Since 2010, a common cry from some of my anti-Ford friends has been, “It’s not my Toronto, anymore!” Sure it is. When Miller was mayor I never thought it wasn’t “my Toronto.” I just thought it was my Toronto run by a grandstanding incompetent.
At a dinner party I attended on the weekend in the west end of downtown Toronto, the composition of guests couldn't have been more representative of what people would expect from that area of my home town. Virtually all of them white and middle or upper middle class, comprised of York University graduates, an OISE professor, single professionals and some parents who delayed having children until a point that would have put them in the age range of grandparents a couple of generations ago. And I; aside from whom, there was a uniform political outlook that night that is euphemistically referred to as progressive.
I tend to avoid political conversations at these type of social events. Though I enjoy discussing interpretations of government policies and the possible motivation of the officials who formulate them, there are some people who become rather agitated when the facts don't bear out their emotional reactions to an idea to which they are attached. On one occasion, I heard after-the-fact from a woman I briefly dated, that at a party of hers, one of her friends became infuriated and left immediately after overhearing me say that some disadvantaged people in our society may be responsible for their own condition and it isn't the role of government to intervene in and correct every bad decision people make. Okay, to be totally honest, the way I may have phrased it may have been slightly different and may have been punctuated with a colloquial term for fornication, but that was the gist of my argument.
Toronto's mayor Rob Ford is a current example of how local progressives, captivated by their own emotional reactions and biases, but without any factual substantiation, have distorted reality into a pessimistic Apocalypse of societal collapse. An ex-girlfriend who works in the Social Services sector expressed the same sentiment as the party guests over drinks a few days earlier, as she righteously pontificated about how Rob Ford is destroying the city.
When I asked her exactly how Ford was supposedly destroying the city, she wasn't able to come up with a single concrete example. She talked about Ford making service cuts as a general concept, but couldn't actually name any that were implemented. What was more telling was that she could not come up with a single example of how anything this alleged Shiva, the God of Destruction who now holds Toronto's mayoralty, has done that personally affected her negatively in any way.
Rob Ford has been in office for almost 14 months and has for the first time in the amalgamated city's history brought in a budget that reduced spending from the previous year. There has been a property tax increase of exactly 0% under Ford and he has kept his promise of reducing Council expenses and eliminating the municipal Vehicle Registration Tax.
By contrast, his predecessor, David Miller imposed huge property tax increases, reduced the frequency of trash pick up while imposing, for the first time in the city's history a trash pick up fee that every household continues to pay. Miler took a lot of money out of people's mouths while giving back virtually nothing to anyone but a few of his special interest friends.
But for people who see themselves as progressive, perception and pessimism frequently trump reality. They don't like the idea of a hated right-winger having been the overwhelming democratic choice in a city they see as theirs. It results in a outlook that refuses to admit that Ford could do anything right and that he must be derided at all times, not for what he's done, but for what he might do.
I say this as someone who voted for David Miller the first time he ran for mayor. His opposition to the Island airport tunnel struck me as a reasonable approach, but more to the point, his opponents were uninspiring. But his terms in office were a huge disappointment because he grew government and government spending while gouging Toronto's tax base. That was the reality of the mayor who preceded Ford. The current mayor may be less smooth but he is more capable and committed to serving the public, and I'll take a poor perception over a bad reality any day of the week.
Today, at the urging of newly elected Toronto mayor Rob Ford, city council abolished the much despised annual Vehicle Registration Tax.
Elimination of the tax was one of Ford's main campaign promises.
Another was to reduce city councilor's budgets from the current rate of over $50,000 per year to $30,000. The new council also passed that measure.
During the election campaign, Ford also promised to work towards the elimination of the city's "Fair Wage" policy. The policy compels outside contracts to the city to pay employees at the same rate as municipal unionized workers, thus eliminating much of the financial benefit of using outside contracts at a cost of millions to the taxpayers of Toronto.
According to the Globe and Mail: City council voted 39-6 to eliminate the vehicle fee as of Jan. 1, 2011. Councillors voted 40-5 to reduce office budgets by about 40 per cent, to $30,000 from $50,445.
The Councilors who voted to keep the tax were: Janet Davis, Sarah Doucette, Pam McConnell, Joe Mihevc, Gord Perks, Adam Vaughan
Those who voted not to reduce their budgets were: Frank Di Giorgio, John Filion, Pam McConnell, Ron Moeser, and the aptly named Gord Perks
There is a much being written about Rob Ford's election on the day following his win. The Toronto Star is both petulant and in shock, a lot of media is attributing Ford's win to "voter anger."
Ford's win is very easily and simply explained.
Ford's message throughout the campaign was "Respect for taxpayers." It was a positive message that all the people of Toronto, and not the narrow political class and a few special interests like civic unions and arts grants recipients, should have a say in how their city is managed.
The main opposition to Ford was George Smitherman, whose only message was one of fear-mongering and arrogance in what appeared to be a sense of his own entitlement to power.
Voters chose the positive message of Ford over the negative message of Smitherman.
And Joe Pantalone, who ran on the idea that David Miller did a good job and his legacy should continue, was trounced, receiving only about 11% of the vote. The message is clear there too. Toronto did not feel David Miller performed well in his job.
UPDATE: In a decisive rebuke to the fear-mongers who tried to smear Ford by suggesting he was a racist because he said Toronto needs to focus on its own needs before taking in more immigrants, the last poll before the election showed Ford was the clear favorite among Torontonians born outside Canada. For that group, Ford's "margin rose to 51.7 per cent, over Mr. Smitherman’s 30.1 per cent."
Adam Vaughan, the councillor for Ward 20, came by my house the other day, campaigning for re-election and...
On a personal level, Adam's a nice, sincere guy. I think he's wrong about quite a few things in his political stances. His support for the despicable Krystin Wong Tam, one of the people behind Queers Against Israel Apartheid, is inexcusable. Adam is one of the councillors who appears content with the Miller status quo and from what I inferred, he thinks Miller's greatest failing is that he hadn't effectively communicated all the wonderful things he'd accomplished during his time as Toronto's mayor.
Vaughan doesn't appear to believe Toronto needs spending cuts and that a lot of our financial woes and the deterioration of roads and infrastructure not being properly addressed is because of the city's growth and the costs of transportation.
Some of those transportation costs being due to the incredible waste that happened during the St. Clair street car construction that cost than 300% of its proposed budget. Vaughan's leftist council colleague Joe Mihevc, as Deputy Chair of the TTC and a principle proponent of that mismanaged disaster, bears a huge measure of responsibility for that, and hopefully the electorate in Ward 21 will remember that and put in an alternative like Shimmy Posen.
The conversation with Vaughan took a strange turn. Vaughn has pretty much a lock on his downtown Trinity-Spadina ward. He's not facing any serious competition, so he seemed more interested in investing his time, not to advocate for himself in his ward, but to advocate voting against Rob Ford as mayor.
It was bizarre. First Vaughan started making comparisons between Ford and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Obviously the comparisons were meant disparagingly and I interrupted Adam to point out that he was making a big assumption to posit that I shared his views about Limbaugh and Beck. (While I find neither to be exceptionally profound individuals, I don't find their positions so outrageous as to share the socialist "progressives" assessment of their being devils incarnate.) Adams' response suggested he wasn't taking me seriously. It appeared incomprehensible to him that an intelligent person couldn't feel the same way. Particularly an intelligent person who lived south of Bloor Street.
As I said, the conversation was a bit bizarre. Adam made some very cogent points about Ford's council record being less impressive than his campaign would suggest, and then he undermined his arguments, in my mind, by trying to suggest I shouldn't vote for Ford because of Ford's father's record as an MPP when Mike Harris was Premier.
Adam then proceeded with an argument that may play well with some of his constituents, but struck me as the ultimate in political cynicism. He brought Ford's having lied (or forgotten about) his DUI/marijuana incident 11 years ago in Florida and his drunken outburst at a hockey game. The cynicism of harping on those matters is that it suggests Annex voters are more concerned with image than substance. My concern is with having a mayor who is determined to get our roads fixed, our municipal costs down, and who isn't in the pocket of detestable unions like CUPE Ontario. I told Vaughan I don't care if Ford smokes joints during council meetings, as long as he can cut the waste at city hall.
Ford is still preferable to councillor who spends $13,800 on their website or one who launches libel suits at the taxpayers' expense.
As far as I was concerned, the conversation reached its nadir when Adam told me "Ford is like George Bush, he tells you he's smart, but he's not."
It became apparent then that I was speaking with someone so blinded by their ideology that it was impossible to recognize or acknowledge any truth beyond it. George Bush was the president of the United States for two terms. In debates, he bettered supposedly more intelligent opponents like Ann Richards and Al Gore. You may disagree with what he did, but one of the reasons for his successes was that he was faced by adversaries so arrogant that they refused to concede the fact that someone who disagrees with them might actually posses some intellect. And he mopped the floor with them.
Adam conceded that Smitherman is not someone people could bring themselves to vote for. That part of the conversation was like his tepid Smitherman endorsement. I like Joe Pantalone in the same way I like Adam. I disagree with him, but at least I know that I'm talking to someone who is communicating what they honestly believe. Vaughan's endorsement of Smitherman is not based on any enthusiasm for Smitherman but on an all-consuming abhorrence of Rob Ford.
The 'strategic voting' endorsements of Smitherman by Mihevc and Vaughan should be instructive to voters. Smitherman has lately been talking about himself as a "progressive" candidate. Those paying attention need no reminder that "progressive" is also a code word that Marxists and radical socialists use to describe themselves.
Is Smitherman a Marxist or a radical socialist? Absolutely not. But he appears to be someone who will make shady deals and talk out of both sides of his mouth to achieve power. He's a McGuinty Liberal. The "progressive" who is going to cut taxes and waste? Don't hold your breath.
Yesterday the Globe and Mail endorsed him. It was the least enthusiastic endorsement I have ever read from a newspaper.
"Mr. Smitherman is vague. The risk in supporting Mr. Ford is what he might do as mayor, the risk in supporting Mr. Smitherman is what he might not do. The latter of the two has failed to articulate a vision or a strategy of his own, and he could easily end up as a second David Miller..He is essentially a professional politician, an office-seeker with a taste for managing, but not for transformation."
One of Eye on a Crazy Planet's readers provided this rendition of what we could look forward to if Toronto doesn't have the sense to reject Smitherman
Christopher Hume, one of the coterie of al-Starzeera columnists going off the rails at the prospect of Rob Ford winning the mayoral contest in October, wrote today "does it make sense to get rid of half of council for no other reason than to save $6 million on a $12 billion budget?"
Evidently, Hume should do what he does best and be out lobbying for some big condo to wreck a neighbourhood somewhere and stay away from numbers. Hume complains, "Government isn’t business and voters aren’t consumers. Were Toronto run like a corporation, not a democracy, the fallout would make the current angst seem a love-in. Despite what the candidates might say, government does not exist to turn a profit."
It sure doesn't when the likes of Miller, Smitherman and Pantalone are running it.
Earlier in his column, Hume mocked Ford for saying voters, "can’t relate to billions of dollars, but they can relate to thousands of dollars. They can relate to getting free gas, free food, free hotels, all the stuff people have to pay for and councillors don’t.”
Clearly, Hume doesn't have any idea how much can be done with the $6,000,000.00 in taxpayer savings he's scoffing at. At least he is helping out by unwittingly proving Ford's point.
On the bright side, Hume didn't call half the city of Toronto that supports Ford "newly emboldened hordes" again.
A sensible plan advocating safe bike lanes where they won't require reduction of traffic lanes, extending subway lines rather than streetcars that reduce traffic flow, and fixing the crumbling roads that David Miller let fall apart during his tenure.
Yesterday, I attended a barbecue with a number of friends and family. It was a group of people from different backgrounds and of varied economic status ranging in age from their thirties to their sixties. Some of these people were multi-generational Canadians and others were the first generation children of immigrants.
It had been overcast all morning with the grey skies seeming to hold the perpetual promise of rain, which by mid-afternoon, delivered on that promise. We gathered under a canopy watching the barbecuer-in-chief deal with the cooking, and all of us imbibing beer and liquor and conversing.
Eventually, the conversation turned to the municipal election. While the things my friends said may be apocryphal, given that this gathering was a seemingly representative microcosm of Toronto's citizenry, it also seemed instructive.
Almost to a person, everyone at that barbecue said they planned to vote for Rob Ford.
A phenomenon that has set the media's head spinning lately, particularly at the Toronto Star, is how after what seems to be fatal foible after fatal foible, Rob Ford's popularity has not diminished. It has in fact increased to the point where he far-and-away the front runner in the upcoming municipal election.
Ford's growing popularity amid The Star's attempts to sink him reminds me of the line Obi Wan Kenobi said to Darth Vader during their duel in Star Wars: A New Hope.
Alec Guiness, playing Kenobi, said: "You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."
While columnists and writers in the Globe and Mail have launched scathing personal attacks against Ford, the Toronto Star has been unrelenting in its vicious onslaught. The Star has gone to the point of printing stories that border on slander, such as their demonstrably false report that Ford physically assaulted a high school football player he was coaching.
While the editorial boards at the Star and Globe, whose arrogant views of their self-importance and influence must be reeling at how their all-out attempts to sink Ford have failed, what must be bothering them even more is the mystery of "why?"
Some columnists have already printed their own theories about the phenomenon of Ford's resilience, and some, like The Sun's Joe Wormington's recent coulmn, reflected some of what was said to me at the barbecue. It seems the media's 'piling on' of Ford about trivial matters while ignoring more serious transgressions by his rivals reflects a panic from the status quo at the prospect that waste and influence by special interests at city hall is in jeopardy.
The quartet of Smitherman, Rossi, Thompson and Panatlone all represented, as far as my friends were concerned, the status quo. And despite the quartet's insistence that they would change things, no one I spoke with yesterday believed them, while they did believe Ford. Why? Because Ford, through his whole career, has campaigned against waste in government, whereas the 2 members of the quartet who have been in elected office are firmly associated with wasteful spending.
Another component of Ford's popularity is his personality. Ford seems like a "real guy," the sort of person you could have a beer with. None of the quartet have been able to convey that convincingly.
And most tellingly, Ford impressed the people I spoke to as someone who is sincere. Ford carries himself as someone who says what he thinks. Sure, that means he says inopportune things from time-to-time. But that makes him a real person. And Ford will say how he feels regardless of who it offends, which as potentially damaging politically as it may be, suggests a refreshing honesty in a politician. In contrast, the quartet all came across as opportunists who are more likely to say something that they think will serve their political purposes than they would be likely to tell the truth.
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No issue made this more clear than reaction to Ford's comments about immigration that were spurred by the controversial arrival of a boatload of Tamil migrants. When Ford said this city can't afford to take in more people when we can't even take care of those already here, he was saying something that most people understand to be true. Sensing an opportunity to paint Ford in the light as "anti-immigration" and even "racist" the quartet piled on like hyenas.
The quartet couldn't have made a worse move. People who have come to Canada legally resent illegal migrants who circumvent the regulations complied with by and stringent efforts of honest immigrants more than anyone else. And nothing has made the dishonesty of Ford's opponents more clear than the accusation of "racism." There was no racial reference or implication to anything Ford said about Toronto's ability to care for its own. Toronto is the most diverse city in the world and "Toronto's own" includes people from every racial and cultural background on earth.
What may have sealed the deal for Ford is the recent revelation that 71% of Tamil "refugees" have returned to Sri Lanka on vacations since they came to Canada. What could be clearer proof that the immigration system and Canada's good graces are getting bilked? You don't go back to a country for a vacation if you are being persecuted there and your life is at risk.
The other factor that Ford stood alone against in the face of attack from the Quartet was his commitment to eliminate the city's "Fair Wage" policy which enforces union pay rates equalling municipal pay rates to outside contractors who make tenders to the City. Anyone can see through this. It costs the city tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. It eliminates much of the very reason and all of the savings the city could gain from outside tenders.
Who benefits from this policy is clear: Unions. The same unions that incumbent mayor David Miller is perceived as being beholden to. The same unions that the Quartet is trying to curry support from. What was telling was that even union people I spoke to were in favor of Ford's "Fair Wage" policy position.
Because only some people in some unions gain from the "fair wage" policy, particularly CUPE, which is fearful of competition and the pressure that getting outside sources to do the same or better jobs at cheaper rates would bring.
The union members I spoke to supported Ford because they don't identify themselves as being unionist before they do as being Torontonians and taxpayers. They don't want the next mayor to be a wasteful spender in the pocket of CUPE any more than anyone else outside of CUPE.
So, it seems to me that, no matter how hard the Toronto Star and the Status Quo Quartet may try, as long as Rob Ford keeps being Rob Ford, his momentum to the mayor's office is probably unstoppable.
UPDATE: AUGUST 23: An Ipsos Reid poll taken over the wekend shows Ford as the clear front runner with an 11 point lead over nearest rival, George Smitherman.
In its relentless campaign against populist Toronto mayoral candidate Rob Ford, The Toronto Star printed an article today featuring condemnation of Ford by the unpopular outgoing incumbent, David Miller.
Ford understatedly observed to this blog last month that the Toronto Star is "not a fan" of his. The Star, which is considered to be a left-leaning, union-supporting outlet, has taken a consistently anti-Ford position, going as far as having printed demonstrably false allegations of Ford having assaulted a high school football player. Allegations the player himself refuted.
Every time The Star prints a new smear against Ford, his polling numbers climb. The Star should be less worried about the prospect of Ford as mayor as they should about their lack of influence over and total disregard by the public.
The current front-runner among the five remaining major candidates in Toronto's upcoming mayoral race hopes to turn taxpayer frustration into votes in October.
Giorgio Mammoliti's withdrawal from the race this week leaves Rob Ford as the candidate most identified with cost-cutting as a campaign issue.
Ford's campaign has just launched a website, respectfortaxpayers.com, that hopes to engage constituents angry at steady tax increases and public spending during David Miller's leadership of the city.
During the six year tenure of David Miller, who announced he is not seeking re-election, municipal property taxes skyrocketed and taxes in the form of user fees for garbage collection and mandatory charges for plastic shopping bags were introduced.
Ford must be pleased at the results of recent polls which place him 2 points ahead of George Smitherman, the former provincial cabinet minister, who came into the race as the then front-runner with high name recognition and a well-organized and funded campaign.
Voter recollection of the Ministry of Health's eHealth scandal that occurred while Smitherman held the helm of that ministry and which cost taxpayers one billion dollars, has hampered his campaign.
Working to keep that voter memory alive, the Ford campaign's website includes an animated commercial that portrays his rivals as spendthrifts and Ford as the superhero who will save taxpayers from unfettered public spending.
Not a bad idea, but a shorter, catchier name would have helped. It should be noted that if Ford wants to look like his animated representation in the cartoon, he will have to spend all his time at the gym and won't have much left over for campaigning.
There is a much being written about Rob Ford's election on the day following his win. The Toronto Star is both petulant and in shock, a lot of media is attributing Ford's win to "voter anger."
