Doug Holyday is a funny guy. Peculiar funny, I mean. But in an ironic way.
When he returned my call late Friday afternoon to discuss the political dynamite he’s playing with – ie: that plan he’s floating to redraw the city’s ward boundaries – he cut to the quick. He told he’d been out golfing all day, just in case I was too impressed by the fact he’s returning calls late Friday while some of his council colleagues might already be making a bee-line for the cottage.
Holyday was out clubbing at a charity event, it turns out. But if anyone is entitled to some leisure time, it’s the deputy mayor. No one would accuse Ford’s right hand of not earning every cent of his taxpayer-paid $99,620 salary. Holyday is old school. He still takes a lunch box to work. I’ve seen it. An orange number with a thermos.
As partisan right-wing pols go, the former Etobicoke mayor is right up there with most on council, but certainly not as bad as some of the other sycos (that’s short for sycophants) who form the current mayor’s inner circle.
If you watch Holyday close enough at council meetings, you might catch a smile creeping over his lips on those occasions when he stands in the chamber to do nothing more than toe the party line – which is often these days.
What to make then of Holyday’s idea to redraw the city’s 44 ward boundaries to more accurately reflect population?
It’s tempting to see the plan as a boon for the downtown, where the condo boom has upped the numbers living in the core. Or to view Holyday’s proposal as a point of growing contention between Holyday and the mayor, and yet another small sign that El Fordo may be losing his grip. Holyday’s plan, on the face of it at least, doesn’t exactly jibe with the mayor’s stated plan to half the number of council seats from the current 44 to 22. Or does it?
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Why would the mayor’s deputy, Ford’s go-to guy on the inner workings of government, hatch a plan to weaken the power of the chief magistrate? The answer to that question is that he’s not.
Holyday understands that if the city doesn’t take the initiative to rejig its boundaries – the Clerk’s Office is working on a plan as we speak – then the province or feds will. The two levels of government are mandated to review electoral boundaries after each census. That’s really what’s driving Holyday’s rep by pop pitch.
Sorry lefties, no silver lining here. Holyday’s plan will not mean a shift in the balance of power to the left at City Hall, for several reasons. First, Holyday’s only talking about adding one, maybe two wards at most in the core.
More to the point, Holyday is not talking about adjusting the electoral boundaries based on the number of households and businesses in each ward. That would definitely mean adding far more than two seats he’s envisioning downtown, where some wards have up to 50 per cent more businesses and households of their counterparts in the burbs.
Let’s be clear. Holyday’s ward realignment would be based strictly on population.
Here’s the kicker: his pitch for what’s being sold as a more democratic distribution of seats could, in fact, further consolidate the mayor’s power over council.
That’s because the downtown core is not the only area of the city that would gain more wards.
Based on Holyday’s formula, wards in the inner burbs of North York (Eglinton-Lawrence, Don Valley West, York Centre) and others in Scarborough and south Etobicoke currently held by Ford allies would also be divvyed up to mean more potential seats for the right on council. Some of those currently have higher populations than downtown wards.
The mayor has his own plan to cut the number of city wards in half. It was a campaign promise. Holyday says he supports that plan, give or take adding two or three seats. Even under that scenario, Ford holds the balance of power. I count 11 of 22 wards solidly behind the mayor, when looking at the current council’s makeup, six too close to call and that could go either way, and five seats for progressives.
Where Holyday and the mayor diverge is on Holyday’s preference for an elected board of control, eight members chosen citywide, two per district, to replace the executive committee currently handpicked by the mayor.
An elected board of control might act as a further check on the mayor’s power. Only, that kind of arrangement could also play into the mayor’s hands. The mayor still has political plums at his disposal, various committee chairmanships and board appointments, for example, that he can use to curry favour with an elected board. Certainly, board of controls that existed pre-amalgamation didn’t prevent mayors of the old cities from pushing their agendas through council.
There may indeed come a time when Holyday breaks ranks with the mayor. As the guy who gave Ford’s daddy, Doug Sr., his start in politics, Holyday more than anyone else on council has license to give Ford what for. On this one, though, Holyday’s got Ford’s back.
