Shark fin ban

Recently the City of Toronto voted to ban the sale, possession or consumption of shark fins. It sounds like the right thing to do but not surprisingly Mayor Rob Ford voted against the ban. Ford’s vote against the ban was one of only four such votes against the motion. The other three votes were from Ford loyalists Doug Holyday, Giorgio Mammoliti, and David Shiner. Lots of other Ford loyalists voted for the ban. Does this mean Ford has lost control of City Council? I’d say he never had it to begin with. Ford attempts to run City Council like a Parliament, up to and including whipping votes. Thankfully a number of Ford’s allies sometimes ignore the whip. But Toronto City Council is not meant to work that way, it is meant to work with the collaboration of everyone and it is unfortunate that Rob Ford doesn’t run council this traditional way.

Here is the above post in French

Récemment, la Ville de Toronto ont voté pour interdire la vente, la possession ou la consommation d'ailerons de requins. Il sonne comme la bonne chose à faire, mais il n'est pas surprenant que le maire Rob Ford ont voté contre l'interdiction. Le vote de Ford contre l'interdiction a été seulement un des quatre ces votes contre la motion. Les trois autres votes ont été des loyalistes Ford : Doug Holyday, Giorgio Mammoliti, et David Shiner. Beaucoup autre loyalistes Ford ont voté pour l'interdiction. Est-ce que cela signifie que Ford a perdu le contrôle du conseil municipal? Je dis que Rob Ford n'a jamais eu le contrôle du conseil. Ford tente d'exécuter le Conseil municipal comme un Parlement, jusqu'à et y compris les votes à fouetter. Heureusement, un nombre d'alliés de Ford ignorent parfois le fouet. Mais le conseil municipal de Toronto n'est pas destiné à travailler de cette façon, il est destiné à travailler avec la collaboration de tous et il est regrettable que Rob Ford ne court pas le conseil de cette façon traditionnelle.

Rob Ford's proposed cuts

I’d like to weigh in on the issue of budget cuts and library closures in the City of Toronto. The Ford brothers appear to have forgotten that they promised no service cuts but now act as though implementing service cuts, including closing libraries, was what they were elected on. It may was well be repeated yet again that in fact Rob Ford was elected to cut the gravy, not actual services and not to close libraries. I also believe it folly to claim like the Fords do that every single person objecting to cuts is affiliated with a union. Some people really don’t want their libraries closed. Some people really don’t want cuts to programs such as daycare. And they may not be in a union. It is not only labour unions that object to hard-right policies and the hard-right should admit that. But for them, unions are a type of scapegoat through which they can claim that all objection to hard-right polices come from unions and that regular folk just love those hard-right policies. This claim is not true. Polls consistently show that even most Conservative voters support some social spending. Ford was elected largely by Liberal and NDP voters. Conservative voters alone could not have put him over the top. I estimate Ford got around 25-30% of Liberal voters and about 20% of NDP voters. Now admittedly, some of those then-Liberal voters became Conservative voters in the federal election held a few months later. This appeared true in ridings the Conservatives won in Toronto federally where some then-Liberal voters who likely voted for Ford also moved to the federal Conservatives. But this was still a minority of Liberal voters who did the switching to the federal Conservatives. It just happened to be enough to pick up a large number of seats in the city, especially with increased votes splitting due to that “Orange Crush”. Notably in Etobicoke North, where Rob Ford got the highest percentage of the vote, a large number of Rob Ford voters voted Liberal and NDP which allowed the Liberals to retain the riding. As I also say, most Conservative voters in Toronto are not hard right-wingers anyway. Therefore when Torontonians strongly object to the type of cuts the Fords have been proposing, it should not come as a surprise. Voters do want low taxes, but this desire is tempered quite a lot when they see the type of services that would have to be cut to give them really low taxes.

Note: This is being posted in the midnight hours of September 7, right before the provincial election is officially called. In the coming days I will be giving commentary on the provincial election.

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.