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Don Valley test

It’s a strange election where candidates feel safe trading in fiscal panic and all manner of Chicken Little prophesies.

Who knew fabricated negativity could sell so well? Still, there’s more than one thing going on in this race, and progressives should take heart that, despite the noise about the city’s so-called financial ruin, much of the citizenry appears endearingly loyal to the idea of sound city services.

You could certainly see this at Ward 26’s meeting at the Noor Cultural Centre on Thursday, September 30, where six contenders aimed fire at incumbent Conservative John Parker.

Here’s a ward shared by the middle-class homeowners of Leaside, the condo-owner/renters of Wynford-Concorde and the challenged, teaming neighbourhoods of Thorncliffe and Flemingdon Parks, where residents have to claw for facilities easily on hand in other areas.

Yes, there are lots of contestants, but the real narrative in Don Valley West wraps around Parker, who served in the Mike Harris government, and Mohamed Dhanani, chair of the Toronto Central Local Health Integration Network, a former adviser to deputy prem George Smitherman and director of the Flemingdon Community Food Bank.

In the 2006 election, Parker squeaked in 214 votes ahead of Dhanani and won, grabbing only 20 per cent of the vote. The soft-spoken Dhanani, bolstered by endorsements from Lib reps for the area, MP Rob Oliphant and MPP Kathleen Wynne, is once again breathing down Parker’s neck. And he’s doing it by urging more rec centres, senior supports, playing fields, daycare and youth services.

Everyone, of course, is for restraint – it’s just a question of what this means, and most folks here don’t think it precludes a spending spree on common facilities. Good for them.

So Parker’s studied gloom-and-doom performance isn’t getting much traction at the Noor tonight, despite the fact he knows the script: shriek about what a crisis we’re in, but don’t dare propose diminishing services.

“The city reserves are at zero,” he says with increasing dread. “We can’t expect higher levels of government to bail us out.” And then the punchline – a non sequitur, actually: “I voted against all the new taxes…. Remember, I was on the other side.”

Okay, we get it. You don’t want to spend any more money – but you don’t want to raise any capital either.

By contrast, Dhanani is running a Smithermanish campaign (minus a tax freeze and subways). He, too, urges prudent spending, but his guiding motif this evening is about being raised in public housing by a single mom. He attributes his family’s survival, and by implication his success as a Yale grad, to the presence of social housing and community facilities and services.

The city’s fiscal woes, he offers, can be met by a tax increase at the rate of inflation and by expanded economic development.

“As we try to balance our budget,” he says, “we have to create a compassionate city.”

It’s a theme that obviously resonates with candidate Yunus Pandor, a resident of Thorncliffe, president of the Communication, Energy and Papers Workers Union Local 554 and a principal in a number of Islamic groups. Pandor advocates for affordable housing, tenant rights, farmers’ markets – and more community services.

Sure, there’s another constraint-meister in the race, entrepreneur Jon Burnside, a former police officer and youth sport coach. He favours contracting out garbage removal, but then again – and let’s get this straight – so do all the candidates here.

As well, every one of them (but Burnside) wants to ditch the land transfer tax as well as the east Donlands’ stacked four-pad complex, and it’s not even in the ward. (No one even raised the fact that the feds have committed $34 mil to the $88 mil project.)

But the other side of the truth is that many voters are withstanding the manufactured fiscal hysteria and daring to stand up for a city that serves its people. David Miller’s winning.

ellie@nowtoronto.com

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