{"id":56912,"date":"2017-03-28T10:00:57","date_gmt":"2017-03-28T14:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=56912"},"modified":"2017-03-28T10:19:23","modified_gmt":"2017-03-28T14:19:23","slug":"john-tory-serving-platform-doug-ford-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2017\/03\/28\/john-tory-serving-platform-doug-ford-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"John Tory is serving up a platform for Doug Ford 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Say you\u2019re Doug Ford. Say you\u2019re tuning in to Episode 237 of the Scarborough Subway Extension Netflix mini-series.<\/p>\n

Say you\u2019re listening, in your predatory way, to Mayor John Tory, the Scarborough councillors, and the Liberal shills in Kathleen Wynne\u2019s cabinet as they collectively contort themselves into pretzels to justify what will become one of the most expensive burrow holes in the history of civic engineering.<\/p>\n

Say you\u2019re reading \u2014 in that peculiar way the former councillor for Ward 2 liked to read \u2013 the latest staff report that recommends, on top of everything else, the Superdome of municipal bus terminals, with enough bays to harbour the Princess Patricia Light Infantry in case their services are required for the next snow storm.<\/p>\n

Say you\u2019re turning all of these disparate factoids over in your brain. What do you get?<\/p>\n

Easy. You get the top line of an election platform that could take out not only the mayor but, as a kind of signing bonus, a handful of the aforementioned Liberal shills (Exhibit A: Brad Duguid) who stand between Patrick Brown and a Tory redoubt in red Toronto.<\/p>\n

This thought came, and not for the first time, as I listened to the vaguely surreal back-and-forth at the packed town hall last night at Scarborough Village Recreation Centre. There were lots of people, many from the southern Scarborough neighbourhoods Councillor Paul Ainslie represents, some loving his pro-LRT arguments and some cheering on Glenn De Baeremaeker, the Howdy Doody of subway advocates.<\/p>\n

Everyone came armed with their Power Point files and meticulously curated facts from various staff reports and other expert analyses. But when you got past all the policy bafflegab, there was also a sense that everyone has missed a gigantic, shouty point with all this genuflection, which is this:<\/p>\n

That the City\u2019s flagrant inability to come up with a Scarborough subway plan that has even the faintest whiff of common sense plays directly into the hands of someone like Ford, should he still have an appetite for this kind of sport, which, based on some recent sightings, seems increasingly to be the case. (After all, we are living in the age of entitled loudmouths.)<\/p>\n

Can\u2019t you just hear the speech? \u201cMy [insert reverent adjective here] brother Rob, may God bless his soul, would never have let things get this out of control. He would have built subways for the people of Scarborough, and he\u2019d be doing it without this kind of fiscal waste. John just doesn’t get it.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so off Dougie would go, with a barrage of claims that would achieve a kind of rare dualism \u2013 absurd in their contentions, and yet pointed in their criticism of a process that has been allowed to spin out of control because of the partisan venality of figures like De Baeremaeker, Duguid, Tory and Premier Kathleen Wynne.<\/p>\n

Under a Ford administration, we will be assured, the private sector will build this subway not only for far less money, but with more stops. We won\u2019t be waiting around, sucking our thumbs, debating this over and over again and watching the dollars go down the drain.<\/p>\n

‘And you know what folks<\/em>?’ he\u2019ll intone. ‘I\u2019m going to make sure we build subways elsewhere in Scarborough, not just to Scarborough Town Centre. Because this plan for LRTs on Eglinton and Morningside \u2013 they\u2019re going to cause a traffic nightmare<\/em>. It will be a disaster<\/em>, like on St. Clair, just like Rob said.’<\/p>\n

Turning his attention to the de facto<\/em> Mayor of Scarborough, the Rt.-Hon Brad Duguid, Ford will be inspired to see in his chivalrous declaration of loyalty \u2013 \u201cover my dead body,\u201d as Duguid has said of the threat of cancellation \u2013 evidence of the kind of wastefulness that is the specialite du maison<\/em> of Liberals. After all, no truly responsible public servant should ever pony up that kind of rhetorical blank cheque, especially when one is part of a cabinet schlepping around a $330 billion Visa bill.<\/p>\n

Channeling Rob and resurrecting the gravy train leitmotif<\/em>, Doug will tell voters that he\u2019ll be the one who\u2019s going to get tough with the bureaucrats at City Hall and up at the province in a way that hasn\u2019t been done, should have been done, and will be done.<\/p>\n

No more mission creep. No more of this year-over-year price escalation of $1 billion when all that\u2019s happened is that a bunch of over-paid planners had to change the cartridges in their laser printers.<\/p>\n

He\u2019ll do what Robbie did, which is get subways approved and get tough on the trough swillers. He\u2019ll build real subways \u2013 not super-long tunnels — that actually serve more people in more communities, will inspire the business community to invest billions, and make Toronto, ahem, great again.<\/p>\n

The platform, for chrissakes, has already written itself. The two warring camps plod along, both sides transfixed by the brilliance\/ingeniousness\/earthiness of their respective arguments, and oblivious to the political chasm that is opening up beneath everyone\u2019s feet.<\/p>\n

Say you\u2019re Doug Ford….<\/p>\n

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

Say you\u2019re Doug Ford. Say you\u2019re tuning in to Episode 237 of the Scarborough Subway Extension Netflix mini-series. Say you\u2019re listening, in your predatory way, to Mayor John Tory, the Scarborough councillors, and the Liberal shills in Kathleen Wynne\u2019s cabinet as they collectively contort themselves into pretzels to justify what will become one of theContinue reading “John Tory is serving up a platform for Doug Ford 2018”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":56920,"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-56912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-transit"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJohn Tory is serving up a platform for Doug Ford 2018 - 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\/2017\/03\/28\/john-tory-serving-platform-doug-ford-2018\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"John Tory is serving up a platform for Doug Ford 2018 - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Say you\u2019re Doug Ford. Say you\u2019re tuning in to Episode 237 of the Scarborough Subway Extension Netflix mini-series. 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