Sure, blame Toronto Mayor Rob Ford! You need to understand that even if you remove Rob Ford as mayor, Toronto’s problems will not go away. You will still have a dysfunctional city council and a badly run city.
But no city of its size or larger seems to be run much better. Have you looked at New York’s problems? And do you really want to be like Chicago? Montreal has a construction probe in progress that is delving into levels of corruption that are even surprising the crooks.
You have to think of Toronto’s problems at city hall as former Premier Michael Harris’ gift to the citizens of Canada’s largest city. And no provincial political party will rush to fix the problems he created. When Mike Harris finally amalgamated the city, it remained less than the sum of its parts and Queen’s Park was in control. The large size of the city council that Harris provided practically guarantees a lack of cohesion on council.
Party politics is not there on the surface in the city but it exists in fact. Many councillors use party politics to get elected and then act as independents. Alignments can be a temporary convenience but can shift with the issues. The left-wing of council has an advantage with the strong New Democratic electoral district associations in the downtown. The suburbs have Liberal and Conservative strengths. There are a few councillors who are not members of any party but they often align themselves with the right or the left of council.
Many citizens do not seem to realize that the mayor has just one vote among the council of 45. The mayor has an advantage in being able to work with a like-minded executive committee and set the agenda for the full council. As was noted last week in the casino vote, the left-wing of council got the 23 council members needed to overturn the mayor’s decision to take the casino off the agenda. The council decision on a casino was more of a rejection of the mayor but it still made council look ignorant and prudish.
While Toronto has had some bad experiences with both municipal-only and traditional parties at city hall, the only solution is to end the hypocrisy and put together parties that could then select their own mayor. The voters need to know who they are voting for, what the agenda will be and who is responsible. Until then, you can enjoy the funny farm.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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