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The Star has been inexplicably hard on the mayor?s tax proposal.
The rhetoric reached an all-time high – or low, depending on your perspective – on Tuesday, October 16, with the paper’s front-page coverage of an arbitrator’s ruling reversing library closures.
The union representing city workers, CUPE Local 416, successfully argued that the loss of Sunday hours for some staff amounted to an illegal layoff, contrary to the collective bargaining agreement.
Oddly, the Star chose to give Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, the right wing’s attack dog when it comes to all things Miller, a platform to go on a tirade.
“Another disaster brought to you by David Miller and his cost-containment program,” barked Minnan-Wong.
The Star’s coverage overlooks a crucial fact featured prominently in a Globe story on the same subject – that the library board also voted unanimously to strongly urge council to pass the mayor’s tax proposals.
A significant development, considering that three of council’s appointees to the library board – Councillors Paul Ainslie, Anthony Perruzza and Chin Lee – are either opposed or undecided on the tax proposals.
The Star’s dependable Christopher Hume wasn’t thinking about his own paper when he mused recently about the “lowest-common-denominator criticism” that has become the stock-in-trade of some City Hall media, was he?
Hume rightly points out that one overriding fact is being missed in the criticism of Miller, “that Toronto exists within a legal and fiscal straitjacket.”
It’d be more appropriate, Hume suggests, for the media to blame the premier for the city’s ills.
Wait a minute. That would be the same premier who raised taxes to save health care and was endorsed by the Star in the recent election.
