{"id":27050,"date":"2012-03-05T10:02:28","date_gmt":"2012-03-05T15:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=27050"},"modified":"2012-03-05T11:30:14","modified_gmt":"2012-03-05T16:30:14","slug":"lorinc-council-opposition-needs-to-keep-eye-on-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2012\/03\/05\/lorinc-council-opposition-needs-to-keep-eye-on-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: Council opposition needs to keep eye on prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When 24 councillors, representing the entire political spectrum, voted on February 8 to support Karen Stintz\u2019s motion to block Mayor Rob Ford\u2019s bid to set fire to $2 billion in provincial transit funding, they showed Torontonians what it means to rise above the normal-course political sniping at City Hall.<\/p>\n

Sure, there were lots of residents who saw Stintz as a back-stabber, but the truth is that the mayor didn\u2019t, and doesn\u2019t, have a viable plan to build a subway on Sheppard. Those councillors recognized that the time had come to act like grown-ups and make a financially defensible decision the province could act on.<\/p>\n

By sharp contrast, the ham-fisted ploy to wipe the Ford supporters off the TTC commission<\/a>, which has surfaced in the last few days, looks to me like the mirror-image of the petty politics that cost the TTC chief general manager his job.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the rushed spate of denials that followed Josh Matlow\u2019s bizarre decision to reveal that plan to The Globe and Mail<\/em>, well ahead to today\u2019s council session, further suggests that the Stintz coalition is straining at the seams. All this static now threatens to drown out the more important story that surfaced on Thursday<\/a>, which is that the Fords — and more precisely Doug, with his whacked-out scheme to pay for the thing with fictitious lottery revenue \u2013 won\u2019t tolerate any new levies to finance their suburban subways, thus ensuring they\u2019ll never be built.<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s the bottom line: if the Stintz coalition get down and dirty with the mayor\u2019s team and their shameful approach to council politics, they\u2019re going to lose the moral high ground and play directly into the Fords\u2019 hands.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

With a razor thin majority, I\u2019d argue that the coalition doesn\u2019t need to do too much to botch the March 21 vote on the future of Sheppard, which is to say the future of light rail in the suburbs<\/em>. It is, in short, theirs to lose, and the internal politicking of recent days suggests to me they may well have it in them to screw this up.<\/p>\n

The more specific question is this: if the coalition has the votes to defeat the Sheppard subway fantasy, why is it so important to bounce the Ford crew (Cesar Palacio, Frank DiGiorgio, Norm Kelly, Doug Ford<\/del> Denzil Minnan-Wong and Vincent Crisanti) from the Commission? Why not keep their powder dry until it\u2019s really needed?<\/p>\n

In my view, the power of the Stintz coalition is directly proportional to its capacity to not<\/em> exercise that power except in exceptional circumstances. The less-is-more principle applies here in spades.<\/p>\n

Why? Because the group has no leader with any kind of broad mandate; it is just a faction right now. Yes, Stintz precipitated this dynamic by calling out the mayor\u2019s transit folly, and she was right to do so. But the coalition\u2019s members include three potential mayoral candidates (Adam Vaughan, Shelley Carroll and Stintz, her protestations to the contrary notwithstanding), as well as plenty of partisans who may be thinking about the next provincial election as much as anything else.<\/p>\n

The fact is that Ford is the mayor, and will be until 2014. He won by a solid margin in an election with a historically large turnout; real political authority stems from that accomplishment. How he uses his power is another matter, and he\u2019ll be judged on his record two-and-a-half years hence. But that\u2019s the way it should be.<\/p>\n

If the coalition is trying to figure out its role going forward, I\u2019d suggest they think about the Canadian Senate, which exercises its constitutional authority to override the House of Commons only in highly challenging situations.<\/p>\n

The Stintz group coalesced because councillors of all political hue recognized that the mayor and his supporters were poised to make a truly historic mistake. For that reason, the coalition opted to release the emergency brakes.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t follow that they now get to drive the train.<\/p>\n

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the originally posted version of this column Doug Ford was wrongly identified as a transit commissioner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When 24 councillors, representing the entire political spectrum, voted on February 8 to support Karen Stintz\u2019s motion to block Mayor Rob Ford\u2019s bid to set fire to $2 billion in provincial transit funding, they showed Torontonians what it means to rise above the normal-course political sniping at City Hall. Sure, there were lots of residentsContinue reading “LORINC: Council opposition needs to keep eye on prize”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1050,19464,246,14697,22100,19461,19460,14213,6020,14860,1969,426,4067,22085,227,1276,314,19463,19462,2474,391,16526],"class_list":["post-27050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-adam-vaughan","tag-canadian-senate","tag-cesar-palacio","tag-doug-ford","tag-editor","tag-ford-crew","tag-ford-denzil-minnan-wong","tag-frank-digiorgio","tag-house-of-commons","tag-josh-matlow","tag-karen-stintz","tag-mayor","tag-norm-kelly","tag-politics","tag-rob-ford","tag-shelley-carroll","tag-the-globe-and-mail","tag-transit-commissioner","tag-ttc-chief-general-manager","tag-ttc-commission","tag-usd","tag-vincent-crisanti"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLORINC: Council opposition needs to keep eye on prize - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2012\/03\/05\/lorinc-council-opposition-needs-to-keep-eye-on-prize\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LORINC: Council opposition needs to keep eye on prize - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When 24 councillors, representing the entire political spectrum, voted on February 8 to support Karen Stintz\u2019s motion to block Mayor Rob Ford\u2019s bid to set fire to $2 billion in provincial transit funding, they showed Torontonians what it means to rise above the normal-course political sniping at City Hall. 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