Tag Archives: Toronto Star

It’s Miller Time! Again!

Posted on by
2

Ooops.

*** sigh. ***

Yes, we here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke will admit to getting caught up in the hype and conjecture surrounding Mayor Miller’s Big Announcement this morning. Hopes were raised. Dreams dared to dream once more. The big dog was getting back in the race.

All for nought.

On the surface, what we were given amounted to nothing more than a budget update. Since last week, it seems, revised numbers uncovered an additional $100 million in the city coffers, some of which would be used to lower proposed property tax increases for the upcoming year. Another chunk of it would be set aside as a ‘property tax stabilization’ fund for use in future years to keep increases reasonable.

Most importantly for the mayor, what this meant was that not only did his administration deliver a balanced budget for Toronto this year but the opportunity was now in place for a balanced budget again next year as well. The contingency for that to happen is the province reassuming the obligation to pay its portion of the TTC operating cost which, to hear Premier McGuinty aka Dalton Empty Pockets, is not a done deal. But that’s a fight for the next mayor and council to engage in.

The response to Mayor Miller’s Big Announcement split into two camps. One: he told us to bring our satellite truck out for this? Two: another surplus after the first surplus they ‘discovered’ during the initial budgeting process? Clearly, an indication of massive financial mismanagement. (Prediction? Read all about it in Sue-Ann Levy’s next Toronto Sun column. And maybe Royson James in the Star as well.) How can you just ‘discover’ $100 million dollars?!

Let’s put that number into a little perspective. If my Google assisted math is correct, $100 million in terms of an overall $9.2 billion operating budget works out to about 1.1%. To put that in more tangible terms, that would be like you budgeting to make a $9 purchase and ‘discovering’ an extra dime in your pocket. As the mayor said in the press conference, every level of government revises their numbers regularly. Hell, businesses do it too. I was still receiving financial statements from companies last June, a full two months after my taxes were due.

Which takes us back to the first camp. What’s the big deal? Why all the fuss? So what?

Well, I think Mayor Miller hyped the proceedings in the hopes of going wide with this shot across the bow of the campaigns of the two men vying to succeed him. Combined with his pugnacious column in last week’s NOW magazine, Miller stepped into the void on the progressive side of electoral ledger, defending his legacy from the slings and arrows of the Smitherman and Rossi camps.

He defiantly challenged their numbers, claims and promises of solutions. During the press conference he trumpeted this as the start of a multi-year budget planning process (a demand of candidate Rocco Rossi, see Amanda Belzowski). The mayor stated simply that the city’s fiscal condition was in robust enough condition that there would be absolutely no reason to sell off any of Toronto’s assets. For the next mayor to do that would be a choice rather than a necessity.

While it’s great that finally somebody is standing up to the right wing, reactionary bluster of Smitherman and Rossi, it’s unfortunate that it’s the outgoing mayor who’s doing it. Clearly the left wing hasn’t recovered from the Adam Giambrone flameout. He appears to have been the anointed one and no one was prepared to step in and take his place. Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone, who has spent much of his campaign so far trying to distance himself for the current administration, has been meek in his response to the Chicken Little antics coming from the front runners. Perhaps now Mayor Miller has paved the way for Pantalone to be more aggressive. Or maybe, he’s cleared the deck for another candidate to step up to the plate and proudly bear the flag. Budget Chief Shelley Carroll wasn’t too far from the podium at this morning’s press conference…

Either way, hopefully the Big Annoucement has altered the playing field of the campaign and made it that much more difficult for Smitherman and Rossi and all the other neo-conservative hysterics to tell us the place is going to hell in a handbasket. The bad news is, it won’t be Mayor David Miller capitalizing on that shift. For some of us, that was the news we were really hoping to hear.

— somewhat dejectedly submitted by Cityslikr

Privatized Parts

Posted on by
Reply

The Toronto Star’s headline for March 3rd declares: Smitherman Backs Privatization.

Inside, the news reads as little more than a minor, almost imperceptible bump up in enthusiasm for privatization than the candidate’s been touting previously despite the article hyping it as his “first substantive policy pronouncement” of the campaign. According to Smitherman, “… any moves to outsource city services would be carefully reviewed,” which I guess makes him the prudent candidate versus opponent Rocco Rossi’s wild-eyed, stock floor trader panicked approach to the selling of city assets and privatization of services.

In actual fact, the respective platforms of Smitherman and Rossi range all the way from point A to point A, essentially coming down to the difference between gutting the city mercilessly versus gutting it mercifully. And where to put bike lanes. Two peas in a pod, really; worse and worser. If you’re a big fan of privatization it’s a happy choice that comes down to how you want to slice up the pie.

One of those big fans of privatization is — surprise, surprise — Smitherman’s chief fundraiser, Ralph Lean QC. As noted previously, Mr. Lean is partial to, at least, “examining” the idea of “outsourcing some city functions.” A point of preference which contributed to the falling out Lean had with Mayor Miller last September just before Miller announced he would not run for re-election in 2010. As George Smitherman publicly signals an open mind toward privatization, it seems he may be more attuned than the outgoing mayor to the wishes of his chief fundraiser.

So what, you say. Surely it’s not unusual for a candidate to share political views with the people working on his campaign. It would seem wrong for anyone to go out and solicit money for a candidate whose views they don’t believe in, wouldn’t it? Hypocritical. Cynical, even.

Yet reading through Ralph Lean’s CV from an article posted on his law firm’s website, over the past decade or so he’s been retained as a lobbyist for American firms interested in the state of outsourcing such varied government functions as prisons and tax collection. It makes Lean’s interest in the areas of privatization and outsourcing seem less political and more.. personal. As Smitherman slowly but deliberately drifts toward a more accepting view on the topic, one wonders who’s calling the shots in his campaign.

And if George Smitherman is elected mayor of Toronto in October and hopes to keep the job for a little while, say, at least a second term that would garner him both national and international coverage when the city hosts the 2015 PanAm games, he would do well to learn from his predecessor’s one fatal misstep. Defy Ralph Lean QC at your peril.

See George. See George Jump.

“There are outsourcing salesmen,” Smitherman explains in the Toronto Star article, “and I run into them all over the place [italics ours], who have advanced this idea that outsourcing in and of itself is some panacea. My experiences are different … It’s intensely risky to have a discussion whereby the quality of the service being provided to the citizen is set aside and the fiscal piece is advanced. I am saying we need to look at outsourcing where it makes sense, given the state of the city’s finances, while protecting our citizens.”

“I will be their protector.”

Don’t worry citizens of Toronto, Smitherman assures us when it comes to outsourcing and privatization, as mayor he’ll have our back. Small comfort we should take from that when we consider that Ralph Lean QC has the ear of George Smitherman.

— Cassandraly submitted by Cityslikr

Say It Ain’t So Joe

Posted on by
Reply

With his new campaign headquarters open for business, Councilor Joe Pantalone has “officially” announced his intention to become the next mayor of Toronto. Fingers crossed, people will now start to notice his presence in the race because since his actual official entry back in mid-January, nobody really has.

Why would they? The man’s just been Deputy Mayor for the last 6 years and a city councilor for nearly 30 but, as we all know, nobody really pays any attention to municipal politics. At least, not until their taxes go up or another TTC ticket collector is photographed asleep at his post. No, it’s all about name recognition when it comes to City Hall elections and the gorilla in the room this time around is a former MPP, provincial cabinet minister and Deputy Premier which trumps a Deputy Mayor any day of the week. In one early poll, Pantalone’s even trailing a neophyte candidate who has oozed out of federal Liberal backrooms.

But as they say, today is the first day of the rest of your campaign and at this juncture Joe Pantalone should be smiling wide. He is the only perceived legitimate candidate coming from the left side of the political spectrum after fellow councilor Adam Giambrone’s exit a couple weeks back. The progressive field is Joe’s and Joe’s alone. In a race that has been so far leaning hard, hard right with the frontrunners fighting to establish themselves as the meanest, nastiest reactionaries this here town has ever seen, Pantalone can simply spend his time shoring up the solid progressive base and taking aim at the just left of centres that have been largely ignored.

So when this week’s headlines come rolling in off the country’s most read newspaper, the head scratching began. Pantalone Pledges A New Era Of Frugality, says Paul Moloney of the Toronto Star. Joe Pantalone Born Again As Tightwad, opines the Star’s Royson James.

Huh?! What’s that, Joe?

Now to be fair to the candidate, the Star’s election coverage to date seems to be driven through the prism of their columnist James’s virulent anti-David Miller views. Anything and everything to do with our mayor, James loathes with a keenness that borders on the pathological, almost to a Sue-Ann Levy degree. Almost. So their presentation of Pantalone needs to be read in that light.

Still, there he is evoking images of the penny-pinching side of the leftie demi-God (and Greatest Canadian®™©), Tommy Douglas in the Moloney article. “If you don’t have a nickel, you don’t spend a nickel,” Pantalone said, quoting his ‘idol’ who ‘was very prudent’. “Miller’s was the expansionist approach,” the deputy mayor told James last week. “Mine will be a consolidationist approach. It’ll be nip and tuck; it doesn’t give a grand vision of nirvana; it’s not sexy but it’s what you have to do to survive. The times require a middle ground.”

As a campaign strategy, I don’t get it. I mean, I do get it in its very cynical approach. Nipping and tucking at the middle ground in hopes of peeling away some of those squishy moderates who are unimpressed with the alpha chest beating emanating from the other contenders.

Being the lone left dog in the race, perhaps Joe thinks he doesn’t need  to cater to the NOW crowd. They’re already in the bag because where else do they have to go? Joe throws them the odd bone as he did pointing out in today’s National Post that some of the city’s budget goes to provincially mandated services like welfare so his opponents’ slash and burn proposals are easier said than done. Still, taking your constituency for granted is not exactly infusing heart into your campaign.

With Smitherman and Rossi tapping into and exploiting the righteous indignation of voters who see an out of control City Hall that is impervious to their demands, their base is engaged and ready for battle if wildly misdirected. Counting on them to split the vote and opening up the middle for you to sprint to victory is simply cold calculation. It’s less than inspiring and may leave the usual supporters home on election day. At best, they’ll head to the polls with their noses held and tepidly vote for you. If that’s the kind of mandate you’re looking for, Joe, well you’ve got yourself started in the right direction.

— miffedly submitted by Cityslikr