And so here we are, on the cusp of anniversary numero uno for Rob Ford, Mr. Improbable and after the Wild Mouse of a ride we’ve had so far, the fun has only just begun.
As the mayor likes to point out, nothing’s been cut.
But if his speech to the Empire Club on Friday, October 14, is a harbinger of things to come – he made a fluffernutter of a mess with the math on Toronto’s financial situation – then I fear, dear reader, we may be in for a train wreck. And I’m not just talking about those odd sightings of His Worship around town well after dark, or the transit file.
But back to the Empire. The mayor referred in his speech to the “hard-working men and women” of the public service. That’s right, the same folks he called “garbage” at the very same pulpit in his speech to the club post-election euphoria last year.
The mayor also talked about alternative visions of the city. “Everyone has their own idea of what Toronto should become,” he said. The mayor seemed to be acknowledging that there’s another point of view besides his own out there that (maybe) needs to be respected, and for this mayor, that’s saying something.
But let’s not get too caught up in the semantics. The mayor is pretending to play nice only because he has to. It’s time to deliver on some of his bigger promises, a slipperier proposition now, after the results of the recent provincial election.
There are the cuts not yet made to attend to, the privatization of garbage pickup west of Yonge, the continued sell-off of social housing, a battle with the inside workers’ union to look forward to. And, oh yeah, that multi-billion-dollar subway extension along Sheppard that the mayor promised to build with private money.
An announcement on that front may be imminent. Word on the street is that Gordon Chong, the man charged with finding the development cash to fund Ford’s subway dreamin,’ has some takers but not enough to raise the required $4 billion.
Which is why there’s been talk among lefties on council of resuscitating Transit City. That ain’t gonna happen.
But there may be hope for the Sheppard LRT part of the plan, which was killed so the money could be used to fund burying the Eglinton Crosstown, as the mayor wanted, from Black Creek to Keele and from Leslie to Kennedy.
Now that Chong may be short on backers for the Sheppard subway, some councillors are arguing that the province is no longer under any legal obligation to bury Eglinton. Having to tunnel under the Don Valley might pose too much of an engineering nightmare, in any case.
But more to the point, the memorandum of understanding between the mayor and Premier Dalton McGuinty stipulates that the Crosstown deal must be approved by city council. The MOU clearly states under the section entitled “Approvals” that each signatory must seek the necessary approvals from their governing bodies. “Toronto will be solely responsible for seeking the necessary approvals from both Toronto City Council and the TTC,” are the exact words.
In fact, the province, too, must approve the MOU, not necessarily a slam dunk in a “major minority.”
The mayor’s been stalling on putting the matter to a vote of council, but the manoeuvring to make that happen is under way among his political opponents.
Councillor Joe Mihevc is pondering a motion to council to revive the Sheppard LRT. Of course, he would need two-thirds of council members to get a motion formally before council, and he doesn’t have that.
But another PR offensive like the one that turned the tide on the mayor’s brother’s port lands plans is taking shape. And this one includes Ford’s supposed friends in the business community, whose concerns about gridlock and the billions it’s costing them every year loom large.
To groups like the Board of Trade, transportation infrastructure, or the lack thereof, is the number one issue facing the city. It’s not difficult to see why when the Toronto region accounts for 50 per cent of the province’s GDP. And the $4 billion gridlock costs us annually is slated to quadruple over the next 20 years.
The BoT is on the list of participants announced Wednesday, October 19, in a transit conference organized by the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance (that’s John Tory’s group), the Canadian Urban Transit Association and the Pembina Institute. Mihevc is also among the organizers.
His attempt to seize the political moment to revive LRT could end up being an academic exercise. Crazy as it sounds, the mayor’s fishing buddy (that would be the prime minister) could decide to write a big fat cheque for Ford’s subway. The HarperCons are getting pressure to build transit infrastructure. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has made a pre-budget submission urging the feds to invest in transit.
Whether the mayor was ever serious about building a subway seems debatable. Given the fast track to disaster he’s put the TTC on, maybe the idea all along was to run transit into the ground, make it so unbearable that the public wouldn’t squawk if it’s privatized. At least, that’s the union’s take.
Take those record ridership numbers many were trumpeting last week. Looked at objectively, they’re symptomatic of an overburdened system that will only be further stressed by new cuts to service levels in the new year.
Ford seems less interested in saving taxpayers’ money when it comes to the TTC. News flash: the TTC workers’ union filed for labour arbitration last week, which should suit the mayor just fine since he’d like nothing more than to make them look greedy in the eyes of the public.
TTC workers have been without a contract since March and, I hear through the grapevine, offered to take a wage freeze in the first year of a multi-year contract that would have saved us tens of millions. But Ford wasn’t interested.
He seems to be more willing to let the TTC adopt a random drug testing policy for employees that will end up costing Toronto millions to defend in court.
If it feels like Ford is taking us for a ride….
enzom@nowtoronto.com
