Not being a fan of the new Toronto mayor, all I can do is commiserate with my Toronto friends. The truth is that Olivia Chow has taken on a task well beyond her capabilities. She was never a good councillor when she was on city council. She was waste of a seat in parliament, the time she was there. She never has been a leader or had any of the attributes of a successful mayor.
And the tasks facing her are daunting. She has Doug Ford running things at Queen’s Park and he is waiting for her to fail. She might have a bit of an edge in Ottawa where Jagmeet Singh might put in a good word for her with Justin Trudeau. She should not count on it.
The feds would likely choke if she goes to them for the full $1.5 billion of Toronto’s budget shortfall. And even then, this might be the least of her problems. How do you get the housing so desperately needed built today when the run-away renovation business in the city is drawing off so many of the trades needed to build new homes.
I was in Toronto on the weekend and I kept seeing all those towering new condominiums and wondering why the roads are in such crappy shape. Aren’t all those new buildings paying their taxes?
Since Mike Harris slammed the city together as a megacity, we have had a succession of mayors trying to make the city make do on less. The city at least could hold its head high with John Tory at the helm, but even he struggled with cheapening the service of city hall. It is a long time ago that people criticized my friend Phil Givens when he was mayor of the smaller city for buying a large piece of art for Nathan Phillips Square. The Givens, Dennison and Crombie era of mayors for the old Toronto was a time of increased pride in our city. We were growing rapidly and Queen’s Park might have been run by conservatives at the time but they understood their responsibilities to the cities of Ontario.
I liked how John Tory handled the job of mayor but even he failed to restore some of that pride, people felt for the city as it was back in the 1970s.
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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry
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