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As I watch the fifty-car-pile-up that is Rob Ford\u2019s mayoralty, I sometimes find myself wondering, what would Mel Lastman have done in the same circumstances?<\/p>\n
Without making too much of the comparison, there have always been a few striking parallels between Lastman and Ford. Both are rich, buffoon-ish conservatives who had\/have an innate sense of how to appeal to the average suburban voter. Neither were\/are articulate or the least bit interested in policy. And they both had\/have a tendency to set themselves ablaze on a regular basis.<\/p>\n
Lastman, remember, got himself into all sorts of hot water when he shook hands with a bunch of Hell\u2019s Angels, insinuated the city\u2019s restaurants were full of \u201crat shit\u201d and, most famous of all, fretted out loud about being boiled alive by cannibals while on a trip to Africa to promote the city\u2019s Olympic bid. Of course, no one ever nabbed him for smoking crack. He did, however, have a real knack for generating an immense amount of civic embarrassment and global headlines.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s not a shred of doubt in my mind that if Mel, a first class huckster with a hound-dog\u2019s nose for a political deal, had been handed the casino file, Toronto would be getting a casino at Woodbine, starting today.<\/p>\n
For some time, some variation on the Woodbine option \u2014 a motion to add 1,500 slots and 150 gaming tables was defeated yesterday by 24 to 20 \u2014 has looked to me like a classic compromise position in an outwardly polarized debate.<\/p>\n
The pro-casino side would get the big development project, the jobs (albeit well south of the fictitious figures tossed around by the casino lobbyists), and extra revenue to the City. Well short of a $100 million, which was Ford\u2019s line in the sand, but not chump change, either.<\/p>\n
The province, in turn, would salvage the capstone feature of Ontario Lottery and Gaming\u2019s modernization strategy. As for the No Casino crowd, that coalition always represented a mix of people opposed to a downtown site per se and those against casinos on principle. Woodbine remains the out-of-sight\/out-of-mind solution that has lots of parking and doesn\u2019t try to shoe-horn a garish mega-project into a tight urban spot.<\/p>\n
Yes, Mike Layton and the anti-gambling councillors are correct in asserting that the addiction issues are serious. But they never fully explained why a casino, meant mainly to catch GTA residents who leave the region to play black jack, represents a quantum expansion of a social ill. We already gamble, a lot, except we tend to do it at the other end of a 90-minute drive to Rama or Casino Niagara.<\/p>\n
Mel, moreover, could have effortlessly triangulated a Woodbine deal on council. He\u2019d have recognized the middle ground, identified swing votes (you know who you are) and the paid the appropriate price for their support.<\/p>\n
So while the No Casino faction today can claim total victory, it\u2019s important also to enumerate what\u2019s been lost: a Woodbine casino could have boosted employment in a distant part of the city, at least minimally, that could desperately use the jobs and the construction activity and whatever spin-offs materialize from the whole affair.<\/p>\n
Now, let\u2019s come back to that 24-20 vote on a proposal to merely expand Woodbine, which was backed by City staff. It\u2019s fair to say that Ford \u2014 who is frustratingly incapable of recognizing the political gains to be had in compromising \u2014 had lost this whole fight long before the Toronto Star\/Gawker<\/em> crack allegations surfaced. But our scandal-besieged mayor, beetling around City Hall yesterday in a desperate bid to out-run the vultures in the press corps, made sure he had no ability to gather sufficient votes to win either the full Woodbine casino option or even the more modest plan to expand the existing facility.<\/p>\n No skin off the downtown\u2019s back, but this loss does deliver a kick to the shins of the northern reaches of Etobicoke and North York \u2014 the beating heart of Ford Nation. So in a more specific way than at any other point in his mayoralty, Ford \u2014 the former councillor for Woodbine in Ward 2 \u2014 failed to bring home any bacon for the base of his base. As any strategist will tell you, that\u2019s a failure from which there can be no recovery.<\/p>\n