition to Mayor Ford not being ideologically cohesive, it spans the entirety of the city, further exploding the divisive urban-suburban myth the mayor so heavily relies on. There is not a former pre-amalgamation municipality not represented in the 29 councillors who stood up against the mayor on the TTC vote. Right of centre Etobicoke councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby joined forces with leftie Scarborough councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker as part of the team with North York centrist Councillor Jaye Robinson and champagne sipping, downtown socialist Councillor Gord Perks.

We should be celebrating this move toward a city wide conciliation instead of shrieking about the collapse of local democracy. Why do we think that one person steamrolling over 22 others to fulfill a mandate or agenda is how a city best runs? While it might fit nicely into a lazy narrative, it is profoundly autocratic loving. Sadly, it also passes as rigid conservative orthodoxy these days.

— happily submitted by Cityslikr

Permanent Campaigning

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Having lost his once iron clad control of city council – and no mayor should lose an iron clad control of city council this early into a first term, at least, and not still be able to claim to have a ‘mandate’ – it looks like Mayor Ford has moved into outright permanent campaign mode. Yep. Fuck governing. That’s for egg-headed losers. We’re heading back out to the hustings where the mayor is most at home, amongst… I’m sorry… among the little guys and mall folk.

So the Brothers Ford make a weekly pilgrimage out to shopping centres in Scarborough where not 90%, not 99%, but 100% of shoppers who very likely drove to their destination want subways. Today the mayor’s opining (press releasing?) in the pages of the Globe and Mail. Whoah! The Globe? That’s some latté reading material there. Thought for sure that’d be news more fit for the Sun. No need, Your Worship. We’ve got your back. Here, here and here. (And that’s not even tapping the official Ford stenographer, Sue Ann Levy.)

Then, comes the big news. Bumping one-time centrist and now arch-enemy, Councillor Josh Matlow, from the airwaves, the mayor and his councillor brother will take over as co-hosts (co-mayors why not co-hosts) of 1010 talk radio’s Sunday afternoon political gabfest, The City. “This is our first opportunity ever to get our message out,” Councillor Ford told the Sun.

[Insert typeface here, denoting peels of belly laughter, followed by tears of mirth and ending with convulsive dry heaves from laughing so long and hard. What would that be, Franklin Gothic Book? Gill Sans MT?]

Aside from the stunningly delusional aspect of that statement, I mean, has there been a first term councillor who has received as much press, been offered up as many media platforms and opportunities to get the message out as Councillor Ford? I know out-going host Councillor Matlow has been accused by many of being a media hound but the real newcomer to council headline stealer is surely the mayor’s brother. How could it not be?

But note too the hint of victimization in the councillor’s assertion. The ‘first opportunity’? Really? Never mind as a sitting councillor back in the day, Rob Ford was a regular guest on John Oakley’s talk show but is Councillor Ford really trying to convince anyone that his brother, as the mayor of Toronto for nearly 18 months, has been ignored, his message kept boxed up?

On the Jerry Agar show this morning to announce their new role as radio guys, the councillor elaborated on that thought. “You’re not going to have the media twisting it around like they have the last year and a half.” Oh, my. Can I get you a little whine with that bitter greens salad, monsieur? How about a soother with that double double, councillor?

It constantly amazes me how these bully boy, tough guy conservative politicians get away with this damsels in distress schtick. Don’t their fanboys cringe just a little? What kind of cognitive dissonance do you need to operate with to buy into the notion that the sissy, downtown effete elite of the mainstream media are always picking on poor little Robbie and never letting him play and always twisting his words around?

Don’t we encourage our children to learn how to take responsibility for their actions and the outcomes that result because of them? It’s a little embarrassing to hear grown men constantly complain about always being taken out of context or having their word twisted. Or blaming other people for their failures.

And fail the Ford Brothers have. After a year plus of successfully pushing their agenda through city council, repealing taxes, reducing budgets, cutting and outsourcing services, they have lost control of the vehicle after hitting a bumpy patch on the road. It was inevitable. Not because of who they are but because that just happens when you’re in power especially at a non-party affiliated municipal level. Everything doesn’t just go your way with a wave of the hand and a loud proclamation.

You have to govern. You have to orchestrate a consensus. You have to lead and make a majority of your elected colleagues want to follow you, sometimes because it’s the right thing to do but other times because it’s the smart political thing to do.

Team Ford has given up on governing and simply kicked off its re-election campaign. It’s just easier. Whistle-stopping in front of welcoming crowds rather than debating with hostile councillors. Taking (screened) friendly calls from radio listeners instead of having to pretend to listen to opposing opinions from the usual suspect that line up to give public deputations. Running a city is hard. Running a campaign, well, any idiot can do that.

While the mayor and his brother are out on the stump, trying to revive the awesomeness of Ford Nation and get it into fighting shape once more in order to scare councillors back into the fold, council needs to just go about the business it was elected to do and, you know, govern the city. We’ve said it before but it bears repeating, Mayor Ford and Councillor Ford are only 2 votes. Yes, the power of the mayor’s office allows the two of them to gum up the works and grind things to a halt if they decide they don’t want to play along nicely or even collegially if their version (I will not say ‘vision’) of Toronto is the only one they’re willing to work for.

So be it.

In two and a half years’ time, one of two outcomes will be facing the mayor when he goes to the voters asking for their support again. Very little’s happened during his tenure as mayor and people are asking if they are better off than they were four years earlier. Mayor Ford’s ‘landslide’ victory in 2010 wasn’t so landslide-y that he could afford to have very many of his supporters answer that question negatively.

Or, the city’s humming along fine, transit is being built, services have been maintained at acceptable levels, people are generally happier than they were the last time they went to the polls, all while Mayor Ford has been on the outside, campaigning about just how bad it is at City Hall and regularly on the wrong side of every vote. Unable to claim much credit for any sort of turnaround, he’ll be running on essentially a platform of 4 More Years Of Contributing Nothing!

That’s a far cry from stopping the gravy train and reminds me of the old adage about lightning not striking the same place twice.

— abdicatingly submitted by Cityslikr