Selling a fake Canadian "genocide" for fun and profit

There have been far too many efforts at genocide in the last century. Some, like that of the Armenians by the Turks, are still denied by its perpetrators, and some, like that of the Sudanese Arabs against blacks, is ongoing. There are some that today openly aspire to commit genocide but lack the means, as the one Iran and its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas would like to inflict on Jews.

But those aren't the genocides that former bigshots, ex-Assembly of First Nations National Chief Phil Fontaine and the defunct Canadian Jewish Congress' old boss Bernie Farber have chosen to decry. Instead they are trying to sell the notion of a fake "genocide" against Canada's Native population in Canada's "national newspaper" and their motives may not be entirely altruistic.

There are nuances that even a generally true statement, such as that Canada's First Nations have received very poor treatment in the past, need to take into account. For one thing, Canada's First Nations are just that, nations, a plural. While Canada's Indian Act applies to them all, in reality, different aboriginal tribes have negotiated and received different treatment from the government. But in absolutely no case, from the foundation of Canada in 1867, could that treatment, in any instance, be described as genocide, which is a deliberate policy of killing an entire racial or ethnic group.

It should also be noted that many of Canada's aboriginal nations waged war on each other, committing mass-murders and driving one another off land in what in contemporary terms would be described at a minimum as "ethnic cleansing."

Canada's historical policies towards First Nations may have been unfair, patronizing and colonial, but to call them genocidal is quite simply a lie.

To really understand Canada's historical policies toward First Nations, we need to look at them in the context of their time and not, as Farber and Fontaine do, through a distorted, telescopic rear-view mirror imposing the values of 2013 on the Nineteenth Century.

Canada compared to the United States, or for that matter compared to government treatment of aboriginals in any part of the New World or under any ex-colonial power, was extremely benevolent. Without question, our 18th Century policies considered Native culture to be lesser to that of the Europeans. But to put the times in context, slavery had only been abolished in the United States four years before Canadian Confederation and there was no country in the world then in which women were entitled to vote.

For Native Americans at that time, Canada was not a genocidal slaughterhouse, but a refuge. After the massacre of Custer's troops at Little Big Horn, it was to Canada that Sitting Bull and a band of his followers came to find sanctuary. Today, in the Royal Ontario Museum, rests a headdress that Sitting Bull gave to Canada's Northwest Mounted Police as a gesture of gratitude for the safety for his people that this nation provided.

For anyone examining all the actual genocides in history, it is clear that the method and purpose was to first segregate, then to annihilate the intended target. Racist laws in countries that had genocidal policies, such as Nazi Germany's Nuremberg Laws, were enacted to prevent, not promote integration. There is no instance, ever, that the purpose of a genocide was to integrate one group with another.   Yet, while it may offend contemporary cultural sensitivities, integration was the clearly stated intention of Canada's policies towards First Nations which Farber and Fontaine preposterously characterize as a "genocide."

Yes, there were abuses committed in Residential Schools many decades ago, for which Prime Minister Harper has apologized. But the worst of the abuses were perpetrated by corrupt individuals and were not part of any government policy.

The authors The Globe chose to promote, Farber and Fontaine, make a curious pair of "genocide" hucksters who may have driving motives other than their own particular concept of "social justice." Fontaine is a former National Chief who obviously craves the limelight, as does Farber. Beyond that, Farber now makes his living working for a company that needs to convince First Nations groups to let them build energy facilities on their land. Whether or not he believes that Canada committed a genocide, being seen as an extremist in their corner can't be bad for business.

However, that extremism comes at the cost of credibility. They are completely wrong in their inflammatory accusations and preposterous, ahistorical inventions such as that Sir John A. McDonald's policies towards aboriginals were genocidal attempts at mass murder.

And this says nothing of the facts about the current situation of First Nations in Canada. It would be a very curious form of genocide indeed that has resulted in First Nations being the fastest growing population in Canada. Last time I checked, that would make it the exact opposite of a genocide. Of course, this would not be the first time a group claimed a fake genocide, as their numbers are vastly increasing, solely for political aims.

But while what Fontaine and Farber have written in The Globe is a load of ridiculous, politicized nonsense, I don't want to give the impression that I don't think they aren't also sincere in their beliefs. After all, to borrow from and paraphrase H.L. Mencken, no one ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of Bernie Farber.

Hey Look! After Sun Media and bloggers have been doing it for 2 months, the mainstream media finally gets around to telling the truth about fanatics Greyson & Loubani

Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail:

John Greyson and Tarek Loubani have been portrayed as innocents abroad, humanitarian do-gooders who were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. This picture is inaccurate and incomplete. The two are hard-core anti-Israel activists who’ve been mixed up in Middle East politics for years. They should have known what they were getting into.

When they were arrested, the two were on their way to deliver medical equipment to a hospital in Hamas-controlled Gaza. The whole world knew that the situation in Egypt was highly volatile. The government was determined to shut down the Muslim Brotherhood (an ally of Hamas) and unlikely to look kindly on a couple of foreigners who decided to film a bloody crackdown.

Jon Kay in the National Post:

Egyptian military authorities have been co-operating with Israel in controlling the flow of weapons and militants to and from Gaza for years. But till now, Western pro-Palestinian activists generally have preferred to play down this fact. The case against Israel works best when it is presented as a simple morality play about indigenous Arabs battling neo-colonialist Jews. And so the fact that many Arab leaders in the region (including not only those in Egypt, but also Lebanon and Jordan) share Israel’s fear of Palestinian militancy is seen as an embarrassment to the conceit of anti-Zionist solidarity. 

(to be fair to John and the NP, they did do a couple of articles touching on the radical fanaticism of Greyson and Loubani before.)

I think Jon's article is overly optimistic in its assessment that the Greyson/Loubani saga will refocus the Canadian radical left away from its anti-Israel depravity onto real human rights crises, but he does make some very valid observations about the other facets of this episode. 

Sun News, as its viewers are aware, has been providing the complete story on Greyson and Loubani from the start:

Media piling-on is building sympathy for Rob Ford

"I don't like Ford, but he was elected and this is a ridiculous distraction. They need to let him do his job."

That was something a very liberal ex-girlfriend said to me on the phone last night about the media histrionics over Rob and Doug Ford's alleged, unsubstantiated misdeeds. And it's something that in one form or another, I'm hearing more and more from people in Toronto.

"They're digging stuff up from 30 years ago about one of them that has nothing to do with how he's performing as a Councillor. That's just vindictive,"  she added.

Comments like that are good news for the Fords and bad news for the media with an ax to grind against him.    The anti-Ford Toronto media have accomplished something that would have seemed highly improbable to many two years ago.They are actually evoking sympathy for the Fords from people who used to find them thoroughly unappealing.

There are people who hated the Fords before they were winners in the 2010 municipal elections. So the current round of scandal-mongering by The Star and Globe and Mail serves as bias confirmation. But I've heard from neighbors, readers, and sometimes random strangers who say in essence what my ex-girlfriend said.

One neighbor confided to me earlier in the week:

"I didn't vote for Ford but I think he's doing a pretty good job for the city and it's disgusting the way the media is going after him over these personal things that have nothing to do with how he's running the city. I'm going to vote for him next time."

There's actually a lot of that going on.

What should be of even greater frustration to the anti-Ford rabble is what was then disclosed to me by this neighbor, whom, like The Star and Globe do with their Ford stories, I will use as an anonymous source.

 "Don't tell anyone I told you that."

It was not the first time someone has said to me about their new affinity for Rob Ford.

It also suggests a potential factor that is very interesting. It means that polls The Toronto Star has taken presuming Olivia Chow could beat Ford in an election, which on the surface seem like they were only culled from a three bloc radius of the Annex neighborhood in downtown Toronto, could be totally misleading.

Part of the problem for The Toronto Star and Globe is that people aren't as stupid and gullible as they would like them to be.

It's a good thing we have The Star and Globe to tell us the city is falling apart because of the Fords and that they must resign immediately. Otherwise, to the average citizen casually observing, it would seem like everything is just fine on the streets of Toronto. And should anyone actually bother to go to City Hall, where they would  see civic government is functioning as efficiently as it ever has, the only thing they would see falling apart is The Toronto Star's credibility.

In essence, The Star and Globe want to pull an undemocratic coup in Toronto. They want a democratically elected mayor removed by an administrative process initiated by the Premier. A Premier, it needs to be said, who has been afraid to call an election since she was appointed by a political party to helm the province.

The Star and Globe are doing their best to whip up a fake storm of hysteria to make that happen. They raise a fury about some unproven, unattributed allegations, then say the "crisis"  they are the only ones obsessed with is rendering the city in chaos.

To that, there's a simple way of proving them wrong. What exactly is not being done that should be by Toronto's municipal government in the midst of this fraudulent chaos they allege?  Where exactly is this "chaos" and how is affecting any citizen of the city who isn't dealing directly with reporters?

Funny how that question never gets answered or even asked by The Toronto Star or Globe and Mail.

Our province's less-than-reputable Premier, Kathleen Wynne, has her own scandal controversy. She was part of the gas plant cancellation scam that effectively stole over half a billion dollars from Ontario taxpayers.

It`s no wonder she was happy to get in on the circus act the media pitched around Rob Ford.

She alluded to the possibility that her government might have to step in to deal with the media-manufactured crisis that is not actually a crisis for anyone outside the media.

Wynne's motives were pathetically transparent. She was thrilled to be exploiting a diversion from the corruption of her own government. There was an added benefit in that her political advisers are telling her that the fiscally conservative Ford's woes are hurting the brand of her rivals, Tim Hudak's Progressive Conservatives.

The motives for The Star and Globe are also transparent.  They saw this as a chance to get rid of a politician they despise. And even if they fail, nothing sells newspapers better than controversy, even one that sinks to new lows in journalistic standards.

But there are plenty of people not obsessed with municipal politics, and just because the local media smells blood in the water and has gone into a feeding frenzy doesn`t mean the rest of the city is joining them.

I was standing on a subway last weekend speaking with a very attractive brunette woman with whom I am acquainted. Normally, I try to avoid political conversations in crowded, confined public spaces, but the woman I was with, who lives outside Toronto, asked some questions about the Ford controversy.

The subject of unions came up, since some of the most vociferous opposition to Ford comes from the bosses of public sector unions, whom Ford has stood up to, in stark contrast to his predecessor as mayor, David Miller. Speaking from the experience of having worked as a unionized civil servant for over a decade, I said, "if you ever want to find the worst employee on the floor, just look for the union streward, and that'll be the one."

A small chuckle came from the seat by where we stood, and there sat a middle aged workman, a salt-of-the earth type, who had been listening in on our conversation. I was expecting to get a lecture on the importance of unions. Instead, he turned to my companion, smiled and said, "he`s right."

"I've been in the union nineteen years," he continued "the union chiefs only care about themselves and use their positions so they don't have to work as hard as the rest of us."

The subject soon shifted back to Ford and the media vendetta. Our fellow subway rider volunteered what has become a familiar strain from a lot of Torontonians lately, "I never liked Ford when I first heard about him, but he's been doing an okay job as mayor. They're going after him about personal stuff that's irrelevant to how he's doing his job. It smells bad and I'm probably going to vote for him next time."

Not for the first time, The Toronto Star may have made a serious miscalculation when it comes to Rob Ford. There are plenty of people in Toronto who hate Ford and would never vote for him under any circumstance. Those people are happy to have their prejudices fed by The Star`s reports.

But there are a big pool of people in the middle on the subject of Ford. And for every voter The Star is turning away from him, their hysterical bullying of Toronto`s mayor may be driving even more to support Rob Ford.


UPDATE: New poll indicates public confidence in Toronto's media has taken a major hit because of the smear campaign against Ford

Is Canada finally going to get sane immigration policies?

From the Globe and Mail:

“It frustrates the hell out of me,” the Immigration Minister told The Globe and Mail’s editorial board on Wednesday. “We're bringing hundreds of thousands of people into the country to end up, many of them, unemployed or underemployed in an economy where there are acute labour shortages.”

...Ottawa wants to transform the immigration system within a year and a half to allow international companies and Canadian professional organizations to assess the education and credentials of any would-be newcomer. Under the new system, employers, not bureaucrats, will decide who comes to Canada.

“Employers are going to do a much better job at selection than a passive bureaucracy,” he said, “because they can’t afford to recruit people to come to Canada who can’t work at their skill level on arrival.”

Union concessions avoid Toronto municipal strike

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The details aren't out yet, and won't be until the union ratifies the deal. It's unlikely the deal will be rejected because the city's administration was looking for the union to hand them a "go ahead, make my day" moment.

Marcus Gee of the Globe and Mail wrote up an excellent summary:


.. the city set a deadline of a minute after midnight on Feb. 5. Many had assumed the city would lock out its workers at that time if a deal had not been reached. The union's propaganda for the last couple of weeks seemed intended to portray it as the injured party if workers were indeed locked out. Mr. Ferguson was suddenly all moderation and optimism, saying first that the union would agree to settle for no pay increase and that it had no plans to strike. If it came to a lockout, he could say: We were talking and making concessions, so why the need to lock us out of our jobs?

But on Friday, in an unusual and aggressive move, the city said that it would not lock out the union at midnight. Instead it would impose new working conditions set out in its most recent contract proposal. The city was demanding more flexibility in how it deploys and, if necessary, lays off its employees.

The tactic put the union in a fix. Going to work on Monday morning as usual under new city-imposed conditions might have seemed like a tacit acceptance of them, a fait accompli. Suddenly calling a strike in protest at the city's move would have been equally tough for the union, given they had said they had no strike plans. Mr. Ferguson called the city a “bully” for making the threat but stayed at the bargaining table. Some time in the dark hours of Sunday morning, a deal was done.

The Globe and Mail celebrates vandals and criminals because they are anti-Ford

Oh, great.

The people who go around vandalizing public property used to be criminals and hoods. But because the ruling aristocracy at the Globe and Mail is offended by a brash outsider holding on to Toronto's mayoralty, they now celebrate low-lifes as "the grafitti community" since they share the Globe's disdain for Rob Ford.

Thank you, mainstream Toronto media, for making yourself increasingly irrelevant.

Don Cherry supports a higher Canadian murder rate!

No, he doesn't.

That was just some blog satire. But The Canadian Press and Globe and Mail printed it as if it were true without even bothering to check with Cherry.

Just another reminder not to believe everything you read in the newspapers.

The Globe and Mail's Patrick Martin is a failure at understanding world events

The Saudi leadership was humiliated at the news of a woman being sentenced to lashing for the "crime" of driving a car earlier this week. That story made headlines all over the world and was being used as another stick to castigate the Gulf monarchy's medieval rule.

King Abdullah reversed the sentence for an obvious reason. Because it being publicized was an embarrassment. Not because of some trend towards liberalization going on in the Wahhabi kingdom.

But you wouldn't know that from reading Patrick Martin in the Globe and Mail. Martin seems to view his role as a columnist as being a press agent for terrorists and tyrants. Prosecuting and beating a woman for driving is a gross violation of human rights, and a minor act of clemency for an infraction that the civilized world was mocking is described by Martin as an indication of  "just how serious the Saudi ruler is about enhancing the civil rights of women in the Kingdom."  Or it could be an indication of how serious the Saudi ruler is about trying not to look bad in the international press, and it's a good thing he has boosters like Patrick Martin to help spread that message.

This comes in the wake of the Saudi leadership giving women minor enfranchisement privileges. Yet the Globe and Mail didn`t seem to have much to say about how that move came only a couple of weeks after Saudi embarrassment over the exposure of how they tried to suppress `Ethical Oil` ads which highlighted the abusive, unfair treatment of women in Saudi Arabia.

The one thing that keeps the Saudi rulers in place is the wealth they derive from oil, and Canada illustrating how their product is the equivalent of `fair trade`` petroleum was bad for Saudi business.

That`s what is going on in Saudi Arabia right now - not a blossoming of a women`s rights movement but some press releases by one of the world`s largest oil producers.

This is not the first time Martin has acted as an apologist for the worst elements in the world. In a`radio interview in which he discussed a Globe and Mail series on Gaza a few months ago, Martin dismissed Hamas rocket attacks on Israel as being `firecrackers.` This vapid, hypocritical comment shows the level of analysis Canada`s``national newspaper` is giving its readers. Or if I`m wrong, Martin might be willing to demonstrate it by standing in a room while a few of those `firecrackers`that can level a house are lobbed in his direction. I wouldn`t bet on him volunteering for that any time soon.

Laugh of the day: The wing-nuts at rabble.ca demand the re-hiring of Rick Salutin at The Globe and Mail

It was interesting to learn yesterday that Rick Salutin had been canned from his gig at the Globe and Mail.

Actually, from what I understand, Salutin technically was never on staff at the Globe, but was a freelancer whose column was placed weekly in that paper.

It's understandable why the Globe would want rid of him. His columns were tedious and repetitive.

Jonathan Kay nailed it well two years ago when he wrote:

After 17 years as a Globe columnist, one suspects, Salutin apparently has gotten to the stage where he simply throws a bunch of buzz phrases in the air — imperialism, Guantanamo, oil, Omar Khadr, "honest broker" — and lets his readers write their own column.

Throw "right-wing" and "neo-con" in the mix, along with the propensity to presume to understand the hidden, un-evidenced, conspiratorial motives of everyone in the political spectrum to the right of Leon Trotsky, and that pretty much covers everything I've ever read from Salutin.



But the news of Salutin's dismissal doesn't sit well with the radical socialists at the online propaganda bureau that Judy Rebick built, rabble.ca

In a piece by Murray Dobbin demanding the re-instatement of Salutin at the Globe, we get some hilarious histrionics:

There are also not many touchstones for progressive Canadians still intact -- things that give us some comfort that the world hasn't completely fallen apart, at least not yet. Every time I hear the theme music to As it Happens, I get that feeling -- or when I go to the doctor and don't have to pay and he doesn't get a bonus for denying me service.

Rick's column was like that. He may well be the best in the country. Each time I saw that column in the Globe -- a hard-line neo-liberal paper in most ways -- it allowed me to believe progressive voices were still part of the mainstream debate -- a place at the table that we might be able to expand.

This invites the question of how many of rabble.ca's devotees of Karl Marx have a subscription to "a hard-line neo-liberal paper,"  but that is a minor point.

It must be frustrating for over-the-hill Marxists mired in the outdated radicalism of the 1960's to be getting the message, over and over, that they're no longer relevant.

It appears to be like the death of a loved one for Dobbin, because he's going through all five stages of grief in his one article:

Denial: Not many columnists in this country have achieved icon status but Rick Salutin is one of them.

Anger: I've always wondered about that popular slogan -- Speak truth to power. We've been doing that for years and they don't give a shit 

Bargaining: We should demand the Globe reinstate Rick Salutin. Some of us are still speaking.

Depression: I can just imagine the suits at the Globe having a brief conversation about Rick's column: "By the way, why are still publishing Rick Salutin?" Long silence. "Rick who?" I wonder if any of these guys ever even read him.

Acceptance: For the suits, the deal was signed long ago -- it's just taking a while to implement it down to the last remaining article.

I am of course having a bit of fun here and slightly altering some of the context and order of the statements. But I am not exaggerating the verbal conniption fit.

Goodbye Rick. I'll miss your columns too, because I used to get a laugh out of them. But evidently, someone came to the realization that I and the handful of rabbleoids with a subscription to The Globe were the few people left reading them.

UPDATE: The email I hated to send

As much as I welcome the idea that Salutin's tiresome paranoia will have fewer venues, as a matter of principle, I felt compelled to send the following email to the Globe and Mail's Editor-in-Chief:

Dear Mister Stackhouse

I am aware that there are some orchestrated campaigns going on at rabble.ca and with a few of their affiliated bloggers to try to get you to re-instate Rick Salutin.

These people probably very rarely buy a copy of The Globe and Mail.

Personally, I found his columns tiresome, predictable and repetitive. As that previous sentence suggests, I have a very different political outlook than Salutin. I should add that other than on the basis of rumour and scant non-mainstream media reports, I know nothing about your decision, so I apologize and want to clarify that this communication is on that basis.

The people orchestrating the “keep Salutin” campaign are mainly politically motivated and see him as one of the advocates for their point of view. A point of view that I believe to be distorted and outdated, and based on his biases rather than fact.

But I would not want to advocate that a person be removed based on his political views. If removing Salutin was a sound business decision, then you should stick with it. If his columns were uninteresting because of their predictability and inane repetition of themes while introducing misplaced ideological prejudices, then stick with it.

But if he was a valuable contribution to The Globe and Mail and was removed because he offended someone, then, much as I loathe to do so, I would advocate in the strongest terms that he be re-hired.

Yours,

All I can say is I hope they got rid of the boring socialist old goat because he was a boring socialist old goat that no one read anymore and not for any other reason.

UPDATE 2: Murray Dobbin is encouraging people to send a letter to the editor  (letters@globeandmail.ca)
at the Globe in support of Salutin. I just sent this, which I'm pretty sure is what Dobbin had in mind:
 

Dear Editor

I found the writing of Rick Salutin to be that of a tiresome, outdated polemicist mired in the politics of 1960’s radicalism. I stopped reading his columns with any regularity quite some time ago, as one could predict their entire substance from the headline.

If that was the reason the Globe and Mail got rid of him, then I commend your decision.

However, if he is a popular columnist who was fired merely for being politically objectionable, then I would ask you to reconsider that decision. That way, I could still check his writing out from time to time in The Globe to mock the irrelevance of the self-described “progressive” movement.

UPDATE 3: The Globe made a great call. Salutin is being replaced by Irshad Manji, who is a big favorite at Eye on a Crazy Planet. Great move, Globe and Mail!

Sarah Thomson expected to announce end of mayoral bid today.

Conrad Black endorsement "kiss of death?"

Sarah Thomson, who has been polling at or near the bottom of the 5 major candidates in Toronto's mayoral election, is expected to drop from the race today. Her campaign has said she will make a brief announcement today at 10 am and will take no questions, according to The Globe and Mail.

In the absence of a credible campaign of her own, Thomson has recently been a proponent of a "stop-Ford" movement.

More later...

The Toronto Star, Rob Ford, and the Status Quo Quartet

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.
                                       
                                   --  ---   ---   ----   ----   ---   ---   ----

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.



h/t blazing cat fur