Despite our almost legendary passivity as a people, one small part of Canada is offering an example of what can happen when citizens shed the mantle of political disengagement that our politicians have long cultivated and counted on in order to push t…
Continue readingTag: City of Toronto
Politics and its Discontents: The Ford Gang Stays True To Form
Although I don’t live in Toronto, it has become an object of fascination for me since the election of Mayor Rob and Doug Ford. Within their fiefdom resides a psychology that provides fascinating examples of and insights into the darker aspects of huma…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Score Another One For Rick Salutin
Consistently able to ‘think outside the box’ of the current North American mindset, Rick Salutin, one of my favorite critical thinkers, has a column in today’s Star well-worth perusal. Entitled The sector that dares not speak its name, the thesis of hi…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Willful Ignorance in the Ford Administration
Toronto Mayors Rob and Doug Ford and their minions, like so many of the extreme right, tend not to let facts, reason, and data interfere with the purity of their ideological vision. Someone who describes city employees as ‘the gravy’ and denies that e…
Continue readingthe reeves report: Toronto mulls deep service cuts to begin meeting $774M budget shortfall
In the effort to reduce a budget shortfall of $774M in the City of Toronto, we may find that the city our forebears worked so hard to create will be drained of its essence. After promising in the 2010 mayoral election that taxes would be cut and services would be left alone – that tired … Continue reading »
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: These Pictures Tell A Real Story
Taken at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto, these photos depict many of the tributes that have been written in chalk honouring the memory of Jack Layton.Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Hamilton Libraries: Something To Answer For
The other day I wrote a post called Hamilton’s Vindication, with a link to a story detailing Hamilton Mayor Bob Bratina’s invitation to author Margaret Atwood to tour the Central Library facilities. I suggested that Hamilton was enjoying a burgeoning …
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: The Ongoing Devolution of Toronto
Perhaps it stems from a sense of inadequacy, a measure of paranoia, or a recognition that when all is said or done, they are just not up to the job, but when those of the far right-wing take power, we are frequently witness to a type of unbridled glee…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Hamilton’s Vindication?
While long regarded as something of a provincial backwater vis-a-vis its ‘world-class’ cousin 70 kilometres down the highway, the City of Hamilton is surely feeling a measure of cultural vindication now that the barbarians have breached the gates of To…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Christopher Hume’s Modest Proposal To The Ford Brothers
Although my right-wing friends seem to have neither an understanding nor an appreciation of irony (I’m lying – I don’t have any right-wing friends), more centered people will enjoy The Star’s Christopher Hume who, in today’s paper, has a modest proposa…
Continue readingthe reeves report: Torontonians beginning to realize you get what you pay For(d)
Running through the public and media discourse during and immediately after the ‘Historic Toronto Council Sleepover,’ as it will be etched forever in city lore, were two dominant threads that reinforced each other while speaking to separate issues. The first: elections matter. The second: you get what you pay for. Mayor Rob Ford’s challenge to … Continue reading »
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: The Failure of Political Leadership – Part 2
The other day I wrote a brief post called The Failure of Political Leadership, inspired by what is quickly becoming a national embarrassment for the City of Toronto in its choice of Rob Ford as mayor. Now quite openly betraying his promise not to gut …
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Unmediated Passion For Libraries – A Cure For Cynicism
I defy anyone to remain untouched after reading this story and watching the accompanying video in which 14-year-old Anika Tabovaradan makes a passionate plea to Mayor Rob Ford not to cut library services in Toronto. As the spokesperson for a large segm…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: A Failure of Political Leasdership
It is perhaps to state the obvious in asserting that our elected officials rarely represent our interests very well. Examples, far too numerous to list, abound. Probably the most obvious failure currently in the news is that of Rob Ford, who became t…
Continue readingRailroaded by Metrolinx: Playing with Team Ford
“It is clear that there is a program to eliminate the public from our great city.”
– Kim Fry, the 11th deputant during the Core Service Review at Toronto’s City Hall on Thursday July 28
For a penny-pinching populist, Mayor Rob Ford’s policies are very expensive. Since his October 25th election, he has spent over $533 million in a strange sibling rivalry against his arch nemesis, ex-Mayor David Miller. During Miller’s time in office, Rob Ford was the least respected councillor, and was relegated to the benches during Miller’s confabs with his handpicked, executive council. In retaliation, cribbing from his tactics as high school football coach, Ford has crafted his defensive lineup – an executive council of six strong ‘yes’ men to systematically take apart Toronto’s public infrastructure – which Miller intended to be his legacy – through cutting core services. Ford is like a younger kid brother knocking down the carefully placed building blocks of his brother’s toy castle because he does not know how to build a city of his own design or imagination.
Select items from a spreadsheet itemizing Mayor Ford’s expenses to the City of Toronto? Canceling Transit City, initial penalties of $179 million, removing bike lanes, $469,000, bailing out an under-used arena, $43.4 million, subsidizing an underused ski lift in the ward of his ally, Councillor James Pasternak, $2 million, and the loss of revenue from the Land Transfer Tax and Vehicle Registration Tax, $204 million and $50 million respectively. Another $100,000 was spent to hire a TTC consultant, and $3 million to hire KPMG, an external consulting firm- both of these expenses are part of city councillor’s jobs, and so are redundant.
While ex-Mayor Miller left a $375 million surplus, Mayor Ford is dangerously close to spending money equivalent to the $774 million budget deficit he wanted to balance by 2012. Left unchecked, these expenditures will almost double the projected 2011 deficit within his first year of office, showing the true cost of privatization. With over three years left in his term, he huddles with his brother, Doug, as his closest advisor, quietly strategizing during City Council meetings, cautioned by his rightwing consultants to remain tightlipped with the media.
Ford’s first agenda item was to hire consultancy firm, KPMG, to perform a core service review. When KPMG’s results were made public, the results backfired for Team Ford. 96% of services are mandated by the federal government, there was no gravy, and the report unintentionally highlighted that the previous surplus left by ex-Mayor Miller was an act of financial wizardry. Apparently, the left can be bean counters, too.
On July 28th, there were over 300 deputations at City Hall on the agenda, with irate citizens decrying these cuts, and police at the council chamber’s door; the new executive council will make the final decision regarding these core service cuts in September. Bowing under thousands of emails of public pressure to attend the deputations- Mayor Ford did not sit in for the first round – he decreed that they take place over a marathon 20 hours. The deputations have become a kangaroo court, a sham procedure, to get them out of the way of his city fire sale, as ‘efficiencies’ are found, cutting core services from the elderly, children, those with HIV, caretakers, bicyclists, and at risk youth, including a program that funds 685 student nutrition programs, 42 AIDS prevention projects and 38 community drug prevention programs. Although police refused access to City Hall’s green roof for his picnic, activist Dave Meslin is part of hundreds attending a City Hall slumber party tonight; internationally, other cities are taking over squares to protest similar austerity measures.
By pitting the KPMG report against community deputations, Team Ford has deliberately polarized the downtown core against suburbanites. Call it ‘wedge politics’, ‘culture wars’ or ‘divide and conquer’, it is a tactic used to distract GTA citizens as hard won public assets are sold off to invisible bidders. Think of the Canadian version of Koch Brothers as high school football coaches, rather than democratic mayors, with transit at the center of the debate.
Ex-Mayor Miller’s legacy was to be Transit City, a light rail network designed to add street level connectivity and make workplaces accessible for outer neighbourhoods; Team Ford proposes to bring another football team and football stadium to downtown Toronto, and extend a Sheppard subway line to nowhere. ‘Austerity will not be pretty’, read a sign at the KPMG protest, but for Team Ford, stadiums, subways and athletes are certainly more important than transit, bicycle lanes, and ‘bike people’, as we are called by Councillor Doug Holyday. For the right, bike lanes are easily sacrificed on the altar of the Almighty Car, and traffic lanes and parking lots are held to be places of worship.
On July 12th, over three hundred bicyclists converged on City Hall, to ask that the newly installed Jarvis bicycle paths remain in place. Used by 890 riders daily, the bike paths connected the east end of the city with the west. Wearing bicycle helmets, and raising silently waving ‘jazz hands’ to show support for councilors arguing for their right to share lanes of traffic, a heated discussion in City Council raged over two days. Central to the debate were these questions- are bicyclists considered worthy of protection? Is Jarvis Street a cultural corridor or highway? And can a lane on Sherbourne Street, 400 m away, be considered sufficient, or do bicyclists have the right to be integrated as part of a citywide network with multiple options of bike routes?
Councillor Shelley Carroll argued that bicyclists will use Jarvis Street anyway, and modes of transport cannot be forbidden under the Highway Transport Act. Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker said, “I think cyclists should start suing the city when struck by cars given this council’s recorded indifference to our safety.” Every seven hours a bicyclist is hit in the City of Toronto.
Finally, in procedural chaos, City Council voted that the Jarvis lanes were slated to be removed in two years upon the completion of the segregated Sherbourne lanes. A calculated, last minute motion by Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti re-added the reverse fifth lane, to render the prior Environmental Assessment and consultations null and void. Feisty Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam objected to the last minute amendment by Mammoliti about the lanes in her Ward; rightwing partisan Speaker Nunziata allowed the motion, and eight left leaning councillors walked out upon learning that they will be unable to vote upon the bike plan item by item in the future. The final blow – City staff told Wong-Tam, who is lesbian, that returning the reversible centre lane to Jarvis would cost $570,000, more than 4 times the city grant to Pride, an event which also takes place in her Ward, and is next on the chopping block. (For a detailed discussion of the vote, link here.)
Upon hearing this verdict, ever-ingenious Dave Meslin, the founder of the Toronto Bicyclist’s Union, posted a Facebook call out for riders to take back Jarvis. Two days later, 1100 respectful bicyclists, ringing their bells, circled Jarvis Street to Church Street and rode to City Hall chanting “We just want to share.” As I rode my bike down Queen Street West, an onlooker called out “Pay some taxes”, a byproduct of the new nastiness now made publicly permissible by Torontonians modeling the behaviour of our Mayor, and his allies, toward bicyclists.
In his nine months in office, Mayor Ford has shown preferential treatment for his constituents. He prefers car-drivers over bicyclists, the suburban elite over the downtown intelligentsia, the very wealthy over the marginalized, and corporations over unions. He cannot walk several minutes from his office to a podium to read a brief speech for the flag raising ceremony of Pride; he attends Caribana instead to show that while he may be homophobic, he is not racist. He makes his preferences known by picking and choosing which events to attend, and which deputations to listen to, and when frustrated by community consultation, changes access to democratic process by changing the date of motions, or by running an all-night deputation session, so that the public cannot attend, or hand signaling a councillor to add a last minute motion to stymie progressive motions.
Inappropriately, Mayor Ford has used his office to discriminate against those who are most defenseless, and in need of defense- whether bicyclists or marginalized groups. Ford as a football coach, if not as a democratic mayor, should rise to the challenge of inclusive policymaking, if he wishes to remain in his position. So should his brother, Doug. Going forward, we need to be Team Toronto, not Team Ford.
With special thanks to the blog ‘Driving the Porcelain Bus’ for the expense breakdown of Mayor Ford.
References:
‘Driving the Porcelain Bus’ at http://drivingtheporcelainbus.blogspot.com
Robyn Doolittle, Toronto Star, Urban Affairs Reporter, ‘Critics see KPMG report as ‘smoke and mirrors’ at http://www.thestar.com/news/torontocouncil/article/1028588–critics-see-kpmg-report-as-smoke-and-mirrors
Matt Elliott, ‘Ford for Toronto’, ‘The Jarvis vote: What the hell happened?’ at
http://fordfortoronto.mattelliott.ca/2011/07/13/the-jarvis-vote-what-the-hell-happened/
Railroaded by Metrolinx: Playing with Team Ford
“It is clear that there is a program to eliminate the public from our great city.” – Kim Fry, the 11th deputant during the Core Service Review at Toronto’s City Hall on Thursday July 28 For a penny-pinching populist, Mayor Rob Ford’s policies are very expensive. Since his October 25th
Continue readingRailroaded by Metrolinx: Playing with Team Ford
“It is clear that there is a program to eliminate the public from our great city.” – Kim Fry, the 11th deputant during the Core Service Review at Toronto’s City Hall on Thursday July 28 For a penny-pinching populist, Mayor Rob Ford’s policies are very expensive. Since his October 25th
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: The Barbarians’ Threat
Libraries have been a vital part of my life since I first learned to read. When I married and had children, my wife and I made sure to inculcate a love of reading in our children, and again, libraries were a vital part of that process. Even today, I wi…
Continue readingthe reeves report: Riding to ‘Save Jarvis’
At last count before the event started, the RSVP on Facebook claimed that about 900+ people would be attending the ride to ‘Save Jarvis.’ But like anyone who has thrown a party and relied on Facebook to count the attendees, I figured that number would drop by at least a third as things came up … Continue reading »
Continue readingthe reeves report: Compromising on Bike Lanes at Toronto City Hall: Pt. II
Yesterday afternoon, when onlookers in the crowd spotted Ford staffers handing out voting sheets to ‘Fordnation,’ as the right wing of Council is known, we who were there to support bike lanes should have guessed the issue was dead in the water. The slim chance that cyclists and their advocates on Council had in retaining … Continue reading »
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