It couldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the city’s swinging right in this election year, and not without reason, given the increasingly perilous state of Toronto’s finances (the gory details of which will be getting a lot of airplay over the next week). But there’s something bizarre about the breast-beating over the alleged dearth of red-meat conservatives in the mayoral race.
Exhibit A: Marcus Gee’s plea in Saturday’s Globe and Mail for Rob Ford to jump into this “lefty” campaign. As a journalist, I whole-heartedly agree with him that the spectacle of a Ford candidacy would be enormously entertaining to cover.
But surely there’s more to this business of holding elections than simply the prospect of nine months of zingers. In our yearning for some blue blood, have we lost sight of that little matter of competence?
At the risk of inviting days of attack on the comment string, I’d argue that three current and former council conservatives certainly have the skills to run the city: Doug Holyday, Karen Stintz, and David Soknacki, former budget chief and currently chair of Parc Downsview Park. You may not agree with them on many points, but they all have functioning brains and understand the issues.
In lieu of these figures, we have Rocco Rossi, whose pronouncements to date make him look more and more like a conservative in Liberal clothing.
It’s not obvious to me why a guy who wants to sell Toronto Hydro and press the pause button on a multi-billion transit expansion isn’t considered right enough.
The conservatives mentioned above are somewhat to the right of Rossi, but anyone running for the job must reach beyond their core ideological constituency in order to build a winning campaign.
Ford certainly has the potential to become a lightning rod for ambient voter dissatisfaction, especially in the suburbs. And yes, Marcus, it would be fun to watch him perform his rhetorical belly flops during the mayoral debates.
But I seriously doubt whether Ford could run a Tim Horton’s drive-thru’, much less a $9 billion-a-year corporation with 50,000-plus employees. He couldn’t even remember the name of the company he’d hired to do the poll allegedly putting him in third place.
His shortcomings are both a matter of style and substance. Ford, as Gee concedes, has conducted himself disgracefully in public and at council, with drunken and/or belligerent behaviour.
More troublingly, I’ve never had the sense that he’s got the intellectual ability to grasp the complexity of the problems facing the city.
A recent case in point: Ford’s answer to my question last week, about his top transit priority, was to designate the TTC as an essential service to prevent the possibility of more wildcat strikes. In other words, he wants to create a situation that will drive up the TTC’s cost structure at a time when we need to do precisely the opposite.
Holyday, by contrast, argued vigorously during the summer strike that the city must resist the public’s calls to designate garbage collection as an essential service, because to do so would only make the operation more expensive (witness the costly arbitrated settlements for police and firefighters). Whatever else you may think about out-sourcing waste management, Holyday’s arguments are consistent, whereas Ford seems incapable of recognizing the contradictions in his bombast.
Run, Rob, run…but to another line of work.
photo by Miles Storey
12 comments
It will be nice to see the day (hopefully soon with Toronto’s $500M AOB shortfall) when describing a Toronto politico as both socially progressive and fiscally responsible in the same breath is not an oxymoron but an apt description of the Mayor and City Councillors struggling to collegially balance the escalating costs of competing demands with limited growth in user/tax revenues and ever diminishing borrowing capacity!
Toronto can’t afford to perpetuate the current ideological dysfunction that bifurcates Council into progressive and conservative divides, without a desperately needed mission to unify the two sides and finally get its financial house in order.
I agree with Bob — and would argue that ideally you’re looking for someone whose goals are still “progressive” (transit, tackling poverty, etc.) but whose methods are more “conservative” (tackling costs, ending budget sleight-of-hand, etc.)
Though he’s a first-class penny pincher, Rob Ford clearly doesn’t fit the bill. So few current conservatives do — e.g. both the Harper and Bush regimes were fiscally reckless (slashing taxes while growing spending) in a way this city clearly could not afford.
While I fully expect that Rob Ford will continue to get tarred and feathered here, I really hope that all candidates will get such close inspection.
Especially WRT any current councillor(s) whom are running for Mayor. I was aghast at Giambrone’s comment that if he was elected Mayor he would have a “hard look†at all department budgets. Just what what the budget needs, a stern gaze. Scare it back into balance.
Just what has he been doing all these years? Giving it a loving look? All councillors running, for Mayor or council, need to account for what they have been doing to address Toronto’s fiscal shortfall for the past years. Other than concealing it.
and not without reason, given the increasingly perilous state of Toronto’s finances
Let’s see – the right is responsible for the downloading that has put Toronto in a structural deficit, and the right thinks taxes are anathema…so, yeah, it makes perfect sense to have the right get us out of the hole they’ve dug…
And may I also point out how strange it is that Mammoliti has disappeared down the memory hole – neither Marcus Gee, nor John Lorinc mention him at all. He’s surely loony right, and he certainly rivals Ford for buffoonery.
Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see Ford join Mammoliti in the mayor’s race – getting those two off council in a losing campaign would be a huge plus. But lets not pretend that Ford would fill some ideological (and entertainment) void that Mammoliti doesn’t already fill.
Mr. Ford is an easy target for the media to mock. He wears his heart on his sleeve and is prone to the occasional outburst. But you know what – a lot of people in Toronto are sick of the status quo. They are sick of having their money thrown away on special interest projects that have nothing to do with the day to day running of this city.
Have a nice laugh at Rob’s expense, but you know what – if he decides to run he’ll be the only viable conservative candidate. Watch the left vote split and see who will get the last laugh on election day!
McKingford —
Mammoliti is shrewder than Ford, and he’s certainly not a fiscal conservative. Just look at his councillor expenses. He’s always near the top of the list.
Dirk, I don’t laugh at Ford – far from it. When first confronted with his behaviour at the Leafs game from which he was ejected, he said that it was a case of “mistaken identity”.
This is not an outburst during a time of drunkeness, this is a lie. Vote for him if you like, but do so with open eyes.
Please don’t legitimize Marcus Gee by quoting his ramblings in a more serious news outlet like spacing.ca!
While prone to outbursts and zany statements, Rob Ford is no Allan Lamport. Lamport fought for Sunday openings, pushed for the Malton and Island airports and was a tremendous booster of public transportation. A blustering buffoon at times, but intellectual and progressive. Just being a blustering buffoon isn’t going to cut it unless he can demonstrate some actual progressive thought is going on upstairs.
Michael Thompson is one councillor I could vote for as mayor. We need a pragmatist, not an opportunist. The candidates who are already grabbing for wedge issues disgust me greatly.
This comment has no real substance whatsoever, but how long until we see signs parodying the Jesse James movie, proclaiming “The Assassination of the City of Toronto by the coward Rob Ford”?