{"id":5596,"date":"2009-07-20T13:14:17","date_gmt":"2009-07-20T17:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=5596"},"modified":"2013-01-21T13:14:58","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T18:14:58","slug":"john-lorinc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/07\/20\/john-lorinc\/","title":{"rendered":"JOHN LORINC: Miller’s demise greatly exaggerated"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Don’t you just love a pile-on?<\/p>\n

In a stirring display of bipartisanship, the gotcha right and the jilted left appear to agree that, a month into the strike, the time’s come to dispatch David Miller to that special anaerobic digester reserved for political failures.<\/p>\n

Conservatives, displaying an admirable capacity to simultaneously hold contradictory views, have revised their familiar characterization of Miller as a CUPE doll by saying he now bears responsibility for a strike that is all about holding the line on the city budget, which, it seems, is a policy goal only conservatives may legitimately pursue.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153An abject failure,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d pronounced the new Maclean’s<\/a>, with The Globe’s Marcus Gee recycling the allegation<\/a>. The Star’s Royson James, a lusty Miller critic, feels the mayor should have found a way to prevent the strike<\/a>, but stops short of explaining how he might have accomplished said feat without breaking the bank. The Sun even managed to find evidence of hypocrisy in Miller playing golf at a private club on the weekend<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the progressive end of the spectrum, we can listen to labour leaders invoking the ancient calumny against Bob Rae and then hinting how the rank-and-file, demoralized to a nearly catatonic state, could well stay home for next year’s election campaign.<\/p>\n

In a perplexing rendition of this argument, John Cartwright of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council raised the spectre of a\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153backlash by right-wing and corporate interests<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d [PDF] and reminded the CBC’s Matt Galloway last week how the aggrieved public sector unions sat out the 1995 election — suggesting, weirdly, that they take part of the credit for the victory of the Common Sense Brigade and the misery that ensued.<\/p>\n

From where I sit, Miller has handled this strike with nearly pitch-perfect poise, although this is certainly not a majority view. Early on, he articulated the case for fiscal restraint in a recession without reaching for apocalyptic rhetoric. As someone who’s always been scrupulous about lauding the civil service, he’s applied pressure while resisting the enormous temptation to publicly vilify the unions — a stance that would surely earn him some political points with irritated middle class homeowners. What’s more, the mayor has chosen not to scamper off to the province for help, which suggests a desire to negotiate a deal, albeit a tough one, and then take responsibility for it.<\/p>\n

Then there’s this business of how Torontonians are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sucking it up,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as Maclean’s notes in its breathless cover story this week, making comparisons to the mess in 2002 and the Army of snow shovellers in 1999. But no one finishes the thought: We’re \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sucking it up\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in large measure because the city operationalized a savvy contingency plan. Did Miller have something to do with that? You bet he did — the city manager now reports directly to the mayor, and would have certainly sought approval for the strike strategy.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the unions are pissed because those park dumps, while gross, work reasonably well, which means there’s no calamitous mess to help raise the stakes.<\/p>\n

All that’s left for the union leadership now is to find a face-saving way to accept the city’s public offer<\/a>. My prediction: the workers will be back well before Simcoe Day.<\/p>\n

As for 2010 and beyond, perhaps all those kvetching progressives could ponder how the city will fare under a right-wing mayor (let’s leave the trash talking Mr. Smitherman out of this for now) and a possibly right-wing premier with a rural base.<\/p>\n

Contracting out? Tick. Transit City? Not so much. Sounds good, right? Right\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.<\/p>\n

photo by Rannie Turingan<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don’t you just love a pile-on? In a stirring display of bipartisanship, the gotcha right and the jilted left appear to agree that, a month into the strike, the time’s come to dispatch David Miller to that special anaerobic digester reserved for political failures. Conservatives, displaying an admirable capacity to simultaneously hold contradictory views, haveContinue reading “JOHN LORINC: Miller’s demise greatly exaggerated”<\/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":[3168,309,4678,307,6435,106,12760,10718,425,12758,1030,12451,1899,426,416,2306,3040,12759,405,19,7606],"class_list":["post-5596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-army","tag-bank","tag-bob-rae","tag-cbc","tag-city-manager","tag-city-strike-2009","tag-common-sense-brigade","tag-critic","tag-david-miller","tag-john-cartwright","tag-john-lorinc","tag-marcus-gee","tag-matt-galloway","tag-mayor","tag-pdf","tag-premier","tag-simcoe-day","tag-smitherman","tag-the-star","tag-toronto","tag-york-region-labour-council"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJOHN LORINC: Miller's demise greatly exaggerated - 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\/2009\/07\/20\/john-lorinc\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"JOHN LORINC: Miller's demise greatly exaggerated - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Don’t you just love a pile-on? 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