The Toronto waterfront mayoral debate at Harbourfront Centre Monday afternoon may have done little to change the complexion of the mayor’s race – except on those occasions when Rob Ford got a little hot under the collar.
But it did illustrate once again that on the weightier issues facing the city, Ford’s out of his depth.
And Rocco Rossi, about whom questions of his campaign’s imminent demise just won’t go away, is looking more like a lost scuba diver caught in open water with the sharks circling.
Rossi’s trying to keep a brave face, telling he cameras before he entered the Brigantine Room for the debate, that his volunteers were out pounding the pavement, getting 1,000 election signs in the ground across the city.
Are these the actions of a campaign on his final legs? Ask his campaign co-chair John Capobianco, who’s mulling a switch to the Ford team.
Watching Rossi up on the stage, it was hard not to get that sinking feeling. The same fire of past debates, just isn’t there. I’m hearing there’s been pressure from high-ranking Liberals within the George Smitherman camp for true Grit Rossi to take one for the party, do the honourable thing and bow out. Expect an announcement in a coupe of days, or so I’m told.
So it’s looking like a three horse race going into the final two weeks between Ford, George Smitherman and Joe Pantalone.
Splashy moments from the waterfront debate, there were a few. For comedic relief there was Ford. His plan for protecting the waterfront from air, noise and water pollution? Get rid of the Queen’s Quay streetcar and replace them buses. Seems to Ford there’s not enough lots for cars to park down by the water’s edge, either. Convert the Rees Avenue parking lot to a park, like Pantalone suggested? Nuts says Ford.
At least Ford was honest about one thing: he doesn’t know what the issues are affecting waterfront communities in any detailed way. “I’m from Rexdale,” he intoned, before going into populist mode. “You tell me.”
His plan: he’d hold a town hall.
Ford almost nodded off at one point, in between time-wasters like playing with his tie and looking down at his loafers. I can go on and on, but you get the picture.
For any substantive discourse, the locals in attendance from local co-ops and condos and social housing, had to rely on Pantalone and Smitherman.
Both are essentially on the same page when it comes to the waterfront – they believe in investment, extending the Queen’s Quay car east to the Lower Don lands, and a rail link from Union Station to the airport, although Smitherman’s not as sold as Pantalone on electrification of said line.
Smitherman says electrification, something the Medical Officer of Health has spoken in support of as an option preferable to more polluting diesel trains, may not be an option if the line’s to be built before the PanAm Games in 2015.
Smitherman who has signed the Clean Train Coalition’s pledge for electric trains, seems just as confident that the newer generation diesel trains being contemplated for the line may be just as green.
Pantalone shot back that no such technology exists.
The two also diverged on another hot topic on the waterfront – the Island Airport.
Smitherman favours a pedestrian tunnel to the airport. Pantalone is opposed to any link whatsoever. In fact, he favours doing away with the Toronto Port Authority altogether, which he says should have been done way back in the 80s when it was made clear the port doesn’t qualify as a harbour.
Smitherman argued that closing the airport, as some in the area are pushing for, is not an option. As for ongoing expansion plans at the airport, Smitherman suggested they may do more to undermine the economic feasibility of what’s now a moderately successful terminal for air traffic. The comment gave rise to a few boos from the back. Pantalone may have the wedge he needs here.
