The rise of Rob Ford

I get why a very large number of Torontonians want Rob Ford to be their next mayor. There has been too much spending under David Miller. Under Miller, there has also been too much banning of things occurring such as the banning of certain types of shopping bags and the once-proposed ban on Tim Horton’s paper coffee cups. In addition, there have been too many fees added under Miller, such as the mandatory five cent bag fee. So I can see why Torontonians are irate and want massive change. I just don’t personally believe that Ford is the right person to clean up the mess. Ford has promised to scrap the Toronto land transfer fee and car registration fee. I never supported the land transfer fee and I would like to see it gone too, but how would Ford pay for its elimination? It would be unthinkable to do it by cutting services. Yes there is plenty of fat to cut but I would support the elimination of the land transfer tax and the car registration fee only after it is established they can be eliminated without cutting services. I’d also like to see the bag fee eliminated and I know Ford is the most likely candidate to do this but I’m wary of a Ford administration for a number of reasons. Firstly, Ford has trouble getting along with other politicians. This problem he has is well documented. As mayor your job is to be as collegial as possible with council and this could go by the wayside with Ford as Mayor. Secondly, I believe Ford’s strongly socially conservative views are incompatible with representing a city as diverse as Toronto. His stance on gay rights is quite out of step with modern Toronto and could become problem (in my humble opinion) if he is elected mayor. Also one of his most infamous comments concerns funding for the prevention of AIDS. As documented on city TV news (http://www.citytv.com/toronto/citynews/news/local/article/17952--councillor-rob-ford-under-fire-over-aids-comments), Ford said "If you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you wouldn't get AIDS probably, that's bottom line." Those infamous comments made no sense and it is a fact that worldwide there are millions (I am not exaggerating when I say millions) of people who suffer AIDS who are neither gay nor users of exchanged needles.

I also strongly disagree with Ford’s idea of eliminating streetcars. It makes no sense and is not environmentally friendly no matter how “clean” the buses are that replace the streetcars. As far as Ford’s plan to cut City Council in half, how does it make any sense to have fewer councilors in Toronto than there are MPs representing the city?

I’d personally prefer George Smitherman to be mayor. He is almost as aggressive as Ford of course. However, his policies on the whole make more sense in my opinion and I like that he does not support mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi’s idea of reviving the Spadina Expressway by making it a tunnel. In my opinion reviving the Spadina Expressway even as a tunnel is a really bad and undesirable idea. After all it was opposed because of all the houses that would demolished and I don’t believe Rossi’s claim that to build his tunnel no houses would need to be demolished. I also oppose Rossi’s tunnel idea because it could quickly turn into a debacle like the Big Dig in Boston.

In Markham where I live the mayoral race is far less heated. Two people are running against incumbent Mayor Frank Scarpitti. Both ran against Scarpitti in the 2006 election as well. One of them is Partap Dua. He ran as an independent in the 2006 Canadian federal election in the riding of Markham—Unionville. He ran as an unofficial candidate for a new, unregistered, left-leaning party. Later that year Dua placed second in the 2006 Markham mayoral election. Also running is Stephen Kotyck. His plan is to cut waste and pare the Town of Markham down to essential services. But I strongly disagree with one of his proposals to cut “waste”. He considers having two transit systems in York Region, YRT and VIVA, to be wasteful. He proposes merging the two systems. I strongly disagree with this. Viva works very well as I have learned from riding it many times. Having two transit systems is not wasteful. Now, despite his suggestion of merging the two transit systems, YRT/VIVA is a Regional issue rather than a Town issue and if Kotyck were elected Mayor he would have to convince the entire York Regional Council to agree to his proposal, which is not likely given VIVA’s popularity. I personally am supporting Frank Scarpitti for re-election because I think he has done an excellent job as Mayor over the past 4 years.

Ken Livingstone and George Smitherman

I am disappointed in the election results from London, England. Labour Mayor Ken Livingstone lost and conservative Conservative Boris Johnson won. I wanted Livingstone to win. He was centre-left but I like him in particular because he has consistently been opposed to the Iraq War. The result is also disappointing because Livingstone was already planning to run for another term in 2012. Livingstone has conceded defeat but ominously said that he wants to be mayor when the 2012 Olympics happen. That would mean challenging Johnson in 2012. But ousting a one-term incumbent would be difficult. Livingstone’s political career thus may sadly be over.

Another interesting fact relating to mayors is that there are rumours that Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman wants to run for Toronto mayor in 2010. The idea is that Smitherman is actually considering challenging David Miller. I am actually concerned by this. Not because of David Miller. Miller’s second term as mayor has been problematic. Nevertheless, for Smitherman to run for mayor would require for him to resign his seat at Queen’s Park. It would also mean he would have to resign his cabinet position. In fact Smitherman might have to resign his cabinet position early. Nominations open in January 2010. If Smitherman were serious about running for mayor, he’d have to register early in order to mount a credible campaign. Doing a year-long campaign for mayor while being a cabinet minister is out the question. Therefore Smitherman would have to resign his cabinet position early in the year. I expect that he would also be under pressure to resign his seat at Queen’s Park early in the year as well. The reason for this is that it would be assumed that he would rarely attend legislative sessions while out campaigning for mayor. In any event Smitherman would have to resign his legislative seat before the municipal filing deadline. Failing to resign his seat before the municipal filing deadline would make his name be removed from the list of municipal candidates. Any such resignation would create a by-election in Toronto Centre. Sadly Toronto Centre isn’t as strong a Liberal seat provincially as it is federally. In the recent federal Toronto Centre by-election, Bob Rae got 59% of the vote. However in the recent provincial election, Smitherman received only 47% of the vote, compared to 20% for the Tories and 18% for the NDP. PC leader John Tory lives in Toronto Centre. Thus if he hasn’t managed to get a seat by then Tory could run in Toronto Centre. I think a Toronto Centre provincial by-election should be avoided if possible and therefore I have reservations about Smitherman running for mayor. But that choice is Smitherman’s to make and I would encourage him to think it over carefully.

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.