{"id":45597,"date":"2013-09-09T08:30:20","date_gmt":"2013-09-09T12:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=45597"},"modified":"2013-09-08T21:15:24","modified_gmt":"2013-09-09T01:15:24","slug":"wynne-offers-murray-scarborough-subway-punching-bag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2013\/09\/09\/wynne-offers-murray-scarborough-subway-punching-bag\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: Wynne offers up Murray as Scarborough subway punching bag"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

If the latest skirmish over the Scarborough subway had a leitmotif, it was that of the minister as loose cannon.<\/p>\n

\u201cOntario\u2019s transportation minister [Glen Murray],\u201d opined the National Post\u2019s Kelly McParland<\/a>, \u201cappears to have drunk deeply from the well of Fordian politics, and is doing his best to emulate \u2014 if not surpass \u2014 the mayor in the halls of bunglehood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wondering who writes his \u201cgobbledygook,\u201d The Sun\u2019s Sue-Ann Levy dismissed Murray<\/a> as a \u201ccaricature of a caricature.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Globe and Mail\u2019s Marcus Gee, describing last week\u2019s developments as the moment when tragedy turns to farce<\/a>, condemned the minister\u2019s \u201cback of the napkin\u201d proposal as \u201cthe latest in a dizzying series of plans and counter-plans, feuds and food fights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rounding out this foursome, The Star\u2019s editorial board thundered on Friday<\/a> that, \u201cOntario Transportation Minister Glen Murray\u2019s latest announcement would be laughable if it weren\u2019t such bad public policy. That hasn\u2019t stopped him from shamelessly trumpeting his ill-conceived plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not often that all four broadsheets \u2014 not to mention the alt-weeklys, the bloggers and the #topoli twitteristas \u2014 are so ideologically aligned on an issue.<\/p>\n

But with all due respect to my colleagues, the Murray-as-freelance-villain narrative is a convenient fiction deliberately perpetrated by the Liberals. Setting aside the intemperate quotables, Murray, from where I sit, is faithfully serving his allegedly level-headed premier, without whose approval none of this would be taking place.<\/p>\n

When I checked Factiva over the weekend, it showed that Wynne had garnered over 80 more print\/online media mentions than Murray mustered between Wednesday (the day of the announcement) and Sunday (330 to 246, respectively). But the premier\u2019s name appeared alongside Murray\u2019s in only 50 of those articles (i.e., less than one in six) \u2013 compelling proof that she\u2019s succeeded in keeping her distance from this political hand grenade.<\/p>\n

Yet he\u2019s clearly her cabinet\u2019s designated flack catcher, and no one should be lulled into believing that Murray\u2019s actions on this file are anything but Wynne-stamped government policy.<\/p>\n

Before I get to the issue of what this tactic says about Wynne, let me note that many premiers and prime ministers have an enforcer\/loud-mouth on the front bench to soak up the political attention that the leader would prefer to avoid.<\/p>\n

Brian Mulroney had John Crosbie. Stephen Harper uses John Baird or the recently departed Vic Toews. Jean Chretien relied on Paul Martin to break all that harsh fiscal news. And lest we forget, Murray\u2019s predecessor in Toronto Centre, George Smitherman, played that exact role for Dalton McGuinty, who never liked to reveal the dirt beneath his fingernails.<\/p>\n

If the analogy holds, it would be fair to say that the Liberals have someone in cabinet who has succeeded in making us feel nostalgic about Furious George. But the parallels are undeniable: Smitherman, notoriously, liked to bang on his officials heads and appeared to be politically fearless in taking on powerful vested interests (namely, the hospital sector, the drug companies, and the nuclear industry).<\/p>\n

But no one wondered whether Smitherman was doing anything but the premier\u2019s bidding. He was the government, not some crazy-ass side-show.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no different with Murray, even if he has succeeded in making Smitherman look like a zen-master. There\u2019s no sunlight between Murray and Wynne, and suggestions to the contrary provide Wynne with precisely the sort of political cover she does not deserve at this moment.<\/p>\n

Wynne, after all, came into office promising a more conciliatory form of government than McGuinty practiced at the end. She\u2019s spent her career espousing sober, consultative politics, as opposed to the my-way-or-the-subway form. In my mind, she was a politician who listened to experts (e.g., during her long stint as education minister) inside and outside government, and respected processes.<\/p>\n

And, lest anyone forget, Wynne\u2019s public career really began during the Citizen For Local Democracy pep rallies in the Metropolitan United Church in 1997, when she and John Sewell fought the good fight to oppose the anti-Toronto unilateralism of the Mike Harris Tories.<\/p>\n

In fact, I\u2019ve always seen Wynne as a politician who actually believed that local government entities \u2013 school boards, municipalities, etc. \u2013 should receive more respect and autonomy from high-handed provincial regimes. (Murray, as mayor of Winnipeg, expended a lot of breath on that very cause about a dozen years ago.)<\/p>\n

That Wynne, I regret to say, has vanished stage right \u2014 persuaded by whomever she\u2019s currently listening to that it makes more sense, in terms of retail politics, to unleash an enforcer as a way of protecting Liberal seats in Scarborough.<\/p>\n

Gone, too, is her brave leadership talk about revenue tools and a fix for a generation and any meaningful commitment to designing a rational inter-governmental approval process for moving ahead with transit expansion in the GTA.<\/p>\n

But we shouldn\u2019t be surprised. Wynne has spent much of her time in the premier\u2019s office meticulously trying to scalpel her fingerprints off the record of the latter days of the McGuinty regime. As I read the storyline, she\u2019s emerged as the sort of leader who prefers to duck out of the limelight when things get hot and heavy.<\/p>\n

In reality, the loose cannon in this subway debacle is Kathleen Wynne, who authorized a senior cabinet minister to detonate an intricately negotiated agreement (between the City, the TTC and Metrolinx) in pursuit of short-term political gain. Any other reading of last week\u2019s Punch and Judy show is simply naive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If the latest skirmish over the Scarborough subway had a leitmotif, it was that of the minister as loose cannon. \u201cOntario\u2019s transportation minister [Glen Murray],\u201d opined the National Post\u2019s Kelly McParland, \u201cappears to have drunk deeply from the well of Fordian politics, and is doing his best to emulate \u2014 if not surpass \u2014 theContinue reading “LORINC: Wynne offers up Murray as Scarborough subway punching bag”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":45602,"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":[2,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-transit"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLORINC: Wynne offers up Murray as Scarborough subway punching bag - 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