Canadian Cincinnatus

The Left Strikes Back in Toronto

It didn't take long for the left to start striking back in Toronto against the popularly elected right wing mayor, Rob Ford.

First, the Toronto Public Library stated in a widely publicized press release that they'd have to close the city hall branch of the library if Ford forced them to accept a budget cut of 2%.  This is a typical bureaucratic response to cut backs.  Don't cut back on waste, unnecessary overtime or excess staff.  Cut back on something very public, the meaner the better, and blame the government.

The TTC struck next, hiring over forty new managers for everything from new customer service managers (yeah, like that's going to help) to "track walkers" for the subway to hunt out things to repair.  Yet, the TTC wanted a fare increase and wanted to cut back on bus schedules.  The Toronto Star was livid.  Mean old Ford.  And when Ford said no to the TTC, the Star slyly suggested it was all a plot by Ford, who must've tricked TTC officials into their fare hike and cut back announcement so that Ford could look good when he reversed it.  Funny, the Star spent most of the election portraying Ford as barely able to add.

The truth of course is that these bureaucrats and the Toronto Star are ruthlessly doing everything they can to sabotage Ford's agenda.  The bureaucrats are all Millerites who hate Ford and will need to be replaced if anything is to work.

Here's what I would do if I were Rob Ford: I'd say to the TTC fair enough.  If you feel it's not worth it to run a bus up and down Davenport Road after10 pm or on Sundays and holidays because there are rarely more than two passengers on the bus, then lets contract the route to a private company--the smaller the better.  In fact, why not just run a 15 passenger van up and down the street late at night?

Of course the unions will have a fit at the thought that even one TTC route goes out to competition, especially lean competition, maybe even run by just a guy with a van and a garage.

Ford won't even have to follow through on this threat.  TTC management and the Amalgamated Transit Workers Union will suddenly find all kinds of savings that will allow for a lower budget and maintenance of under-used routes--anything to prevent even the slightest crack in the TTC monopoly on public transit in Toronto.

As for the library: Aren't e-books all the rage these days?  Maybe it's time for the library to improve its pathetic and technically flawed attempts at e-book loans.  I'm not suggesting that we close branches and replace them with e-books.  I just want the unions to be uncomfortable, to worry about new technology, to feel like maybe it's better to make concessions than face major changes.

The public service unions proved to be intractable under Bob Rae's Ontario NDP, and Miller's Toronto, but those two men owed the unions and everybody on both sides knew it.  Ford owes the unions nothing and knows he will get zero support from them in the next election no matter what he does.  That's why they fear him.  That's why they'll deal.

Mike Downtown

Who is the Strong Mayor Now?

"Unintended consequences" has become a buzz phrase lately, mostly used by left wing latte sippers.  It's an indication of a shift in power from left to right over the last few months, and Toronto's election of true conservative Rob Ford is the most dramatic example.

Four years ago David Miller won his second term with unprecidented powers, bestowed upon him by Ontario's libreral premier, Dalton McGuinty, who felt Toronto's mayor needed to be a "strong mayor," with powers like the mayor of New York, the power to push through a socialist (oops, I mean "progessive") agenda without needing the support of right wing councillors.

I warned friends, especially socialist friends, about the danger here: what if a right wing mayor were elected?  Would they be happy then?  I was no fan of Miller, and I was trying to get them to understand how I felt about the City of Toronto Act and Miller's new powers, which allowed him to have an executive council of his socialist buddies, limit debate on the budget and shut right wing councillors out of city government, giving key positions only to his loyalists.

My socialist friends scoffed.  David Miller was going to be mayor for years, at least until he annoited a successor.  No right winger could ever win Toronto.

In their defense, I envisioned Doug Holiday, Case Oates or maybe Denzil Minnan-wong coming to power.  Even I didn't see that the left's arch-nemisis, favorite council punching bag, and the man endlessly ridiculed by the Toronto Star could ever come to power.

But now Rob Ford is the strong mayor with power that McGuinty and the socialists unwittingly endowed him with.  He has already shut out the downtown socialist from his executive, and while the left wing councilors point out that Rob Ford is only one vote on council, they are quietly cringing that they gave him the power to corall many votes without the need to compromise.  The unintended consequences of the City of Toronto Act make it clear that it is a mistake to increase the power of government to support a particular ideology.  Governments must be contained and constrained.

I'm delighted about the election and Rob Ford's strong mayor powers, of course.  Rob will be able to fundamentally change the way the city works, and I'm looking forward to that.  But I'd still like to see the end of the City of Toronto Act, because I prefer it when the mayor has to build a consensus, something Miller always talked about but never bothered to achieve.

Unlike my socialist friends four years ago, I can see that a pendulum swings.  Rob Ford has more staying power than David Miller, of that I'm sure, but stuff happens.  One day, unexpectedly, a socialist mayor will be voted in, probably disguising himself as a centrist.  I don't want him to be a strong mayor.  I want him to have to include the right wing councillors.

But for now: Go, Rob, Go!

Mike Downtown

Toronto's Year of Living Financially Dangerously

Mayor David Miller set himself free when he announced that he wouldn't run for mayor again, free to do anything he wants with Toronto without trivial concerns like voter anger.  Thanks to the "strong mayor" powers McGuinty granted his buddy Miller, that means there's a lot of potential for damage.

Miller has started by issuing 30 year debentures for his capital spending plans.  That means I might not live to see Toronto's new debt paid off, and I'm in my forties.  He's also committed Toronto to contracts for TTC streetcar right-of-ways (AKA car blockers) in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and new streetcars in the billions.

Toronto's next mayor will find his hands tied, and the city's bank account way overdrawn.

But it gets worse: the Millerites are now talking about a City of Toronto sales tax!

The timing is stunning.  The province's manufacturing industry has taken a major body blow from the recession, McGuinty's HST is about to drive up the cost of fuel, natural gas, heating oil, electricity and numerous other essentials by 8%, and Miller figures this is a good time to tack on more!  I thought everyone wanted to get the economy moving and consumers spending?

But I bet this isn't the end.  I foresee road tolls suddenly coming back up for discussion before April 2010.

The next mayor of Toronto will have to be a truly strong mayor, and not because the province grants him/her that power, but because they come by it naturally.  The next mayor will have to cancel contracts for bike lanes and streetcar right-of-ways.  All road construction must only be essential maintenance, not needless narrowing to constrict cars, like the narrowing of Jarvis and Bloor.  Speed bumps will need to be dropped from the plan.

Will these decisions be easy or popular?  Easy: no.  The greens will scream and protest.  Popular: if the new mayor is clear and strong, voters will surprise everyone, as they did when they elected Mike Harris to a second term.

My vote was for Karen Stintz, but she has dropped out.  So the question for the Right: take the easy way out and hope John Tory doesn't blow it, or find a better leader?

My hope is that either Denzil Minnan Wong or Case Ootes jump into the fray, but not both.

Toronto needs a strong mayor.

Mike Downtown

The Real Reason Toronto's Mayor Quit

Ontario Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty's massive deficit.

Yes, those two men have gone hand in hand for the last seven years, the best of friends.  The City of Toronto act that McGuinty shoved through could have been called the "Everything David Miller Wants Act" and led to many new taxes for Toronto, including the $60 per year vehicle tax and the Land Transfer Tax.

I even wondered if it was quid pro quo when David Miller chose to resign his NDP party membership before the last provincial election and refused to support NDP leader Howard Hampton, despite the fact that his platform was designed to give Toronto absolutely everything that a lefty politician could desire.

But now that friendship, while still strong, has reached a limit.  Dalton is out of money.  The province of Ontario posted a massive $24 billion dollar deficit, double the bad old days of Bob Rae's provincial NDP government.  The province is already spending 45 billion more per year than when McGuinty took office, so there is absolutely no wiggle room left.

Since Toronto depended on a $400 million dollar hand out from the province last year to balance its budget, as well as raiding the LAST of the reserve fund for another $20 million, it all adds up to a tax blood bath at city hall next spring.

The budget chief is already asking for 5% cuts across the board on THIS year's budget. Yes, the same budget that approved 1300 new hires a scant six months ago.  The Millerites have amazingly blamed the recession, as if they didn't notice the financial crisis last fall, a full year ago, until now.

Miller probably got all the bad news in September: he lost his fund-raiser (who was unhappy with Miller's performance over the strike), he lost the support of the unions, again because of the strike, his popularity plummeted over the summer (you guessed it), and council had called for an inquiry into when Miller knew about the $200 million dollar error in liability of the sick days, and whether he withheld this critical information from council before they voted on the union's contract after a strike that was all about sick days.

That's a lot of heat.

But I'm guessing the nail in the coffin was a quiet word from Dalton that there would be no money for Toronto's budget next year.  In fact, it's amazing how all the left-wing councillors are suddenly discussing cuts and none are loudly calling on the province to bail them out.  It's because they already know the answer.

David Miller has chosen to leave while he is still the progressive mayor, the green mayor, and not the mayor who will bring about the most punishing tax increases the city has ever seen.

Instead of facing the music on election day a year from now, he has chosen an easier path: to take over as CEO of Invest Toronto, a post vacated when former liberal attorney-general Michael Bryant was charged in the death of a bike courier.

Indeed, maybe that was the final incentive, a chance road rage argument that turned the course of local history.  Whatever the case, Miller doesn't need to be mayor of Toronto anymore.  He's already got another fashionable job, and if a left-wing candidate is elected mayor next year, I bet Miller gets to keep that job.

Either way, Mr. Miller will land on his feet.

Toronto, however, will have to live with the hangover of his party.

Mike Downtown

Toronto Mayor David Miller’s latest crackdown on law-abiding citizens

The police program with the Orwellian-sounding name, Project Safe City, was announced on Wednesday by David Miller’s sycophantic police chief Bill Blair (“Smithers, unleash the hounds”). Who does it target? Law abiding citizens. Who did you think it would target, armed gangsters? Come on, get serious.

No, the target is people whose firearm Possession and Acquisition License (PAL’s) or Possession Only License (POL’s) have expired but who still have guns registered to them. What kind of people fall into this category? Well, seniors for one. People with a few guns that they had from years ago and who dutifully registered them when it was required of them and who have now become old and forgetful. Or other people who want a gun or two but aren’t so enthusiastic about the shooting sports that they keep up with all the paperwork that the firearms bureaucracy heaps on them. The irony is that if these people had ignored the government and never registered their guns when the Liberal government first demanded they do so, they could breath easy today for there would be no way for the police to know that they are gun owners. That will teach you to obey the law!

A third category is people who are on top of their legal duty, who did realize that their PAL will expire shortly and who therefore did send in their PAL renewal before the expiry date, but who unfortunately haven’t received their new PAL in the mail yet because it sometimes takes 9 months or more for the government to process it. And while there is no legal onus on the CFC to do basic paperwork in a reasonable time, there is a legal onus on gun owners to maintain a valid PAL at all times. In other words, the Toronto police is targeting people simply because the federal government isn’t doing its job. If this situation does not offend you as a Canadian citizen, then you have given me all the information I need to assess your moral state.

This brings to mind an anecdote from Miller’s last campaign against people who obey the law – closing down gun clubs that resided on City of Toronto property. One such club was located at the Mid-Scarborough Community Center. Across the hall from the range was a basketball court that was often used by local ‘youth’s’. Over the years there had been a number of incidents involving ‘gunplay’ in the parking lot. The work of gun club members? No, participants of the basketball league or their hangers on. Yet nobody raised a peep about the obvious gang presence at these games. As far as I know, they’re still there, occasional gunplay and all. And the gun club that generated no criminal activity whatsoever? Vilified for the crimes they never committed and shut down. And you wonder why Miller can’t get a grip on the city’s crime.

Does David Miller have any idea that his programs are targeting people who don’t fit a criminal profile, even remotely? While I think Miller’s understanding of public policy is low, I don’t believe even he is this dumb. A cynic might assume he is deliberately criminalizing his political opponents. And while I think it is safe to say that gun owners feel no love for his blondeness, I nevertheless think it is more basic than that. I think it is the result of a gut-level distaste experienced by elite gentry liberals like him when they encounter people who don’t share their political and aesthetic tastes: people who drive SUV’s rather than vintage bicycles; people who prefer a suburban house over a downtown ‘loft’; and people who’d rather have a box of Timbits than a glass of Perrier at a Yorkville bistro. While urban elites like to view themselves as tolerant and open-minded, their tolerance for diversity ends when they find somebody who doesn’t think like them or like the things they like. For Miller, Project Safe City is not about crime. He knows it can’t do anything about that.

Project Safe City – as well as Miller’s war on the automobile and urban sprawl - is about the people he is prejudiced against.

Toronto: City of Spiders and Flies

Toronto's garbage strike was very different depending on where you lived.  In Etobicoke, voters still had garbage collection thanks to private contractors.  In low-density bucolic suburbs like Scarborough and North York, where people have garages and wide lawns, the stench was minimal. 

But in high-density downtown, where I live, the strike was up-close and personal.  Sometimes the smell from the temporary dump sites could make one gag and roll up the car windows; several evenings the scent of burning garbage wafted through the neighborhoods, as some more independent citizens took incineration into their own backyards.

But worst were (and still are) the spiders and flies.  It's a record year for both downtown, especially fruit flies, thanks to plentiful rot to eat.

Now, as I slash through the spider webs around my back porch and wave the fruit flies away from my green bin, I'm left to wonder what this strike was all about.

At the beginning I went way out on a limb and predicted on this blog that it would be short, damn short.  By the third day I felt that limb snap under me, and I spent a few moments hanging in mid-air like the wily coyote before I metaphorically fell down an impossibly deep canyon.

What went wrong?  Why did Mayor David Miller stab his union buddies in the back for five weeks before completely caving into them?  What possible political capital could this earn?

What ever his reasoning, it was the biggest miscalculation in a career that has had very few errors.  His popularity plummeted when he promised to punish people who dumped garbage outside transfer station fences when the union wouldn't let them easily cross the picket lines.

Perhaps my error was assuming that Miller was very smart, and I admit I've always pictured him as a spider spinning web after web with city hall at the centre.

The flies were the right wing councillors like Rob Ford, who can't help but say what's on his mind and damn the political correctness.  He gets caught and held up to ridicule time and again, even getting censured for not spending his $50,000 office expense budget.

But now I wonder if Miller has been more lucky than smart.

He made ridiculous promises during the strike that he couldn't keep, and he grossly exaggerated when he stated that the sick bank had been "eliminated."  Hey, if a city employee who has been working there for one year can continue to bank 18 sick days per year for the next thirty years then it has not been eliminated for our generation.

Now perhaps he hopes that by saying the sick bank has been "eliminated" often enough that voters will only hear that sound bite and not look too closely at the actual deal, but if so he's mistaken this time.  Every paper, including the Miller-friendly Toronto Star, brought up the fact over and over again that the sick bank isn't really "eliminated."

Miller is still a political juggernaut in Toronto, and the unions will back him in the next election because he's still their mayor, although their ardor may have waned.

He can be sure they won't vote for a right wing candidate, but where Miller may have miscalculated again is that disgruntled union members can chose to unofficially boycott an election.  Maybe some garbage collectors will spend the voting time given to them on election day having a beer at the local pub instead.  Meanwhile, voters who remember the humiliation of the strike could vote for change.

I make no predictions this time, but now I think of Miller more as a hapless fly than a spider, and if the right person spins a web at the right time, Miller could find himself snared and devoured.  I now have hope that change could come to Toronto. 

Mike Downtown

David Miller’s conflict of interest

Toronto’s five-week-old garbage strike is over and it seems that the unions have gotten 90% of what they wanted. The only real substantive concession they made is that new hires will not be able to collect and bank 18 sick days a year that they are able to cash in upon retirement. This is a long-term savings to the city, but because all present employees will continue to be able to collect sick days there will be little immediate or midterm cost savings.

Unfortunately this is what happens when a politician, who is as heavily dependent on union money and volunteers as Miller, leads the government’s side of the negotiations. That is why this strike was so bad for him. David Miller was caught on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand he can’t afford to piss off the voter, on the other he needs the unions for his reelection campaign. But this situation is bad for the city too because Toronto was not being represented during the strike by somebody who could zealously and single-mindedly represent the city’s interest with a clean conscience.

Now as long as it is legal for mayoral candidates to accept contributions and volunteers from city workers unions there is nothing illegal about any of this. Therefore, the solution to this problem does not reside in the courts but rather at the ballot box. So if you are a Toronto resident, make sure that on November 2010 you go out and vote for whomever is most likely to defeat Miller.

Obama and David Miller are destructive geniuses, not idiots

When one considers all the misbegotten things that Obama has done in the past 6 month’s - passing the $787 billion porkulus bill, passing the $410 billion omnibus spending bill, getting the Fed to buy Treasury Bills en masse (which is, in effect, printing money), needlessly offending allies, wooing enemies like Ahmadinejad while ignoring their democracy loving opposition, and now cap-and-trade (a huge energy tax, plus corporate welfare) and comprehensive health care reform (a massive entitlement introduced at a time when the US is dead broke) - one is tempted to conclude that he is an idiot.

But one would be wrong. If Obama were merely incompetent, he wouldn’t be systematically pursuing his goals. Instead, he would be flailing about, reacting to events, behaving like someone totally out of his depths. In short, he would be acting like Stephane Dion or John Tory. But whatever you think of Obama’s policies (and I have the gravest reservations about them), he is not doing that. He is proactively and deliberately working towards farsighted goals. This is normally a mark of high statecraft. Unfortunately, there is just one wee, itsy bitsy problem: the principles guiding him are completely rotten and will lead to disaster on many fronts. This is why he is a destructive genius.

Toronto’s mayor David Miller is in the same league. Since 2003 he has done innumerable stupid things but he has never just sputtered about, captive to events. He has pursued his dumb agenda with the same far-sighted determination and skill that Obama has shown.

Take one example coming up: the light-rail network Miller wants to set up across the city. To realize how truly bad this plan is, one needs to go to St Clair Ave West to see the destructive effects that the streetcar right-of-way has had on the local community. For one thing, there is nothing rapid about it. Light rail cars are only just fancy, expensive streetcars, no faster than busses but just as inflexible to the demands of other road traffic – which is its only real attraction to Miller. The streetcar right-of-way that Miller shoved down the throats of local residents who hate the thing is a nightmare for traffic, choking off car traffic along St. Clair West. This is Miller’s real objective. He hates cars and his light rail network is his plan to ratchet up traffic jams by several orders of magnitude. He thinks that if he makes Toronto’s traffic bad enough, people will have no choice but take his ‘light rail’ white elephants. Oh, and the best part, it will cost the city and the province billions to build.

Toronto’s own destructive genius at work.

 

Why no one wants the province to legislate an end to Toronto’s garbage strike except David Miller

Last week, the new leader of the Ontario PC Party came out against back-to-work legislation for Toronto’s two week old garbage strike. My first instinct was to think: great, he’s wimping out, just like John Tory. Then I realized, no, he’s actually making the smart play.

David Miller would like nothing better than for others to legislate to end the strike (or to demand such action). Miller’s currently on the horns of a dilemma because of his conflict-of-interest situation with municipal unions. On the one hand, the citizens of Toronto are pissed at the pampered garbage collectors and their unbelievable sick leave benefits. On the other hand, he is completely dependent on these same unions for his re-election campaign. If he asks Queen’s Park to legislate them back, all the union support he has enjoyed in past elections will vapourize in 2010. The only good way out of this situation for him is if somebody else plays the heavy with the union.

I think Hudak realizes this and is deliberately staying out of the way while his enemy self-destructs (and make no mistake about it, Miller is an enemy).

In related news, yesterday Premier Dalton McGuinty said that he is also in no hurry to legislate strikers back to work. I guess he’s had also enough of Miller, in this case his constant carping for provincial money. Forcing David Miller to come grovelling to Queen’s Park begging for back-to-work legislation would certainly put an end to those demands – after November, 2010.

It couldn’t happen to a nicer socialist demagogue.

Mayor David Miller is behaving obnoxiously during Toronto's Garbage strike

So what else is new?

Let’s take a look at Miller’s contempt for ordinary Torontonians as it manifested itself this week:

At the beginning of the week, the finger wagging from city hall chastized the people against dump garbage illegally. Granted the city has a responsibility to keep the city clean but circumstances have painted householders into a corner. They have to take their garbage somewhere but if they take it to the transfer station, they will be hectored and bossed around by a bunch of striking city workers, forced to wait needlessly in long line-ups, and ordered, again completely needlessly, to walk their garbage in past the picket lines, when the strikers decide to let them past. Where is the empathy?

And top it off, David Miller instructed us to obey the picket captains while we are at the transfer station. Say what! The citizens are told by the mayor they elected to take orders from people who are currently refusing to work? What kind of nonsense is this? Earth to David Miller: the mayor listens to city residents, city workers listen to the mayor, and nobody has to listen to strikers because they are currently unemployed.

What people need is a realistic option, an alternate place where they can take their garbage. I know, I know, the city is finally setting up temporary dumpsites. But at the beginning of the week, this option wasn’t being discussed. Instead of threatening people with bylaws infractions, why didn’t Miller reassure us that help in the form of alternate dumpsites is on the way, so don’t panic and dump garbage where it doesn’t belong. Same message, different tone, indicating a different mindset. If the mayor phrased his message that way he would have indicated to us that he viewed his job as that of providing the best services at the lowest tax rate possible. Instead, both the unions and the mayor are signalling their arrogance - that they think we are dependent on them instead of the other way around. This is what a government that gets too big sounds like.