I thought I mentioned the garbage collection. Yes, it has gone well, but the savings are smaller than has been advertised; it’s somewhere around 8 million a year. To be fair, there seem to fewer complaints with the GFL service than with the City owned service.
To me, it shows that Miller could get money (yes, some from the province) for infrastructure. I do not believe Ford has.
No, I didn’t. You’re right; it was a jab. I don’t think you think Ford is a great policy make; I think it’s a stretch to say he’s better than (or as good as) than Miller. My point stands, though; Ford isn’t as bad a policy maker as he could be because the limited policy he has is blocked by council.
Miller’s policies also include Ridership Growth Strategy (which improved transit for the non-subway lines); getting the City of Toronto act amended to allow diversification of taxes away from property tax (property tax is fine for a smaller city, but larger cities need a more robust, scalable tax base); tackling a very serious problem with banking of sick days by the union (which is what the strike was about); lowering commercial property taxes (strange that this would be a thing for some radical left mayor, isn’t it?); general improvement in the cost of services delivered (Miller was quietly performing reviews that generally got a 5% reduction in costs per year, unlike the trumpeted and unfound 10% that Ford has repeatedly claimed - the difference is that Miller increased services). Miller’s “Everyone gets to p(l)ay” strategy for community centres and sports fields was derided, and again seems strange that he’s some far left mayor, but it was much better handled than the massive increases in sports field fees that Ford’s budget created.
Was Miller great? If you want to argue he wasn’t, I won’t bother arguing with you. Was he better than Ford? Yes, he was.
Well, to be fair, I’ll spot you a Jen Keesmat and Andy Byford, then, which might tip the scales back. Especially Jen.
No, I pretty much had you down as a Miller detractor rather than a Ford supporter, which is fine. There are lots of reasons to dislike Miller; he really ought to have done something about the Gardner (the expressway that is the downfall of Toronto mayors). His strange, now-reversed aversion to Arctics, particularly on Eglinton. While I agree with the outcome on the strike, the garbage strike. He did a bad job on selling the VRT.
But there is, to me, a big difference between “He espouses policies I think are wrong, or disagree with” and “He doesn’t have any actual policies that anyone can point to”. You may feel differently.
Oh wait, that was the entire point of my post. Ford is not an awful mayor because of policy. He is an awful mayor because he fails at the non-policy aspects of the job, which in Toronto, is most of the job.
No, he is an awful mayor due to policy. He has proposed policy which is not supported by other councillors, so it doesn’t get implemented. He loses more votes than he wins. You know he lost the last budget vote, right?
Miller was a decent mayor because of policy. He did not do as much as he should have, but he generally inacted his agenda, which largely people agreed with.
But he did very little, so in effect accomplished next to nothing.
Ford, conversely, has… done very little. Different men, totally different approaches or lack thereof, but same results, more or less.
The fact that Ford has failed to do more because he fails to win votes is, again, precisely what I was saying; a Toronto mayor’s skill at doing his job cannot be measured by his use of his power, because s/he doesn’t have much legal power. It’s a weak-mayor system. Ford fails at what he does not because of his policies, but because he does not adequately represent the city to the public.
In a very tangible sense, Ford losing a budget vote is a much smaller failure than, say, not showing up for Pride Day. Toronto still has a budget; Ford voting “no” instead of “yes” doesn’t change that. But only Ford can be the Mayor of Toronto, representing its highest office on Pride Day, and he failed to do that. And that matters, a lot. Ford cannot really have a lot of impact on the way the city runs in a practical sense, but he can certainly embarrass it. The Mayor’s job is, frankly, about 75% Governor-General and 25% Prime Minister. (Not a perfect comparison, but you see the point.)
David Miller, for all that he spent his term blaming other people for Toronto’s budget, at least could represent the city to outside parties and, while he alienated constituents outside the downtown core, for most of his term he did not actively piss off the people of his own city. He wasn’t a distraction and a burden on the city, which Ford is.
The good news in this is Ford can’t ruin the city. When he was elected, I knew downtowners who were screaming that Toronto was doomed and they were going to move to London or New York. “Don’t worry,” I said, “He can’t ruin Toronto. He’s not eh King of Toronto. The mayor doesn’t have the power to do anything seriously bad. If he goes off the rails, council just runs the city.” I didn’t imagine it would happen that fast, but it was so.
And, incredibly, Ford might well be re-elected. Hardly in the bag, but it’s possible. The mind boggles.
ETA: Sort of connected to Ford’s idiocy, one area I fail to give Miller due credit is that he was CLEAN. In an area of politics infamous for graft, slime and corruption, you cannot deny David Miller was about as honest as municipal politicians come. Ford isn’t dirty that I know of, but then I’m not sure that’s because he doesn’t want to be or he’s just too dumb to leverage his office for money, but credit Miller with being clean, something Toronto City Hall needed at the time.
He did quite a lot. Most of it, really, was overwhelmingly boring stuff. RGS, Tower renewal, dropping taxes on businesses, the huge LRT purchase for (I think) 501, provincial money for transit in the form of 3 LRT lines, including the much needed Eglinton Crosstown. Not much, really, I suppose. Delayed the Airport Island bridge, which is still worth hearing people complain about. Forced CUPE to negotiate on the massive unfunded liabilities of the banked sick day. Not much, now that I actually type it out.
Yes, the damage he can cause, the tangible damage, is less than it would be in a strong mayor system. So? He tied up council for a year arguing about a casino when we have, you know, actual problems to solve. Sure, he was prevented from selling off properties cheaply because someone else stopped him. The fact that others stop him from implementing bad policy does not make his policy any less bad.
Sure. He has a bully-pulpit, and his “you can have subways for FREE and anything less is just you getting screwed by those downtowners” is more detrimental than his budget vote. The bully pulpit, the changing of the opinions of people who vote based on mistruths and, frankly, lies, is, I agree more dangerous than the one vote he has on council. Is that your point?
Tower Renewal, which you know, improves the lot of less-than-wealthy people by making the rental housing stock in Toronto more desirable, actually did good things that improved people’s lives; in fact, I would argue that it improved the lives more than it cost to do so. Same with Transit City (you know, the one with the LRT lines? That improve the transit in areas where transit is overwhelmed? Where Miller got provincial funds? Billions worth? For his constituents?), St. Clair Disaster, more flexible taxation for the city, etc. All the policy stuff that you keep hand waving away and comparing to, uh, outsourcing garbage collection.
On the other hand, Ford’s ripping up transit city (which was reinstated by council) cost a couple of years of delay in those LRTs, making life worse for the people who are hoping for them. But you’re correct; the checks on his power prevent him from doing things (I thought I was responding to the statement that Ford was no worse on policy than Miller) that would seriously injure the city.
Strange, I work in the downtown core (and live just outside it), and have never heard that. I’ve heard he’d screw up the transit file, and be an embarrassment, but not that everything was doomed.
It think it more than likely that he will be re-elected, depending as always on who runs against him. His policies are non-existent, there isn’t a lot of “gravy” to find, and he is slowing down progress, but, and this is, to me, important, the alienation and anger he taps into is very real, and, I believe, motivated by real and legitimate grievances. I don’t know what they are. I don’t understand them, and I clearly don’t value the things that give rise to them (in the sense that those are not the things that are important to me), but they should be understood and addressed. I don’t think Ford can address them, really, although honestly he probably wants to.
Ironically, in the meaningful way (ignoring his alleged drug usage) I strongly suspect Ford is clean. In fact, in a perverse sort of way, Ford is honest; he almost certainly believes everything he is saying. Ford is unlikely to take money in exchange for favours intentionally (he has done so unintentionally, but I honestly don’t believe he really understood what he was doing).
Boy, my Facebook was flooded with it. But I sometimes run with a very artsy crowd.
Well, there’s the million dollar question. We have no idea, really, who will run, despite the Toronto Star’s weird attempt to draft Olivia Chow. What’s Sarah Thomson doing these days?
Actually, I mention it in my first response to you.
Apparently, the one I run with has a better idea of how city politics work. I was talking with a CBC reporter (who had the city hall beat) at the Spacing party a few days before the election, and his bet was that Ford would alienate council and be unable to do anything. Ford actually lasted longer than anyone expected.
Being annoying, same thing she did during the last election. Stintz would take it. Mysteriously, John Tory would take it (I have no idea what, if anything, he has accomplished). Perks would do well, downtown, but I don’t think he’d try for it, and I don’t thin he’d do well in Scarborough or Etobicoke. Chow wins in every match up I’ve seen, but I don’t know if the current scandal will lift Ford’s approval numbers.
No doubt, but have you seriously never heard people with the “(Name of politician they do not like) will DESTROY things if elected!” thing before?
I will believe Stintz or Tory would win when they win. Ford himself was considered a joke candidate at one point, and now look. Polls run in theory over a year before an election mean** absolutely nothing.**
Mayors in Ontario are nearly powerless (about all they can do that the other councillors cannot do is name people to committees). Consequently they can neither do much harm nor do much good of their own accord.
And now it looks like our loveable Senator Mike Duffy is going to be investigated by the RCMP for fraudulently claiming expenses from the senate while in actual fact he was campaigning for the CPC during the last election.
Of course, Prime Minister Harper knew nothing of this, because he does not really have a whole lot to do with how the election strategy unfolds. He’s more of a “hands-off” kind of a guy. These senators sort of took advantage of his easy going nature.
Sort of like how his own chief of staff didn’t tell Mr. Harper about the $90K he gifted to Duffy to pay off his other fraudulent housing claim. I mean, Mr. Harper cannot be expected to know what his going on in his office, right? Nigel was just trying to save the taxpayers money right? Or was that the talking point last week - I forget and it’s hard to keep track.
You expect the Prime Minister to personally review every expense clam from every senator?
You expect the Prime Minister to keep tabs on personal banking information of all his staff?
Sorry, but you’re sadly mistaken here. Not only is it plausible that the the Prime Minister didn’t know about any of this, but it’s also completely ridiculous to assume that he did know yet stood by and did nothing.
My mum put a card in the mail for me a week ago Sunday. Yes, the following Monday was a holiday in Ontario (and everywhere but Quebec) but Tuesday came and went, and then Wednesday, and then Thursday, and then Friday, and now Monday, and Tuesday, and I haven’t received the damned card from 700 Kms away in the same province.
What do the rest of you think of Canada Post’s service? Is it time to sell it off and privatize it? I’m all for it.
Why on earth sell off an agency that is actually making money for the Ontario government? Aren’t we supposed to be about reliable revenue streams and paying for what we buy?
'Cause I don’t think it’s the Government of Ontario’s business to sell booze. And even if booze was sold privately the government could still levy the same taxes for profit, like cigarettes, for example. And we wouldn’t be stuck with pension plans for retired cashiers. And maybe the hours would be better. The selection would be different depending on whose store you went to. There would be competition and price wars.
