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No mayor is a nation

A great week for Rob Ford. Thought you’d never read those words in this mag, huh?

After bringing the Toronto Community Housing Corporation board to heel, there seems no stopping the bully from the burbs.

H

eck. Barely 100 days in office and Ford’s already a legend, with his very own full-fledged political movement and it’s gotta name – Ford Nation.

A little like Leafs Nation, Ford’s merry band of supporters are also real die-hards. In their eyes, their hero can do no wrong, even when he’s skating on thin ice, like Ford was earlier last week, before the TCHC controversy blew everything else off the front page.

I’m speaking here of the mayor threatening to sic his acolytes on Lib Premier Dalton McGuinty in the upcoming fall election if the Preem doesn’t cough up $150 mil for roads and childcare.

Talk about a hypocrite. Ford proclaimed during the campaign that he would not go begging cap in hand to the province for money. What was that Ford ‘ism’ again about the city not having a revenue problem, but a spending problem?

That seems to have been conveniently forgiven, if not forgotten, just like the $774 million hole this administration has dug for 2012. Some of the mayor’s other pronouncements that don’t quite add up: the zero property tax increase without service cuts (good one) Ford’s claim the city bureaucracy is floating in untold billions worth of “gravy” ($1.7 billion to be exact). Yup. That’s why we’re hiring consultants at $3 million to sniff out the supposed “waste” in the system.

The big picture seems not to matter in the script being writ by Ford and Company. Platitudes and pronouncements will suffice. The mayor has moved with such breathtaking speed on that front that the media can barely keep up. Give the public what it wants – or what it thinks it wants – and don’t sweat the big stuff, seems to be the operating principle.

What’s the grand plan Stan? There isn’t one with Ford, unless runaway privatization and less government happens to be your idea of a “vision.” Less is not necessarily more when it comes to good government. Amalgamation proved that.

Ford has cast himself as a man of action. In reality, though, he has no political courage – or inclination judging by his simplistic approach to issues – to really sink his teeth into the complex workings, and problems, of government. Not Ford’s bag to chew on important questions.

If anything, Ford is taking the easy way out. Hanging a For Sale sign outside City Hall doesn’t take much imagination. Arguably, Ford has abdicated his responsibility, but then he’s not a mayor for all the people, just those who voted for him.

Sure, his supporters will say that Ford is doing what he was elected to do and that seems to be good enough for now. But will the taxpayers Ford says he holds near and dear to his heart be better served by his policy decisions in the long run? Hardly.

Take the TCHC board’s resigning en masse last Thursday.

It’s doubtful Ford had any real plans for TCHC before City Auditor Jeffrey Griffiths came along with his report about $6,000 staff retreats to the Muskokas. But Ford saw his opening and took it. (Besides the timing was such that he needed to change the channel on that $150 million lie over provincial funding.)

The mayor, better than most, should understand the complex challenges facing social housing in the city. If, that is, we’re to believe the stories about the thousands of tenants he’s helped get much needed repairs to their rundown apartments.

The real problem at TCHC is not a handful of employees blowing taxpayer money on Holt Renfrew chocolates. The real problem is the years of provincial and federal government neglect of social housing.

TCHC was on the way to turning that around during the Miller years with an ambitious plan to leverage the value of city-owned land to finance the building of new housing stock.

Today we’re seeing the results of that work with the historic remake of Regent Park, the redevelopment of Don Mount court further east and, in the coming years, plans for a large-scale makeover of Lawrence Heights.

Those plans are not just about putting roofs over peoples heads. They’re about rebuilding the very foundations of social housing, both literally an figuratively speaking – bringing isolated communities into the life of the city by transforming poor neighbourhoods into mixed-use housing.

Doing nothing is not an option. More than 40 per cent of the 166,000 tenants currently living in TCHC are under 25, “at risk” because of their address, race and socio-economic status.

Most of the residents who showed up at Thursday’s emergency meeting of TCHC begged the board not to resign.

Because, for all its faults, TCHC is really a social housing success story. To many of those among the tenants who are disabled, sick, or come from abusive situations, TCHC was their lifeline, family.

Much goodwill has been built up. What happens to all that now? The first clue will be who Ford pushes to put on the reconstituted TCHC board. Griffiths report has cleared the deck for Ford to blow up the entire works. And for what? A few grand in misspending by a couple of dozen employees who’ve already been fired. Makes sense. Forest, meet trees.

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