Municipal Politics – Babel-on-the-Bay

Ford’s Missing Ingredient.

August 13, 2022August 12, 2022 by Peter Lowry

Some days, you wish that Ontario premier Doug Ford knew what he is doing. As premier, he is busy rearranging Ontario’s municipal politics. It shows how much harm a little knowledge can cause. He is trying to create a strong mayor system for Ontario’s larger cities without much understanding of what is needed.

The simplest way to explain the problem is that for a strong mayor system to work, you have to have political party support. It is the very rare situation where a really strong mayor can hold together a council without either a political party endorsement or a personal popularity that is equivalent to a strong party endorsement.

Toronto has had a quasi-political system for years. We have had mayors from all major parties. Most progressive mayor’s have had the support of other progressives. The current mayor, John Tory has been effective at pulling together support from the suburban right wing. Despite nobody wearing party name tags, Toronto has moved along—sluggishly—but with persuasion.

The least effective example of Toronto mayors was Doug Ford’s younger brother Rob. A right-wing populist, Rob was a loose cannon. As a background to Doug Ford’s strong mayor plan, Rob was the last person who could have made it work.

The person who could have made it work was David Crombie, Toronto’s ‘Tiny, Perfect Mayor.’ David won the mayoralty as head of a bunch of reformers in 1972. I had always enjoyed arguing politics with him until his little mob in city hall tried to stifle development, rather than to control it properly. What helped David win the mayoralty was the liberal party being honest about its participation in municipal politics. A lot of liberals lost that year. David was elected as a federal conservative MP in 1978 and I have not spoken to him since.

To elect a strong mayor, such as Ford envisages, will not work unless the mayor can get a majority of the council behind him or her. The easiest way to make that work is to invite the major political parties to run candidates for the mayor and councillor seats on city council. And that is about to happen?

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Home Town Haunting.

August 2, 2022August 1, 2022 by Peter Lowry

Barrie is beset by bad decisions this summer. The city lost a good mayor when Jeff Lehman decided to finally make the move to Queen’s Park. Poor timing on his part. He was left adrift and defeated by weak liberal leadership.

I was there to help, if he had thought to ask me. We have different views of what leadership means. He needed to recognize the needs of the people in the rural areas of our electoral district. Taking on an incumbent is far trickier than a fresh field.

But the major cause for concern is Lehman’s lack of planning for the future, particularly in filling the mayor’s chair. Who wants their legacy smeared by leaving their job to the town fool?

And that is one of the possibilities looking at the early registrations. First to file was boy wonder, former councillor, former MP, Alex Nuttall. Nuttall was a disciple of Patrick Brown—the former Barrie councillor, former MP, former leader of the Ontario conservatives and currently mayor of Brampton. It was Nuttall who moved into Patrick Brown’s proposed riding of Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte. He came within 86 votes of losing and he was hardly gracious at the recount.

It took him one term in Ottawa, to know he was out of his depth. His one contribution during that period was to work for Maxime Bernier who almost beat Andrew Scheer for the leadership of the conservatives—and went on to found the extremist People’s Party of Canada. To further prove he had no political smarts, Nuttall was a worker for Peter Mackay’s run for the leadership in 2020.

I admit that I have never liked Alex Nuttall. He was a confused and negative influence on city council. He was a useless member of parliament. His fighting against Barrie having a safe consumption site when he was in Ottawa was based on ignorance. He contributed less in Ottawa than the mice that run over the MP’s feet in their offices.

But I am going to have to pay attention in my own town as we head for this fall’s municipal elections. There is a city here that needs protection from ghosts of the past.

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There is no joy in Brampton.

July 30, 2022July 29, 2022 by Peter Lowry

Something smells in Brampton, Ontario, and it is not the roses that the city is famous for. Patrick Brown has returned to confuse and compound. A lost boy, Patrick clings to Brampton as his life raft in a stormy sea.

The former city councillor and Member of Parliament for Barrie, Ontario never has been tuned into the Brampton mysteries. He never understood the understated humour of former premier of Ontario Bill Davis. Bill was always proud of being from Brampton. It is a small town with grand ambitions.

It is not a Barrie, wrapped around a beautiful bay. It is not a Barrie, well-served with a major hospital and community college with links to major universities. It is not a Barrie with a hard-working city council. It is not a Barrie with its year-round tourism attractions. It is not a Barrie where a political Patrick Brown honed his skills as a retail politician.

A retail politician such as Patrick was never countenanced in Brampton. Retail politicians sell themselves. The brand is immaterial. A retail politician is a user. People are used and then discarded. Aides, are flattered and then floored when unknown. Voters are only a seasonal target.

Brown’s success as a retail politician was greatly expanded when fellow MP Jason Kenney explained to him the key to the ethnic diasporas of Canada. Kenney arranged for his young acolyte to make the long pilgrimages to India and Pakistan to make the connections to the Canadian diaspora from the Sub-Continent. It was how he swamped the membership in the Ontario progressive conservatives to win the leadership of Ontario’s conservatives. It was how he connected to more than 100,000 temporary sign-ups to the conservative party of Canada. It was what won him the Brampton stage four years ago.

But there is little honour in being a retail politician. You are kept busy keeping too many balls in the air. Mistakes can be made. Rules can be broken. And members of Brampton city council started to understand the callowness and selfishness of this gate crasher in the mayor’s chair. Patrick Brown just might have struck out this time. It might be time for him to get a real job.

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Coming to Hamilton.

July 29, 2022July 28, 2022 by Peter Lowry

Most of us probably think of Hamilton as the lunch-pail city of Ontario. Maybe we do but it doesn’t deserve a lunch-pail mayor such as former MPP Andrea Horwath. The city deserves better.

It is probably because I have always admired Hamilton. You can hardly drive over the Burlington Skyway and not be impressed by the vast and busy Hilton Works of Stelco. This is a company that helped build Canada throughout the 20^th Century.

Hamilton is a complex city. It is the east end with its homes of workers and of management for the steel plants, the downtown with that rusty steel building as a centrepiece and the mountain homes with shopping plazas as an afterthought. It hardly needs someone as inarticulate as Horwath as its chief salesperson.

We have really seen enough of Ms. Horwath at Queen’s Park.

She was elected to Queen’s Park in 2004 and became leader of the new democrats in 2009. She sat in place for the Wynne liberal years and blew her chance for power against the braggart Ford in 2018. The liberals self immolated that year and Horwath found she was leader of the opposition. It was another opportunity lost.

It was during the pandemic that I was trying to help someone in her town with a problem at a Hamilton hospital. She answered my e-mail about it by saying have the person call her Hamilton office. The person got nothing but busy signals. I tried to call and also got busy signals. It looks busy when you take the phones off the hook.

It looks like Ms. Horwath is following former federal candidate for conservative leader Patrick Brown’s lead. If it looks like you are at a dead end, you can always go back to your municipal roots.

The only problem with that is that Hamilton hardly needs a retiree from Queen’s Park for mayor.

Hamilton needs a mayor like John Tory in Toronto. He is always there. He is out where the people are. He is pro-active. Hamilton needs a champion. Ms. Horwath is no champion.

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Conservative Kangaroo Court.

July 25, 2022July 24, 2022 by Peter Lowry

Wow, would it ever speed up the processes through our courts if the conservative party’s minions were running things. I will freely admit that I have absolutely no use for Patrick Brown, former MP, former Ontario PC leader, and former candidate for federal conservative leader. It is simply that I believe if you accuse someone of doing something wrong, you should prove it.

Mr. Brown has broken the rules in the past and I would suspect that he has done it again. As I understand the conservative party rules, a new membership in the party is required to have a personal cheque attached or valid credit card information that is issued in the applicant’s name. I would assume that rule would preclude money orders being used, as you can buy those for Santa Claus. And Patrick Brown should know better.

It seems to me though that the charge that Brown had contravened the election act is much more serious. It should be easy enough to track down that story and find out if it really took place.

What concerns me the most is that the citizens of Brampton might be stuck with Brown in the mayor’s chair for another four years. I am not sure that Brampton deserves that.

There have been repeated reports from Brampton of ruction at city hall. I have no idea what is going on there but it sounds to me that Brown does not know how to work with his council. It has been reported that when he was leader of the Ontario progressive conservative caucus, he had problems with an unruly group of conservatives. City councils are rarely all members of the same political party and you really do have to be a persuasive person to keep them all working in the best interests of their community.

While Patrick Brown has been active in politics since a very young age, he has not learned much about working with others. It seems to me that politicians who get the urge to get into politics later in life, after a successful business career, do a much better job for the local citizens. Brampton might be best to consider alternatives.

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What’s Democratic About It?

July 23, 2022July 22, 2022 by Peter Lowry

Ontario premier Doug Ford’s proposals for ‘super mayors’ in Toronto and Ottawa have nothing to do with democracy. What he seems to be trying to do is make sure that the developers keep working with city hall. It is probably the only way that those cities will ever have close to enough affordable housing.

As I understand it so far, the idea is to give the super mayor a veto over any motion by council but council can overrule the mayor with a two-thirds vote. Giving the super mayor control over budgeting as well as department appointments could also be part of the package. Knowing how the progressives and right-wing members break down on council, such a formula in Toronto would give the mayor a virtual control of the current council. While there is not a clear-cut right-left breakdown of council, you do see more left-wing councillors downtown and more right-wing suburban council members.

While there is general consensus that the more powerful mayor system would be more efficient, that does not mean that more meaningful work would be done. A powerful mayor might be able to negotiate more geared-to-income rental housing being built in the city but the mayor would also need to be motivated to use the power in that direction.

And there is still the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) attitude to geared-to-income in individual wards. No councillor wants to be drawn into battle with his or her voters.

Ideally the super mayor would have the ability to negotiate with developers to include a ratio of geared-to-income in any major project.

It is amusing to realize that a similar super mayor concept was proposed by the McGinty liberal government back in 2008 and David Miller, mayor at that time, thought the system was unnecessary.

Obviously, the imagination of the municipal affairs experts at Queen’s Park have yet to be challenged by this proposition. We will await developments.

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Ford’s Advice from Afar.

July 22, 2022July 21, 2022 by Peter Lowry

Ontario premier Doug Ford needs to stop taking advice from his dead brother. We hear that he is thinking of giving the mayors of Ottawa and Toronto powers similar to those of the U.S. ‘strong mayors.’ Ford seems to get all of his ideas from séances.

The older brother, Doug Ford served as a city councillor in the four years that his younger brother Rob was mayor of Toronto. With the younger brother’s use of crack cocaine and then falling ill with the cancer, that ultimately killed him, it was a turbulent time in Toronto City Hall.

It was assumed to be ‘get even’ time when the elder Ford became premier and one of his first acts was to cut the number of Toronto councillors from 47 to 25. This was despite the fact that the election was already underway.

Doug Ford, coincidently, was based in Chicago for his father’s label printing company during part of the reign of Richard M. Daley as Chicago’s super mayor. Ford never got the label business off the ground in Chicago but he should have understood why the Ontario approach to mayoralty is more challenging than the American system.

I have never known a mayor in Ontario who did not complain at one time or other that they only have one vote on council. What you need as mayor is something most good mayors—such as Toronto’s John Tory has—panache.

As chief magistrate of their community, our mayors are well-paid greeters and honours dispensers. The smarter mayors use their appointment privileges to strengthen their clique and to get objectives through the council agenda. The lazy ones leave the heavy lifting to the city clerk and often have to settle for a single term.

The most annoying problem that our mayors face is that they have to go ‘hat in hand’ to the senior levels of government to get the money required for large expenses such as subways and other high debt load projects.

Toronto is one of the five major cities in Canada recognized as a Charter City. That means it gets additional funding sources in addition to property taxes. Yet, as is always the case: The more you give them, the more they want.

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Brampton Brown Bifurcates.

July 21, 2022July 22, 2022 by Peter Lowry

It is amazing how Patrick Brown always seems to find the fork in the road of least resistance. For someone who has never held a real job, it seems he can always weasel his way out of one mess and get into another. His only problem seems to be, whenever he gets where he is going, he does nothing.

It was seven years ago, that Brown went from being the apparent do-nothing member of parliament for Barrie to leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative party. There are various versions of what went wrong there. Needless to say, he was soon applying for the regional chair position in Peel Region. When Doug Ford arbitrarily cancelled that position, Patrick took the fork in the road to the mayor’s role in Brampton. It took some promises but with the aid of the South Asia diaspora in Brampton, the MP, come party leader, became mayor of Brampton.

I have been meaning to stop by some of Brampton’s parks to see how the big change is coming. Patrick promised members of the South Asia diaspora in Brampton that he would turn some of Brampton’s lovely parks into cricket pitches. South Asians dearly love their cricket games.

If there is one thing that Patrick knows, it is politics. He made quite a show of announcing that he was quitting the conservative leadership race (since he was already kicked out). That was a carefully chosen crowd that he had assembled—probably from lists of people who wanted something from the city. They all seemed pleased that he was running for mayor again.

And he even brought along his kids because they are at the cute stage. After all, who would want a picture of Patrick.

If there is any progressive running who thinks he or she can beat Brown, I would be pleased to come down to Brampton for a day and discuss how he can be beaten. Mind you, the gas is on you. Just once, I would like to see Patrick have to get a real job.

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Ford is No Tory.

May 12, 2022May 11, 2022 by Peter Lowry

There seems to be no doubt at all that Torontonians are very pleased that Doug Ford did not defeat John Tory for mayor of Toronto eight years ago. Four years ago, the city was collectively pleased to re-elect John Tory as mayor. In fact, he won in every one of the city’s 25 wards. I am sure that most voters are pleased to see that he has agreed to run for re-election this year.

I mention this by way of suggesting that Doug Ford is no John Tory. Ford is also not even a progressive conservative. He might call himself a conservative but he sure seems unfamiliar with that brand of politician. He seems more like Donald Trump, who did little to enhance America’s reputation when he spent four years as president of that country.

Some reporters refer to Mr. Ford as a populist. Populism, as a political theory, is based on separating the political parties’ political ends from the will of the people. The closest we have seen to populism in Canada was the foolish attempt earlier this year of a bunch of truckers to disrupt and replace our current federal government.

If anything, Mr. Ford has shown disturbing signs of megalomania. This is a person obsessed with power and wealth and who likes to promote grand schemes. Practically on day-one of becoming premier in Ontario, he stopped the election of an enlarged Toronto city council. He was getting even with some of the enemies he made during his days on city council.

Doug Ford did not get his political training from his father. His father was a conservative who served one term at Queen’s Park on the back benches of the Mike Harris government.

Doug Ford Junior got his training from his younger brother Rob. Rob spent 10 years as councillor for Ward 2 in Etobicoke. When he ran for mayor in 2010, he asked his older brother Doug to run for his council seat. They both won and that was the beginning of Ford Nation—in their mother’s backyard. The younger brother’s penchant for crack cocaine made for an interesting term as mayor. He died of cancer before Doug Ford ran for mayor of Toronto and lost to John Tory.

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What’s in a Name?

April 29, 2022 by Peter Lowry

When you live in a large city, you find naming streets and places more difficult as time goes on. Proposed names have to be researched. Maybe not to the extent that the Roman church checks out its saints but you have to be wary of later embarrassments.

But I am sure many of us are sick and tired of this constant witch hunt for people in the past who might have made a mistake in judgement. I think this particularly relates to heroes such as Egerton Ryerson (1803 to 1882) and Sir John A. Macdonald (1815 to 1891).

I think those people running Ryerson University failing to charge the nincompoops who tore down Ryerson’s statue did far worse than anything Ryerson did in his lifetime. Defacing that statue was a criminal offense. Ryerson did a lot of good in his lifetime. He created Ontario’s public school system. He also helped design the residential school system and Sir John A. Macdonald signed off on it. And ‘Metropolitan Toronto University’ is a stupid name. I will just continue calling it ‘Ryerson.’

John A. and old Egerton did what they thought was a good thing at the time. They might not have been aware of a weakness among the Roman church’s celibate clerics. They failed to recognize the harm they were doing in separating the children from their parents and they failed to protect the children from their minders.

And it is hardly the worst mistake in Sir John A. Macdonald’s lifetime. He was not only a drunkard; he was also a conservative. Yet, he contributed a great deal to the founding of this country and deserves our respect for that.

But we need to do something about this naming problem. Maybe we would be better off if we just numbered streets and avenues. And you should only sell naming rights once. I miss a place called SkyDome in Toronto. The same for the O’Keefe Centre.

I remember one time when our council member in North York was telling us that a nearby nature walk was to be named after his mother. I told him that it would be wrong because she was still alive. He was even more annoyed with me when I said she still had time to rob a bank.

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