[Vamp018]

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

$1:

Sounds like a certain Democrat from chicago

... and his dad before him (if I'm thinking of the same guy) ...

Yep as is his half brother (MB)supporter/member from across the water.

[JaredMilne]

I'm not from Toronto, much less Ontario, so take my opinion for what it's worth.

That said, I believe Rob Ford is perhaps the best example of why forcibly amalgamating municipalities is often a bad, bad idea.

The whole reason Toronto became this giant megacity was because the Mike Harris government forcibly amalgamated the old city of Toronto with surrounding communities like Scarborough and North York. The rationale would be that it would decrease the costs of services and save taxpayers money.

I found an article from the Frontier Centre for Public Policy detailing the epic fail that is Toronto's megacity amalgamation. It increased costs and the size of local government, to say nothing of how the expanded city council was a "shambles" that was "too large to be effective".

Keep in mind this article was published in 2008, long before Ford stepped into the mayor's chair. Oh, and the amalgamation was done by Mike Harris, who was elected on a platform of trimming the fat that supposedly existed in government.

Aside from all these headaches, we all know the story of how fed-up suburbanites voted Ford into office because they were unhappy with the downtown urban people of old Toronto and the latter's priorities. It's clear that the downtown residents and suburbanites have different priorities. That, in turn, led to so much of the polarization and hostility between different parts of the community...which was only made worse by Ford's leadership style, such as it is.

I think the best solution for all concerned would be to de-amalgamate Toronto and go back to the old way of doing things. If suburban communities like Scarborough want to be governed by someone like Rob Ford, let them. If downtown Torontonians want to be governed by someone like David Miller, let them. Certainly the city council would be smaller and wouldn't be the huge "jobs program" that Bart is describing it as. And none of this would prevent Toronto with cooperating with its neighbours on an issue-by-issue basis, like sharing fire or transit services.

[rickc]

Its time for this fat fool to step off, and quit embarrassing the good people of the great city of Toronto. Don't go away mad, just go away!

[llama66]

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

I'm not from Toronto, much less Ontario, so take my opinion for what it's worth.

That said, I believe Rob Ford is perhaps the best example of why forcibly amalgamating municipalities is often a bad, bad idea.

The whole reason Toronto became this giant megacity was because the Mike Harris government forcibly amalgamated the old city of Toronto with surrounding communities like Scarborough and North York. The rationale would be that it would decrease the costs of services and save taxpayers money.

I found an article from the Frontier Centre for Public Policy detailing the epic fail that is Toronto's megacity amalgamation. It increased costs and the size of local government, to say nothing of how the expanded city council was a "shambles" that was "too large to be effective".

Keep in mind this article was published in 2008, long before Ford stepped into the mayor's chair. Oh, and the amalgamation was done by Mike Harris, who was elected on a platform of trimming the fat that supposedly existed in government.

Aside from all these headaches, we all know the story of how fed-up suburbanites voted Ford into office because they were unhappy with the downtown urban people of old Toronto and the latter's priorities. It's clear that the downtown residents and suburbanites have different priorities. That, in turn, led to so much of the polarization and hostility between different parts of the community...which was only made worse by Ford's leadership style, such as it is.

I think the best solution for all concerned would be to de-amalgamate Toronto and go back to the old way of doing things. If suburban communities like Scarborough want to be governed by someone like Rob Ford, let them. If downtown Torontonians want to be governed by someone like David Miller, let them. Certainly the city council would be smaller and wouldn't be the huge "jobs program" that Bart is describing it as. And none of this would prevent Toronto with cooperating with its neighbours on an issue-by-issue basis, like sharing fire or transit services.

Well Put, good sir.

I think the Rob Ford Chronicles has reached obnoxious levels. He has a problem (whether he admits it or not), he needs help and he must do these things if he thinks he even has a chance to win the next election, especially latest polls have him out of the running for reelection (Election is a year away... so big grain of salt).

The guy had the chance to come clean and look like the bigger guy (no pun intended) back in May, had he admitted to the crack use then and told reporters that he had gone for help then I think he would have come out of this a lot (read: 1000 times) better. But he denied the allegations, he denied the allegations even for a short while after the Chief of Police said they had the now infamous video. So now any new allegations are going to be looked at differently because he lied about the crack use. The took what could have been a PR victory, and managed to screw it up so badly that he might have just ruined his chance for any public office ever again. If the Mayor wasn't going to be a lame duck Mayor before, he sure is now (and I mean even before council neutered him) What a PR disaster.

It actually hurts my head to think how badly he fucked everything up.

[Jabberwalker]

$1:

That said, I believe Rob Ford is perhaps the best example of why forcibly amalgamating municipalities is often a bad, bad idea.

Yup. Toronto worked just fine beforehand ... and so did the suburbs, for that matter.

[Individualist]

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

I'm not from Toronto, much less Ontario, so take my opinion for what it's worth.

That said, I believe Rob Ford is perhaps the best example of why forcibly amalgamating municipalities is often a bad, bad idea.

Emphasis on the "forcibly". I agree that it was a bad idea, and agree that it had crass political motivations behind it (gerrymandering by Harris to thwart left-wing downtowners, Barbara Hall specifically). It was similar logic to that which separated the prairie region west of Manitoba into smaller, more easily controllable provinces than a larger regional entity (which would have been called "Buffalo") that could have more easily challenged Central Canadian power.

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

Aside from all these headaches, we all know the story of how fed-up suburbanites voted Ford into office because they were unhappy with the downtown urban people of old Toronto and the latter's priorities. It's clear that the downtown residents and suburbanites have different priorities. That, in turn, led to so much of the polarization and hostility between different parts of the community...which was only made worse by Ford's leadership style, such as it is.

Miller's handling of the garbage strike and his overall left-authoritarian style turned off Torontonians in the suburbs. In particular, Miller seemed obsessed with inconveniencing and punishing drivers of private automobiles. Like fellow paternalistic authoritarian Dalton McGuinty, Miller also liked trying to ban things he didn't approve of, like handguns and shooting ranges. And his vendetta against the Toronto Island Airport was intensely counterproductive in a city that, despite all the ugly condo towers and hipster posers, is still primarily a centre of commerce.

Those living in Scarborough and Etobicoke do tend to have different priorities that those living in the old city, but more important is the growing gap in terms of values and priorities between those in downtown Toronto and the rest of the country. Downtown councillor Adam Vaughn proudly declares that he's never been to communities in the broader GTA - "I am a Torontonian and the GTA is the rest of Canada". And he's right, in a sense. The communities that so many downtown snobs in the media like Vaughn (a former reporter), Christopher Hume, Heather Mallick and Enzo DiMatteo look down their noses at are more indicative of the broader Canada than the island of central planners, collectivists and social engineers that downtown Toronto has become.

Commentators from outside the CotU don't feel the need to name-check Jane Jacobs or Richard Florida in every discussion, place people who commute to work in a car on the same moral level as war criminals, use expressions like "world class city" in a non-ironic way, or brag about how they never eat in chain restaurants or shop in chain stores. And it's these people who helped elect Ford. The Toronto Star editorial staff like to think of themselves as "kingmakers", and the irony is that their most successful achievement in this regard (a mayor who brags about a complete different set of dining habits) is the exact opposite of what they actually wanted. Every time Christopher Hume or Thomas Walkom wrote some screeching anti-Ford article, the man's numbers went up.

Of course, there are all kinds of people who live in downtown Toronto who don't match the "latte-sipping elitist" stereotype and who like cars and personal space, and I'm sure there are plenty of people living in Etobicoke who like art galleries, don't mind taxes and use the term "city-building" in regular conversation. People have to stop thinking of Ford as the cause of this dysfunction but as the effect. Swinging the pendulum wildly from left to right sets the stage for perpetual warfare, which I guess Jared is the whole point of your call for de-amalgamation. But this ideological see-saw doesn't need to be.

The irony is that the downtown left actually had the right idea last time in putting their support behind someone who was centre-left and not hard-left. Many "progressive" downtowners held their noses while voting for Smitherman, as the only things he had going for him from their perspective was that he was gay, not averse to spending money, and most importantly, not Rob Ford. It was a good idea, but badly executed. Smitherman was ideologically moderate compared to Miller, Adam Giambrone and Joe Pantalone, but in an election where you had a strong candidate campaigning almost solely on the theme of "respect for the taxpayer", putting Mr. eHealth in the ring with him wasn't going to end well.

The lesson some on the downtown left took from this was "Screw compromise candidates, we're going for broke next time." Hence the momentum building behind as yet undeclared candidate Olivia Chow. Others are still trying to pursue the compromise path with John Tory, although I'd suggest that most of the people who want John Tory to run would never actually vote for the man themselves. They like Tory because he's their kind of conservative; that is, one who can't win an election to save his life. Like Joe Clark, Tory always finds a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

De-amalgamation might end this culture war, or at least turn down the heat on it. But downtown Toronto further isolating itself behind a Berlin Wall from the "rest of Canada" will not help the overall political discussion in Canada. Like it or not, Toronto is still the media and business capital of the country, and having its residents so culturally and ideologically removed from the rest of the country is dangerous to national unity and our already fragile sense of national identity. Isn't it better to have a country where a small-government conservative like Rob Ford can draw votes in progressive Toronto and a progressive like Naheed Nenshi can draw votes in conservative Calgary?

[raydan]

I read, "Toronto Mayor Rob Ford was stripped..."


Threw up...


Refuse to read any further...

[Jabberwalker]

$1:

Emphasis on the "forcibly". I agree that it was a bad idea, and agree that it had crass political motivations behind it (gerrymandering by Harris to thwart left-wing downtowners, Barbara Hall specifically). It was similar logic to that which separated the prairie region west of Manitoba into smaller, more easily controllable provinces than a larger regional entity (which would have been called "Buffalo") that could have more easily challenged Central Canadian power.

It was also used on the Island of Montreal to stamp out the political and cultural identities of the sizable English suburbs ... somewhat successfully, in fact.

[Jabberwalker]

raydan raydan:

I read, "Toronto Mayor Rob Ford was stripped..."


Threw up...


Refuse to read any further...

... kind of reminds you of seeing whales being stripped of their blubber in the old newsreels, don't it?

[JaredMilne]

Individualist Individualist:

Emphasis on the "forcibly". I agree that it was a bad idea, and agree that it had crass political motivations behind it (gerrymandering by Harris to thwart left-wing downtowners, Barbara Hall specifically). It was similar logic to that which separated the prairie region west of Manitoba into smaller, more easily controllable provinces than a larger regional entity (which would have been called "Buffalo") that could have more easily challenged Central Canadian power.

Ugh, don't I know it.

Individualist Individualist:

Commentators from outside the CotU don't feel the need to name-check Jane Jacobs or Richard Florida in every discussion, place people who commute to work in a car on the same moral level as war criminals, use expressions like "world class city" in a non-ironic way, or brag about how they never eat in chain restaurants or shop in chain stores. And it's these people who helped elect Ford. The Toronto Star editorial staff like to think of themselves as "kingmakers", and the irony is that their most successful achievement in this regard (a mayor who brags about a complete different set of dining habits) is the exact opposite of what they actually wanted. Every time Christopher Hume or Thomas Walkom wrote some screeching anti-Ford article, the man's numbers went up.

Of course, there are all kinds of people who live in downtown Toronto who don't match the "latte-sipping elitist" stereotype and who like cars and personal space, and I'm sure there are plenty of people living in Etobicoke who like art galleries, don't mind taxes and use the term "city-building" in regular conversation. People have to stop thinking of Ford as the cause of this dysfunction but as the effect. Swinging the pendulum wildly from left to right sets the stage for perpetual warfare, which I guess Jared is the whole point of your call for de-amalgamation. But this ideological see-saw doesn't need to be.

The irony is that the downtown left actually had the right idea last time in putting their support behind someone who was centre-left and not hard-left. Many "progressive" downtowners held their noses while voting for Smitherman, as the only things he had going for him from their perspective was that he was gay, not averse to spending money, and most importantly, not Rob Ford. It was a good idea, but badly executed. Smitherman was ideologically moderate compared to Miller, Adam Giambrone and Joe Pantalone, but in an election where you had a strong candidate campaigning almost solely on the theme of "respect for the taxpayer", putting Mr. eHealth in the ring with him wasn't going to end well.

...

De-amalgamation might end this culture war, or at least turn down the heat on it. But downtown Toronto further isolating itself behind a Berlin Wall from the "rest of Canada" will not help the overall political discussion in Canada. Like it or not, Toronto is still the media and business capital of the country, and having its residents so culturally and ideologically removed from the rest of the country is dangerous to national unity and our already fragile sense of national identity. Isn't it better to have a country where a small-government conservative like Rob Ford can draw votes in progressive Toronto and a progressive like Naheed Nenshi can draw votes in conservative Calgary?

That's what it all comes back to in Canada, isn't it-the more centrist, pragmatic nature of so many Canadians. Remember that a critical element of Ford's platform was his promise to save money while not cutting essential city services. This certainly didn't hurt his standing with his base, although he did end up breaking this promise later in his mayoralty.

But Individualist raises an extremely important point here. There are far too many people feeding into the stereotype that all downtown Torontonians are all the latte-sipping leftists that Ford and many columnists at places like Sun Media decry, while all suburbanites are a group of closet bigots who don't care about anything beyond their next case of beer or McDonald's takeout. This is being exploited by people just as much on the left as on the right, and not just in Toronto but across Canada.

Just take a look at this garbage, written by somebody who uses Ford to paint all the suburbs with the same ugly brush for supporting Ford.

I'm one of those suburbanites he could have described, and I'm extremely irritated by many of the people who have the traits Individualist describes in the first paragraph of this quote, including the quoting of Jane Jacobs and the demonizing of anyone who commutes to work in their cars, or who shops and eats at chain stores and restaurants. Stuff like this is what alienates me from some of the more hardcore progressive activists out there. The rhetoric the Council of Canadians uses in some of its messaging, (e.g., demonizing the oilsands as "Mordor"), makes it that much harder for me to support them.

And yet, I have many of the same hangups as a lot of progressives about things like some of the elements of trade deals like NAFTA and CETA, the status of Aboriginal people in Canada, the impact of recent changes to the tax system, and so forth. It's like Jonathan Kay wrote in his review of one of Linda McQuaig's most recent books, in that he was surprised that he considered many of the arguments McQuaig and her co-author made to be quite reasonable, but he was turned off by the attitude of the writers in that they seemed to inherently dislike rich people as a whole.

But it goes the other way, too. Ford did not do anyone any favours by inviting Don Cherry to his inauguration to more or less declare war on cyclists and so many downtown residents in general. Certainly his supporters in the Sun Media chains were quite happy to paint everyone in downtown Toronto as an effete latte-sipper, never mind that many of those downtowners are also ordinary, hardworking Canadians who take their kids to hockey practice and enjoy Tim's coffee just as much as anyone in Ford Nation itself. The federal Conservatives are also pulling this crap, depicting themselves as the outsiders fighting for the little guy against the elitists who support the Liberals and the NDP...never mind that I know quite a few of those "little guys" who work hard for their money, prefer Tim's coffee to lattes, are proud Albertans and yet despise Stephen Harper.

That's one of the biggest challenges not just in Toronto, but also in our provinces and nationally as well-trying to find ways to actually build bridges between citizens as much as possible and emphasizing what we have in common.

But in today's day and age, how do we do that?

[Thanos]

We're in a cycle where the worst among us command the most attention and somehow manage to accrue power and influence from their bad behaviour. Whether it's forty years worth of liberal and leftists referring to ALL conservatives as being little better than fascists, or conservatives who's hatred of Barack Obama is so uncontrollable that they're willing to sabotage the US government and collapse the world economy just to screw him, the worst among us are in charge of too much.

I offer no solution. I'm not sure if there is one, at least not short term. Not to start a generational war or anything like that, but the bad behaviour on both sides seems to come mostly from radicalized baby boomers. Gen X'ers and Millenials don't seem to be as nearly as pissed off or suffering from bad temperment as the Boomers are. The long-term solution might reside solely in that, as the Boomers age and die off, the overall society becomes less radical, angry, and fueled by so much reckless hatred of the "enemy". It's difficult to believe that a single generation can emotionally and mentally strangle a society so much, but a generation as huge and influential as the Baby Boomers never existed before either. Their gradual disappearance into the pages of history might have as revolutionary an effect on society as much as their appearance and then domination of the overall culture did as well.

[Jabberwalker]

$1:

We're in a cycle where the worst among us command the most attention and somehow manage to accrue power and influence from their bad behaviour. Whether it's forty years worth of liberal and leftists referring to ALL conservatives as being little better than fascists, or conservatives who's hatred of Barack Obama is so uncontrollable that they're willing to sabotage the US government and collapse the world economy just to screw him, the worst among us are in charge of too much.

The Lindsay Lohans, Donald Trumps and Paris Hiltons are inheriting the Earth.

Maybe, if I were sufficiently creepy I too could be rich, famous and powerful. Maybe, I'm only a lewd, rude Twitter gram away from power!

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Thanos Thanos:

We're in a cycle where the worst among us command the most attention and somehow manage to accrue power and influence from their bad behaviour. Whether it's forty years worth of liberal and leftists referring to ALL conservatives as being little better than fascists, or conservatives who's hatred of Barack Obama is so uncontrollable that they're willing to sabotage the US government and collapse the world economy just to screw him, the worst among us are in charge of too much.

Welcome to Civilization 101. Happens to pretty much every powerful empire/civilization at some point.

[Freakinoldguy]

It just dawned on my why Ford isn't stepping down. If he can last till just before the next election people will remember him, not for his personal antics, or ability as Mayor but as a famous name and since we're becoming more and more like the States, having a famous name is just as important in getting elected to office as having a good platform.

His remaining in office is just another political campaign move, albeit early and people can howl all they want about him but one thing he and his handlers aren't is politically un-savy or media stupid.

So standby Toronto. Whether the Council can make him resign or not may be irrelevant because despite their best attempts he might just end up back as the Mayor in 2014 especially considering that alot of people consider him a good Mayor mated to a despicable human being.

[Gunnair]

raydan raydan:

I read, "Toronto Mayor Rob Ford was stripped..."


Threw up...


Refuse to read any further...

'Bout time you darkened the doorway again.