Canadian Cincinnatus

Rob Ford and Donald Trump

Yesterday, former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford passed away at age 46 from a rare form of cancer.

Superficially, it is easy to equate Rob Ford with Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump, as they are much alike on the surface. Both were born well off, both are populist politicians with a strong working class appeal, and both have a proven ability to dominate the media. Both also have the same exquisite taste in enemies. The elites of Toronto hated Rob Ford with the same intensity that the Republican and Democrat elites hate Donald Trump.

It is less known that both rose politically with the same issue – immigration. While Donald Trump famously wants to build a wall along the Mexico border, the role that immigration in Rob Ford’s career is less well known. In the final debate before the 2010 mayoral election, a reporter asked Ford a gotcha question. Recently a boatload of illegal immigrants had landed on the shores of British Columbia. Aware that Ford’s support was centered on Toronto’s multicultural suburbs, he asked Ford if he was in favour of housing those refugees in Toronto. Ford replied, “absolutely not!” Until that point, he and his Liberal challenger, George Smitherman, had been neck-and-neck in the polls. On election night, Ford won in a landslide, absolutely dominating the multicultural suburbs.

This contradiction in Ford’s appeal is encapsulated by this anecdote by National Post reporter Chris Selley:

“Not by design, I wound up moderating the first mayoral debate after Ford came out of rehab. As I pulled into the parking lot, there was a mostly black group of Ford supporters trading abuse with a mostly white group of protesters insisting Ford was horribly racist against black people.”

Donald Trump has that same contradictory appeal, strongly nationalistic while garnering support from the same minorities that he is supposedly racist against.

Nevertheless, I contend that Ford and Trump are really opposites. The first difference between the two men lies in their faults. With Ford, all of his failings were personal. Primarily, Rob Ford had a serious drug and alcohol problem that wrecked his mayoralty. In contrast, Donald Trump is a teetotaller.

Trump has faults as well, but a lot of them are public. Take his relationship with the political establishment. While Trump plays the role of the outsider, he has been gaming the political system his entire life, donating to every Democrat and establishment Republican in sight. Not Rob Ford. Ford was never part of Toronto’s political establishment. All throughout his three terms on City Council, he was always the maverick outsider, often casting the lone dissenting vote. Even his father, Doug Ford Sr., was an outsider. He was a Member of the Provincial Parliament (MPP) in Mike Harris’s Progressive Conservative government during the Common Sense Revolution days. It seems that bucking the establishment was in Rob Ford’s genes. In contrast, Donald Trump is a pay-to-play real estate developer born to a pay-to-play real estate developer.

Take also political consistency. Today Trump is a conservative champion but in the not-so-distant past, Trump held left-wing positions on a whole panoply of issues (some of which are 180° opposite of those he champions today). For instance, he was for illegal aliens before he was against them. Trump comes across as little more than an unprincipled opportunist.

In contrast, Ford was so consistent in his message that one of the criticisms levelled at him was that that he sounded like a broken record. He repeated his election slogans, “stop the gravy train” and “respect the taxpayers” endlessly. But if consistency is any guide, he meant it. As a Councillor, many of those lonely nay votes were against unnecessary spending and he was actually censored by Council because he spent zero money on his Council office (which he funded out of his own pocket).

As Mayor, he was driven by two goals: better services, and less spending. He fought relentlessly to keep municipal taxes low. To save money, he privatized half of Toronto’s garbage collection and weakened the ‘jobs for life’ provision that the previous mayor had placed in the union contract. To ensure critical services would not be disrupted, he declared the transit commission and the paramedics an essential service so they couldn’t go on strike. Most important of all, he championed subways against the neighbourhood-killing streetcar right-of-ways that his predecessor fetishized over. His crusade only stopped when City Council stripped him of his mayoral powers after his crack scandal surfaced. Powerless to stop it any more, the gravy train started moving again. Unlike Donald Trump, no fair-minded person could accuse Rob Ford of being mercenary in his causes.

One of Ford’s best virtues, one that is both public as well as private, was his genuine concern for the average person. This concern was often demonstrated when the cameras were not on. As Ezra Levant relates in this embedded video, Rob Ford loved to coach football and he loved his team, helping the players out if they were in trouble. As Levant asks, how many politicians do you know who would let a troubled youth sleep on his couch if they were in a spot? Not Trump, that’s for sure.

When cancer forced him out of the last mayoral race, he ran for City Councillor in Ward 2 instead. He won 58% of the vote while immersed in chemotherapy. The reason Ward 2’s constituents were loyal to him was that he had been loyal to them. When he was first a Councillor, he took his responsibility seriously. If you had a compliant about city services and called his office, he called you back – personally. And then he fought for you – personally. Stories about his dedication and tenacity got passed along the rumour mill. What the media could never figure out was that this was one of the reasons for his enduring popularity, allowing him to survive scandals that would have totalled the career of any other politician.

Therefore, I think it is fitting that he died completely undefeated. He will be missed – at least by the little guy. And though they might seem alike in superficial style, Donald Trump is no Rob Ford.

Toronto’s taxi drivers don’t pick up short fares, but hey, don’t allow Uber on our streets!

Late on August 4, two people were fatally gunned down outside the Muzik nightclub after rapper Drake’s afterparty spilled out into the streets. Now we find out that just before one of the victims was murdered, she was refused a cab ride by a licenced Toronto cabbie because she was a ‘short fare’. That is, the cab driver thought “her estimated $8 fare was too low” so he didn’t bother to pick her up. Minutes later she was struck by a random bullet.

As a result, a representative of the Toronto cabbie’s union wants “tougher penalties for cabbies who refuse short fares.” The Toronto “director of bylaw enforcement called the practice of turning down short fares ‘despicable’”.

These would be the same people who only a few short weeks ago were all in high dudgeon about the presence of Uber cabbies on Toronto’s streets.

So let me get this straight, the solution to the short fare problem is more bureaucratic enforcement of rules and regulations, and – presumably – more form-filling by complainants. But the solution is definitely not more competition in the marketplace. 

Toronto Mayor John Tory attacks free speech

World-famous pick-up artist Roosh V is going to give a few lectures in Toronto on how to pick up women. Toronto Mayor John Tory took time out of his busy day of governing a city of 2.7 million people to tweet the following:

“While free speech is the law in this country, promoting violence against women is wrong.”

While we’re on the subject of free speech John, you know what? If you don’t support speech you disagree with, then you don’t really support the concept of free speech. There is also the concept of tolerance, something that you no doubt wholeheartedly profess to support. However, if you stop and think about it, the word ‘tolerance’ means tolerating things you don’t agree with. If you only tolerate things you agree with, then you aren’t really being tolerant, are you?

And if you are really into stopping those who promote violence against women, why don’t you crack down on all the Marxist professors proselytizing at the University of Toronto and York University? According to historians, communism killed about 100 million people in the 20^th century, give or take a few tens of million. Given that at least a few millions of these victims were women, you’ve got some real misogynists on your hands, especially as both universities lie within Toronto’s borders. But I’m guessing you won’t be doing that anytime soon.

Then Mr. Tory took more time out of his hectic day to tweet this:

“I am calling on those hosting this tour to do the right thing – cancel this show.”

You know what I am getting sick and tired of? Politicians who refuse to stay within the bounds of their job description. In the case of the City of Toronto and its Mayor, these duties are defined by the City of Toronto Act. The City of Toronto Act gives the City and its Mayor plenty to do: collect garbage, run the police force, inspect restaurants, maintain the fire department, clean the snow off the roads, and many other essential tasks. You know what isn’t on that list? Regulating the content of private meetings held on private property. Doing that isn’t part of your job, Mr. Tory. Instead, why not concentrate of providing the best municipal services you can while keeping the property taxes down? If you do that, and do it well, not only will you be re-elected, but you will also find that your day will be filled from morning to night with productive tasks.

So Mr. Mayor, I suggest you mind your own business and make sure my trash is picked up on time.

 

The Toronto Uber controversy: the real issues

The Uber controversy has come to Toronto. As most people already know, Uber is the smart-phone app that allows people who need a drive to connect to a driver affiliated with Uber. As has happened in other cities, the local taxicab monopoly freaked out at the prospect. If one’s only source of information were the local media, one would get the impression that the beef that taxicab owners have with Uber is the playing field is no longer level, tilted now, with the arrival of Uber, against those who comply with City regulations designed to ensure driver safety and car safety.

What the media leaves unmentioned is that a cab license in Toronto costs between $80,000 to $100,000 on the open market. This is because the number of cabs in Toronto is fixed. In other words, cab owners are paying for the privilege of belonging to a monopoly. This cost has nothing to do with safety regulations.

Another associated but unstated fact is that the financial burden of purchasing a cab license means that the cab owner has less money left over maintain his car. The more you pay of the license, the less money you have left over to keep the car in good running order. The result: ratty old cabs.

Another issue is that of ‘price gouging’. This came up a couple of weeks ago when Toronto’s entire subway system abruptly ground to halt in the morning rush hour as a result of a computer glitch in the communication system. Instead of praising Uber for being there to help transport some of the stranded passengers to their destinations, the media concentrated on the fact that Uber had opportunistically raised its prices thanks to its “opportunity pricing” policy.

While I am not so doctrinaire a libertarian to fail to see the negative aspects of price gouging, what the media left unstated was that if Uber weren’t there, the rides they offered wouldn’t be available at any price. At least now, there is an option, albeit an expensive one. This for some people may be a bargain - if they have a crucial meeting or appointment they can’t afford to miss. The Uber representative was asked about this. He gave a confused PR-speak justification citing supply and demand (implying - but not explicitly stating - that peak pricing encourages service providers to come out of the woodwork to meet the increased demand). This was dismissed by the media as spin (instead of being a core principle of economics).

What was completely unstated by all concerned was the unfair nature of the existing fare structure for people living in the suburbs. Because taxi fees are optimized for the close distances found in downtown areas, taxicabs are a rare luxury elsewhere. A flexible fare structure would go a long way to giving the people in outlying areas a viable transportation alternative when they have had a few too many. Of course, such reasoning is entirely beyond a typical newspaper reporter’s understanding of economics.

The real solution for the ‘Uber problem’ is not to legislate Uber out of existence but to deal with the taxicab owners legitimate concerns without instituting a ban on entrepreneurial efforts to aid Toronto’s transit woes. What’s the answer? Simple. You buy back the existing cab licenses, while requiring everybody, including Uber, to comply with basic, simple, common sense safety rules. No more license limits, so no more monopoly pricing.

Of course, this is the last thing local politicians want to hear. It would cost the City a billion dollars to buy back all 100,000 cab licenses, and it would provide insufficient opportunities for graft. What our shortsighted pols fail to see is that this money would be pumped into precisely those local small businesses that specialize in providing transportation solutions. With Uber and the now newly enriched exiting cab companies in competition, all kinds of transportation solutions would be possible that weren’t before.

This is the conversation the City of Toronto should be having but isn’t. Mostly thanks to blinkered, incompetent local reporting.

Uber “here to stay”: three cheers for John Tory

Toronto’s mayor-elect John Tory catches a lot of grief on these pages, in large part because of his ignominious stint as leader of the Ontario Conservative party. But when somebody does something praiseworthy, the policy here is to praise him.

What did John Tory do that was worth patting him on the back? His response to the recent introduction of the Uber taxi service in Toronto. The stage was set by the Municipal Licencing and Standards Toronto who sided with the existing taxicab monopoly:

“Uber does not have a licence to operate in Toronto…We have filed 35 charges relating to Uber... this is at the provincial court level."

John Tory went strongly against the City’s regulators. He said:

Tory said launching a court injunction isn't the way to deal with Uber and services like it.

"I just think we use what I'll call old-fashioned methods like court cases … when in fact these kinds of technological changes are here to stay," said Tory.

Tory said Uber's bosses must understand that they can't operate outside city regulations, but also said city bureaucrats and traditional taxi companies must acknowledge that the taxi business is changing.

"You sit down [with the operators] and sort these things out," said Tory. "But you don't sort them out from the premise that says these applications are going away, that we're going to go back to the way things were before.

Why is this significant to Toronto’s residents?

Because Uber is a disruptive technology and the current taxicab industry is a dysfunctional, outdated monopoly that serves both the cab owners and the consumers poorly. Because the number of taxicabs in the city has been fixed, a taxi licence in the city runs at over $100K per car. In the meantime, there is a shortage of taxis in the city. Ever try to find a cab on New Year’s Eve? I though providing alternatives to drinking and driving was a good thing. Who on earth thought that capping the number of taxicabs in the city is something that we should do?

As well, taxi fares are fixed throughout Toronto, optimized for downtown Toronto. This means that in the suburbs, where distances are much greater but the roads are better and traffic congestions less, taxis have been priced to the point of being a rare luxury good. For instance, though I live within city limits, a taxi ride from the last subway stop to my house is close to $30. This is nuts. But I guess there is no need to provide alternatives to impaired driving out here.

This is where Uber comes in. It provides a smartphone app that partners up people who need a ride with drivers who sign up with Uber. As most of these drivers are not within the existing taxicab monopoly, consumers are served better but the owners of expensive taxi licence are threatened.

If Uber can help break this long-outdated monopoly, then more power to them. And if John Tory enables this to happen by reigning in the city regulators, then three cheers to him.

 

 

The two most important people in Toronto’s mayoral election are not on the ballot

There is an interesting dynamic at play in Toronto’s mayoral race, and it has manifested itself in a recent poll. Rob Ford’s brother Doug has now pulled neck-and-neck with the frontrunner, John Tory.

The two important people not in the race? Former Mayor David Miller and current Mayor Rob Ford. Why are they the most important people even though they are not running for office? Because many voters are basing their decision on getting (or avoiding) the next David Miller or next Rob Ford.

To people not from Toronto, Rob Ford needs no introduction. He excites all the right people in all the wrong ways, the same way that Sarah Palin does. By right people, I mean the white, liberal intelligentsia, who mostly live downtown. They Hate Rob Ford. While their ideal candidate in this election is, or would be, Olivia Chow - an extreme-left former Toronto City councillor who represented a downtown ward - their number one goal is not re-electing Rob Ford. But now that Rob Ford has stepped down because of cancer, this translates into not electing his brother Doug. Because Olivia is stuck in the 20% range, they are flocking to front-runner John Tory as their second choice. My sometime guest-blogger, Mike Downtown, tells me of a number of urban trendies in his circle of acquaintance who plan on holding their nose and voting for Tory.

On the other hand, the people in the suburbs don’t fear the next Rob Ford so much as they fear the next David Miller. While he didn’t make a spectacle of himself on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, Miller did incalculable damage to Toronto, specifically with tax hikes, insane traffic-snarling projects like the St Clair Streetcar Right-of-Way, and a complete screw-up of Toronto’s garbage collection system. To my American readers, the best American analog of David Miller is New York Mayor Bill de Blasio: he looks like a CEO, he talks like a CEO, but he’s really a Marxist.

When I first heard that Olivia Chow wanted to be mayor, I confess I was scared. I knew of her hard-left past of course, but I also was afraid that Torontonians of Chinese background might want to elect Toronto’s first Chinese mayor. In the last election, they - Toronto’s largest ethnic group by far - backed Rob Ford. (In Toronto, ethnic groups and immigrants live in the suburbs and tend to be center-right, at least municipally.) But it turns out, I didn’t have to worry. I wasn’t the only one afraid of the next David Miller. Seven years of Miller was enough and most people think Olivia Chow wants to be the next David Miller.

When Chow looked like a credible threat, mainstream voters flocked to Tory. To my American readers, the best analogue of John Tory is Mitt Romney, minus the business acumen: a bland, centrist cipher, who wants to be a political leader but lacks the touch. But now that Chow has tanked, many Fordanatics feel free to flock back to Rob Ford’s torch bearer, his brother. This is the reason, I think, for the recent uptick in Doug Ford’s support.

This is what I mean by interesting dynamic. There are three main candidates: Olivia Chow, John Tory, and Doug Ford. John Tory leads but excites no-one. In contrast, Olivia Chow and Doug Ford’s supporters are hard-core. Tory’s ranks are largely made up of people repelled by one of the other candidates, or more precisely, who one of the other candidates stands in for. As a result, Tory’s support is a mile wide but an inch deep, and this race is still in a profound state of flux. 

Brad Duguid’s endorsement of John Tory means that Toronto’s left has given up on Olivia Chow

Yesterday, Ontario Liberal cabinet minister Brad Duguid endorsed former Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory for mayor of Toronto. This can only be because the left-wing candidate in the Toronto mayoral race, Olivia Chow, has fallen to third place. Right now, it is a two-way race between John Tory and Mayor Rob Ford.

Clearly, Olivia Chow is the candidate the Toronto left would like to see running City Hall, but after the debacle of David Miller (Toronto’s Bill De Blasio), Torontonians are not clearly in a mood for another extremist in the mayor’s office. Nevertheless, as Toronto’s left sees it, Job One is not electing Olivia Chow, but making sure the Great Satan, Rob Ford, is not re-elected.

As the article linked to above points out, Ford and Tory are neck-and-neck, with Chow a distant third. Time for some strategic voting by Toronto’s respectable class.

Are you a Canadian gun rights activist? Then pat yourself on the back.

On Monday, the far-left (but credible) Toronto Mayoral Candidate, Olivia Chow, called for a handgun ban. Never mind that the only people targeted by such a law have nothing whatsoever to do with Chow’s tragic examples, or the people who actually killed them, or the people who will go on to create other murder victims. Never mind that and pay attention to what happened next:

The other two leading candidates, John Tory and Rob Ford, but came out against the ban.

Think about this: in Toronto, the stronghold of the Liberal Party of Canada – even there – a handgun ban is controversial. 

Who do we have to thank for that? Canada’s gun rights activists, that’s who. Think about how far they have moved this issue, and with what little resources.

In 1989 when the Progressive Conservative Justice Minister, Doug Lewis, first proposed a handgun ban, Canadian gun owners were disorganized and friendless. We had no money, no power, no media allies, no influence, and no friends in politics. Indeed, the one political party that should have been our natural ally – the Progressive Conservative Party – was our prime enemy.

Look at where we are today: we have political allies at all levels of government; we have important – and outspoken - friends in the media, and have won significant political battles. How did we accomplish this, with next to no resources? 

We did two things right: we engaged in vigorous debate, where we unapologetically conceded no ground; and we were persistent. Through thick and thin, we stood our ground. By following these two principles, we were able to move mountain towards us. As a result, we are at the point where, even in the Great Satan of Canadian politics – Toronto, our opinion is respected.

John Tory’s non-position on the expansion of Toronto’s Island Airport

With regard to Porter Airlines’ bid to expand  Billy Bishop Airport to accommodate jet traffic, Mayor Rob Ford is enthusiastically in favour, extreme left-wing mayoral candidate Olivia Chow is resolutely against it, and ‘Red Tory’ mayoral candidate John Tory is, well… I’ll let him tell you in his own words:

“Mayor Ford and NDP candidate Chow will fall back to their ideological positions of "yes" or "no." But the fact is council cannot proceed with a decision until the critical questions highlighted in the report are answered. 

If somebody brought me a proposal with this many unresolved matters when I was running a business or a charity, it would have been a very brief meeting - I call on the executive committee to be brief.  Executive Committee should not vote, but rather put this important vote off until more information is in hand.”

Got that?

Hamlet for Mayor: vote John Tory!

John Tory’s focus-tested BS

During last Thursday’s mayoral debate, Toronto mayoral candidate John Tory declared that he doesn’t believe in “turning left or turning right.” Rather he believes in “moving forward.”

Who speaks like this? What does this even mean? Specifically, how does moving neither left nor right, but only going forward, have for the practical questions of the day such as: contracting out of garbage collection, property taxes, the expansion of the Island Airport, or the debate about the Scarborough subway vs. LRT?

I can’t say, but only because I think there is no answer. It is a phrase devoid of meaning that has been crafted by advertising consultants, and poll-tested to invoke a warm and fuzzy feeling in the low information voter. Unfortunately for the focus-grouped politician, because it is completely insubstantial, it is also open to ridicule. It is also indefensible when challenged. An American example was George H W Bush’s, “a thousand points of light”, ridiculed (justly) by Neil Young in his song, “Rockin’ In the Free World.”

You know, if you are a political candidate and you are presented with a slogan by your campaign, it is a good test to ask yourself, do ordinary people talk like this? If not, don’t talk like it either.

This is one of Rob Ford’s secrets as a master communicator (and yes, he is a master communicator). He doesn’t spew out bafflegab like this. He talks like an ordinary person using plain language everybody can relate to. This is one of the keys to his popularity, and what allows him to survive scandals the size of tactical nuclear wars. It is also what allows him to differentiate himself from phony slicksters like failed Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leader John Tory.