Tag Archives: Toronto Sun

Ford Tough. We Laugh.

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When news broke about councillor Rob Ford’s entry into Toronto’s mayoral race, well, let’s just say that pandemonium broke out here in the editorial space of All Fired Up in the Big Smoke. “I want to write the post!” “No, I want to write the post!!” No, I want to write the post!!!” “No, I do!!!!” “No, I do!!!!!”

You get the picture. But I eventually won out because this is my site. I call the shots. If somebody else wants to step up and start contributing a little more than doodles on cocktail napkins or even.. just anything, every now and then. I mean, we still haven’t caught up with Acaphlegmic since he pulled the Houdini act in Niagara Falls last week. If you’re out there, buddy, how about just a quick note to let us know everything’s cool?

Anyway, Rob Ford’s now running for mayor and we’re even more excited than Sue-Ann Levy. He represents everything we hate in today’s “grassroots” right wing political thought. The bogus claim of populism. Long since discredited Common Sense that is anything but. Fiscal prudence masking nothing more than a miserly mean-spiritedness. The man’s demeanour smacks of pure I got mine, Jack, and you can go fuck yourself.

He’s a politician that hates politicians leaving you unsure why he ever ran for public office in the first place aside from protecting his and his own. Now he wants to be the head of the 6th largest government in the country?! And we couldn’t be happier about that even if we were Sue-Ann Levy. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist another look. Is the lady honing her skills for a crack at a spot on Fox News or what?)

Some of our joy springs from a tactical place. Ford’s entry into the race crowds an already crowded right of centre spectrum and promises to divvy up conservative votes. It will force the others who have pledged fidelity to reactionary policies to differentiate themselves from the hard core values that Ford brings to the table. Rocco Rossi has already attempted the repositioning tango when he declared last week that he was not nor had he ever been a right winger. There’s little sense now in courting Rob Ford voters now that the real deal’s arrived at the dance.

But mostly it’s the theatrical shenanigans that Ford will bring to the campaign that has us over the moon. There is the very serious possibility of some retro-Lastmanesque buffoonery that brings on a wave of oxygen-inducing giddiness. A dash of unscripted, wacky remarks mixed with a soupçon of belligerent outbursts topped off with heaping cups of bluster and blather that is the Fordian trademark. His is a horn of plenty candidacy that will never leave those dabbling in political commentary empty of meaty material to run with.

If this sounds like little more than a hasty dismissal of Rob Ford for Mayor, it is. Although we did likewise when Mel Lastman threw his hat into the ring back in the day and much egg wound up on our faces. But this is different (fingers crossed.) Lastman was alone on the right side of center when he faced off against Barbara Hall. Ford is sharing those digs with others who have, at least so far in the campaign, been treated as viable candidates.

We also heartily welcome Rob Ford into the race because it places everything that he stands for on a much wider stage than he’s had as merely a councillor from Etobicoke. Now a far bigger audience will be given the opportunity to plug into his preposterous anti-politics politics. The soap box is that much higher for him to bellow out to the heavens explaining how exactly he would run a city by spending less, taxing less and basically doing less. Governing by not governing.

Call us naïve. Call us cock-eyed optimists but we still think a majority of Torontonians have heard that siren call before and witnessed the havoc it wreaks on the common welfare of this city and aren’t prepared to get fooled again.

So welcome to the circus, Councillor Ford. We’ve been waiting for the clown act to appear.

— gleefully submitted by Cityslikr

Legacies Aren’t Free

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So it begins.

Toronto’s PanAm games are still more than 5 years away and already the cost downloading directly onto the public’s back is off and running. Yesterday 10 000 undergraduates at U of T’s Scarborough campus began 3 days of voting on whether or not they were going to help fund the construction of an aquatics facility through increases in student fees starting this September. Funny how that possibility wasn’t mentioned here or here as part of the gleeful press releases issued after the city’s bid was crowned in November.

Joeita Gupta, vice-president of the Association of Part-Time Undergraduate Students, said in a Toronto Sun article on Tuesday that “The school is asking students to pay for 80% of the university’s contribution — about $30 million.” Not surprisingly, he’s urging a No vote. I’m assuming that if they’re being expected to pay for the pools these same students were asked to vote on the proposal to bring the games to the school in the first place.

Because it seems that the city itself wasn’t consulted about the bid until the process was already underway. According to the National Post, Mayor David Miller “was a latecomer to the PanAm party…” Apparently, this wild, out of control spendthrift was concerned about the city having to pick up the tab on any cost overruns. And there are always cost overruns on events like these. Watch the revised numbers coming in from Vancouver for their games just as we start putting shovels into the ground for ours.

“Mr. Miller needed reassurances about cost overruns.” the Post story continued. “He also had his own vision for the games’ legacy, in line with his agenda for bringing transit and sports infrastructure to low-income neighbourhoods.” That bastard.

No, our PanAm games were brought to us due to the yeoman efforts of Premier Dalton McGuinty, former premier David Peterson and a couple Olympic committee mucky-mucks, all of whom were concerned that Toronto was in desperate need of some nebulous victory for “…resonance on the international scene,” as McGuinty put it. Huh?!

So desperate were we that the premier, who has fought tooth and nail for nearly 7 years to not restore provincial funding for the TTC operational costs, agreed to have the province pay for the cost overruns. Pure semantics, of course, as we’ll all end up paying through increased taxes, user fees and/or cuts in services. You’re welcome Ontario.

While we may be poorer for it in the long run, we here in Toronto will have new shiny things to crow about due to the PanAm games, some of which will even be useful. A fixed link to the airport. Increased infrastructure especially in terms of public transportation. Swimming pools and diving centres. Possibly even super human athletes!

So forget the money, OK? It’s all about legacy. Yours, mine, the city, the province, the country, the Premier. That’s not something you can really put a price tag on.

Actually, no wait. You can. For U of T students in Scarborough, that price will be $80 a year until 2015 when the facility opens and then $280 per for the next 21 years. Legacies, it seems, don’t come cheap these days.

— snidely submitted by Cityslikr

A Surplus Of Ill Will

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Mayor David Miller. At this stage, you’re either with him or a’gin him. Never, it seems, shall the twain meet.

His big announcement this week of an additional $100 million surplus (on top of the $250 million surplus already in the books earlier in the budget process) had many in the press scratching their heads while others pulled their hair from it in outrage. “Mismanagement,” screeched the Toronto Sun’s Sue-Ann Levy during Wednesday’s press conference. ‘Overblown’ in the minds of some, and not worth the trip to City Hall. We thought it was going to be something really important like the mayor’s early resignation or re-entry into the race, seemed to be the only thing anyone could agree on.

The Toronto Star’s Royson James tried out the dichotomy of it being either good news or a cheap political stunt. But, I ask, why can’t it be both, Royson?

Mayor Miller and his minions on the budget committee aren’t the first politicians to play politics with budget information, dampening down expectations of good news or heightening worst case scenarios in the hopes of a soft landing when the budget finally arrives. Spinning, I believe it’s been referred to. Massaging the message.

Do I wish it wouldn’t happen? Absolutely. A straight forward and transparent rendering of the city’s revenues and expenditures would go along way to restoring the public’s confidence in their elected officials. Money monkey business gives the impression that we’re being played and elevates our resentment at paying taxes to contribute to the running of the city.

Still, why are we surprised by Miller’s moves or so irate at the fact that the city has more money at its disposal than it originally believed? It is good news, Royson James, and much, much better than the alternative of having less money than expected. Good news delivered in the form of purely partisan political theatre. That isn’t too difficult to get one’s head around if one really wants to.

But for James and all the other media type megaphones trumpeting the hymn from the right wing songbook about a financially out of control administration at City Hall, this pricks a hole in their balloon. In Thursday’s article, James does a little message massaging himself, pointing out that under Miller, spending has gone up by a billion dollars in the last two years. A billion dollars! That’s crazy. That’s out of control. That’s.. let’s see 1 billion of 9.2 billion is about.. just under 11% divided by 2, gives us a 5.5% increase/year in the last two years. During which, we had one of those, what do you call it… major recessions. A global economic meltdown the likes of which we hadn’t seen since the 1930s. Between bailouts and increases in social spending, all governments saw expenditure spikes, Royson. How about giving us that kind of perspective in your role as a member of the fourth estate?

Alas it seems, when it comes to covering Mayor David Miller these days, perspective is the last thing that we should expect. At least of the objective, just-the-facts-ma’am kind of perspective we need in able to make informed decisions.

— unbiasedly submitted by Cityslikr