Miller’s honeymoon is over

Toronto Mayor David Miller’s honeymoon is over and in 2010 he is going to have to actually run an offensive campaign. He will not be able to run the passive, frontrunner’s campaign he ran in 2006. In 2006, Miller was able to run as complacent a campaign as the federal Liberals were able to run in the 2000 federal election. In both the 2000 federal election, and the 2006 Toronto Mayoral election, the incumbent cruised to victory by running a complacent frontrunner’s campaign. I don’t see how Miller will be able to do this again after the ruckus of the past week. David Miller’s proposed taxes on land transfer and automobile registration proved extremely unpopular among Toronto’s electorate. While I personally do not find the proposed fee on car registrations to be that bad, the proposed land transfer tax was WAY too high. The only way I could support it is if it is made 10 to 20 times lower. Toronto’s housing market is what is keeping Toronto’s economy competitive these days. Such a high transfer tax would thus devastate Toronto’s economy. I’m not sure whether the province should have given Toronto the power to tax land transfers. Is it even allowed under the new Toronto Act? Has the city even checked the act to see whether a land transfer tax is permissible under the Act? The Act does expand Toronto’s taxation power, but only in specific areas. The city cannot charge income tax, general sales tax, or many other types of taxes. But it can charge entertainment and booze tax (bought at a restaurant). Why isn’t the city looking at entertainment and booze tax as an option. It would cause a lot less of a ruckus than the land transfer tax. My proposal is as follows. The city should charge 250 dollars on land transfer, charge the car registration fee, and introduce a reasonable booze and entertainment tax. These should really help the city out of its financial troubles. A 250 dollar land transfer tax wouldn’t cause too much trouble, unlike the currently proposed 4000 dollar land transfer tax.


City council voted on Monday to defer a vote on the two proposed taxes until after the provincial election. The councilors are hoping that provincial politicians will sometime between now and then bail the city out (so far politicians from both parties that have a shot at forming government in the upcoming election have been quite non-committal on any such possible financial help). Right after that, David Miller has made things worse by saying that the failure to immediately approve his proposed taxes could mean cuts that shut down Toronto’s Sheppard Subway. The backlash facilitated by this threat has been severe by both politicians and citizens alike. Citizens such as myself and councilors not in Miller’s inner circle are outraged by this threat, including erstwhile moderate centrist Miller allies such as John Filion, Brian Ashton, Peter Milczyn, and myself (an aspiring politician who has seen himself as such a moderate centrist Miller ally). I do not think that Subway line will close down. This is clearly a scare tactic by Miller and his ally and TTC chair Adam Giambrone. It is now ironically the most left-leaning councilors on Toronto Council who want to shut down the Sheppard Subway. But if doing so were to come to a vote on council, I think it would be defeated because Miller’s staunchest allies make up a plurality, not a majority, of council. The centrists and right-wingers hold a combined majority on council. I also do not think the province will allow the city to shut down the Sheppard Subway. I’m not even sure shutting it down can even be done unilaterally without authorization from the province. Miller could obviously come back to council with a completely alternative tax proposal such as the one I suggested and try to get it passed (presumably with much more success) to help dig Toronto out of it’s financial hole, but sadly Miller has adopted a my-way-or-the-highway attitude. Considering the backlash both against the proposed taxes and against “crying wolf” on the Sheppard Subway, I’d say David Miller’s three and a half year old political honeymoon is over. Granted, three and a half years is a very, very long time for a political honeymoon to last, so I suppose the honeymoon was bound to end eventually.

Electorally, the only thing Miller has going for him is that it is another three and a half years until the next municipal election, so all this does have the chance to blow over. But after what Miller has been through, I don’t see how re-election can be such a sure thing next time. I’d say Miller’s recovery rests on being able to dig Toronto out of its financial hole without imposing a crippling land transfer tax. If he can do that, he may regain his popularity. If not, we’re looking at a right-of-centre mayor elected in 2010. Or if we’re really lucky, a centrist mayor.

It is quite amazing how much Miller has fallen in a matter of months. People who voted for him in 2006 have said they will not vote for him again if the taxes (especially the land transfer tax) goes through. This is significant because of Miller’s electoral success in 2006. Miller had an informal NDP affiliation but at the same time won some of the most non-NDP parts of the city. His main opponent was Jane Pitfield. She was something of a centrist but in more recent times seemed to be shifting to the right. She claims to have never belonged to any political party. But if one were to assign a political affiliation to her, it would have to be Conservative because she is known to have campaigned for John Tory in his 2005 Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey by-election campaign. But for the most part she appears to be a right-of-centre politician without a formal party affiliation. She’s a great person on a personal level, but during her final years on council began to create a reputation of flip-flopping on major issues. David Miller highlighted with success these flip-flops during the mayoral campaign. In the end Pitfield’s campaign proved to be a largely unsuccessful affair. This is especially true in that Miller won every single city ward except for the two Don Valley West wards (one of which was Pitfield’s council ward). Miller’s win is what I think of as a 1984 Ronald Reagan style sweep (Reagan won every Electoral Vote jurisdiction except Minnesota and the District of Columbia, winning left-leaning, solidly Democratic states such as Rhode Island) only with reverse political ideology. In the same way that Reagan won liberal states like Rhode Island, Miller won municipally conservative areas of the city such as Ward 34, the southern part of Don Valley East (I know here it is Liberal federally and provincially, but municipally it is normally very conservative here and Ward 34 voted for John Tory in 2003), as well as normally municipally conservative Etobicoke. What’s more, Miller came within less than 1% of winning Don Valley West over Pitfield, who represented the area. For him to fall so much from this high in a few short months is for me astonishing.


I would also like to congratulate the British Labour Party for holding onto the two safe Labour seats of Sedgefield (until June 27th Tony Blair’s district) and Ealing Southall in two by-elections on Thursday. In Ealing Southall, the very loud buzz about a possible Liberal Democrat or Conservative steal came to nothing. Turnout in both by-elections was above 40%, not bad for a by-election. Granted the Labour vote fell in both by-elections, but for a governing party that almost ALWAYS happens. Also of note is that both by-elections were won easily by Labour but both had a Labour vote of less than half the total votes cast. However, this is also very common in by-elections. Due to the abnormal nature of by-elections (low turnout, protest voting, etc.), it is quite rare for the winning candidate in a by-election to get more than half the vote, especially in the UK. I am also glad to see that in both districts, the Tory vote remained very stagnant from the last General Election result, in both cases increasing only very slightly. In Sedgefield, the Liberal Democrats surged to second place and to almost 20%, an increase of almost 10% over the General Election result. In Ealing Southall, the Liberal Democrats retained second place and saw their vote percent increase a little bit. This marginal increase has to be a disappointment to Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell who faces discontent within his party and who’s party normally is a formidable force in by-elections and thus normally cruises to victory in by-elections in which the Lib Dems were also second place at the previous General Election. And this meager result for the Lib Dems comes in spite of a strong, aggressive campaign (the Lib Dem candidate may well have out-campaigned the Labour candidate). Most likely this failure for the Lib Dems occurred because new Prime Minister Gordon Brown is enjoying a honeymoon period that probably gave both Labour candidates a significant boost in the two by-election campaigns. I want to say I’m glad Labour held onto the two seats and I want to wish the two new MPs and the new Prime Minister well.