Toronto’s extremely small ‘p’ politics

We believe in strong government everywhere except in Toronto. We favor strong executives and strong political parties to keep Canada united, democratic, and effectively led. We’re proud of the historic capacity of Canadian reformers — when in office in provincial capitals and in Ottawa — to get what we want done.

We look down on Washington gridlock. But when we compare the City of Toronto to Chicago and New York, we concentrate on demographics and cuisine.

In Toronto politics, the frontrunners campaign on platforms and on resumes that highlight their personal enthusiasm for endless meetings with other politicians and lobbying other governments for money.

Can you imagine Michael Bloomberg or Rahm Emanuel running for mayor of Toronto? Why not?

It’s bigger than Chicago and is growing faster than New York, and still maintains a handy northern European respect for those in authority.

(Of course, the gentleman’s school of old Ontario believes that Toronto’s big enough to be taken seriously in New York and Los Angeles but worries that it may be too divided to be one city. John Barber of the Toronto Star argues that Ford Nation is real and so alien that it must be excised from the body politic of Toronto’s delicate downtown. Surely, the city’s intelligentsia can do politics with commuters in Scarborough and single parents in Etobicoke. After all, they’re qualified to guide Canada and advise Iraq on federalism.)

Toronto is also a mecca for pragmatic, talented, and tolerant individuals. In every sphere, including national and provincial politics, they favor strong leaders over weak ones.

Nevertheless, Torontonians who excel at exercising power give generously to Toronto charities but leave its politics to "lifers."

The key problem is hardly the savagery of its unions, community groups, public intellectuals, and journalists, and the solution is not teaching Torontonians to be even nicer.

Power itself is what’s missing.

The prospect of wielding real power is what attracts individuals who are best at wielding it. And the prospect of electing individuals to powerful jobs invites voters to think carefully and then turn out to vote.

Happily, improving the odds of electing exceptional mayors, at least for exceptional times, doesn’t demand that we find a charismatic import or accept less accountability as citizens.

The first big step is changing a few of the 459 provisions of Ontario’s City of Toronto Act, 2006.

That statute created the terms and conditions of what political scientists and policy wonks call a "weak mayor system." Appropriately, the Globe and Mail invoked its feature in endorsing John Tory for mayor:

“Remember, Toronto has what is known as a weak mayor system. The mayor is not a prime minister. Not even close. A Toronto mayor is but one vote among 45 on council. He may have allies, but he doesn’t lead a party. He isn’t backed by a slate of councillors who ran on a common platform…. The mayor has to negotiate his way to better policies, better choices and better government. He has to be a networker-in-chief….”

Networkers will help you get out of a ditch. And they thrive in great cities. But networkers can’t crack their dire political challenges. They have democratic personalities and never go on binges. However, exceptional leaders won’t seek an executive office with terms of reference that give them limited carrots and no sticks.

Surely, there must be a better way for Torontonians to avoid being harmed by lousy mayors than by trivializing the job.

The Rob Ford Embarrassment doesn’t argue for keeping the status quo but for replacing it with a strong mayor system: a system in which credible candidates would be recruited, tested, nominated, and backed by registered political parties. If those parties didn’t take their responsibilities seriously, they’d pay. Those parties, as well as family reputations, would suffer for the failures of their mayoral and their council candidates to deliver.

Few Torontonians ever say they like partisan politics. But they show up in highly partisan provincial and federal elections. In far greater numbers, though, they leave it to their neighbors to vote for innocuous names and innocuous incumbents on city ballots.

Toronto isn’t an island; its mayor must have influence in Queens Park and Ottawa. That influence, however, will only be strong enough to secure significant wins for Toronto if the mayor of Toronto has won more votes in Toronto than the busy Premier of Ontario and the ever-embattled Prime Minister of Canada.

Even in liberal Ontario, the Cops are Tops

Ontario political activists see Ontario as a liberal society, surrounded by neighbors who are less so.

Regardless of party label, liberal sentiments are usually in charge. Sure, Ontario liberal and progressive politicians must keep an eye on taxes and deficits. But, in their hearts, they are in it for the little guy; they embrace change and distrust bullying traditions.

Historically, their outstanding virtue was their skepticism toward entrenched institutional authority. This perspective wasn’t always popular—but it was genuine. Colonial Tories and their Crown, in fact, labeled and persecuted many of them as radical democrats and traitors.

That was then.

If liberalism in Ontario stands for anything today, it stands for trust in public power.

Liberals such as premier Dalton McGuinty talk about new challenges, embrace futurists, and put their faith in established institutions. They call their opponents extremists and defend the province’s oldest institutions. 

Least discussed and least liberal is their deference toward state power’s most faithful servant: the police.

A couple of years ago, Toronto hosted the G-20. To help protect Canada’s reputation as a quiet northern democracy, the Ontario Cabinet quietly gave Ontario police forces additional powers to restrain thousands of anticipated protestors. The well-publicized incidents of abusive policing that did ensue were blamed on a handful of overzealous officers and, conceivably, the brutish vibes given off that Alberta Prime Minister, Stephen Harper.

Indeed, Toronto’s Chief of Police at the time, Bill Blair, survived the G-20 scandal. Indeed, he has sufficient stature today to publicly protect his vast police bureaucracy from budget cuts that are being imposed across other Toronto services.

Rob Ford, Toronto's populist conservative mayor, asks for cuts in the police budget, and Blair responds that he wouldn’t be able to do his job. And left councilors obsequiously agree with the Chief: the “safety” of the city was supposedly at stake.

Fifty years ago, those councilors' bravest liberal-minded parents would have asked for Blair’s immediate resignation. The others would have whispered to themselves: who’s left to control the beast?

As important, this month, Premier Dalton McGuinty threw his credibility as Ontario’s most successful Liberal Premier into upholding the Ontario Provincial Police’s right to use their professional judgment in deciding when they should serve a formal order from the court.

In a province-wide broadcast, OPP Superintendent Chris Lewis repudiated a complaint by Justice David Brown of the Ontario Superior Court that a court order to lift a railway blockade wasn’t being acted on. Lewis stated that his overriding responsibility was to maintain the peace. Amazingly, McGuinty offered him his unqualified support: “In our democracy, we do not direct the police. That would be inappropriate.”

No? In some societies, the police are free to take care of things. But, surely, not in ours.

Premier McGuinty, of course, can call his Deputy Minister of Energy to help nudge along new supports for clean energy, but must not call the police to tell them how to make an arrest. That said, policing isn’t an existential job in a liberal democracy, I think.

The situation was complicated: it involved First Nation grievances and a blockade of a vital transportation system. For the protestors and the wider society, many complex and conflicting rights were in dispute. (Two legal scholars backed Lewis’s ‘cautious’ approach.) The case for police discretion, nevertheless, boils down to two dangerous assumptions: the police may have better political instincts than the judges, and that peace and quiet is their overriding mission.

Liberals and tomorrow’s insolent protestors should be wary.

Democracy doesn’t keep our liberties robust by guaranteeing that the most politically astute are always in charge. Furthermore, the politically astute aren’t necessarily nice. Our system is called liberal because it gives power and assigns accountability only to the ones that get elected.

We elect politicians to keep our rights up-to-date and we assign to free courts the authority to oversee their decisions and the actions of their agents. Our police forces aren’t free simply to keep the peace. Otherwise, they’d be tempted to exile troublemakers, just like the good ol’ days.

10% of an excellent idea: selling 10% of Toronto Hydro

You want to expose pure-blind dogma in American politics? Just ask a campaigning Republican to accept any increase in taxes, for any reason. In Canada, you ask a self-identified progressive or a social democrat to support privatizing a public asset.

Mayor Rob Ford of Toronto—probably the most timid backlash politician on the continent—is reported to be thinking hard about asking Toronto’s Council to agree to sell 10% of its electricity utility, Toronto Hydro. The proceeds could reduce the city’s future debt charges for new capital projects or temporarily relieve financial pressures on core services.

So far, the mayor’s critics are only squirming. Councillor Mike Layton called the proposal a “Band-Aid to stop the bleeding.”

Click on: www.nationalpost.com/news/Mayor+looks+selling10+Toronto+Hydro/5606392/story.html

Since the city is definitely bleeding financially, that tired Band-Aid allusion isn’t really that damning.

For those who favor new investments in needed public transit, who also want to keep public libraries open and read books, the strategy of selling assets that needn’t be public ought to be embraced, not tolerated in puny bits.

Selling Toronto Hydro at a good price is 100% a good idea, and should be pursued as such. Rather than raise possibly $150 million for temporary relief, why not raise $1.5 billion by selling the entire company—and do some real good?

If the province of Ontario’s transfer tax regime still stands in the way of selling more than 10%, then the mayor, with a majority of Council, ought to lobby Premier McGuinty. After all, a democratic government would be finding a solution to its own problems, and providing a precedent that the debt-ridden province of Ontario may end up having to consider as well.

The old arguments against wholesale privatization are unpersuasive.

Public ownership doesn’t protect customers. Toronto Hydro’s customers are jealously protected now, and will continue to be, by the Ontario Energy Board. That regulatory body also regulates Toronto’s other—private—utility, Enbridge Gas. The private gas company and the public electricity company have, over decades, received comparable customer satisfaction reports.

Dividend payments from publicly owned Toronto Hydro are nothing more than hidden taxes on Torontonians and can be replaced by more equitable and transparent sources of revenue.

Furthermore, a mayor and 44 councillors who are elected independently and answer separately to their separate wards cannot provide rigorous accountable share-holder oversight. It is wasteful vanity for 45 politicians to imagine that they can stop being professional politicians and run a billion dollar business strictly according to business principles. 

The left has had a lot of fun ridiculing Rob Ford’s elusive “gravy train.” Fair enough. Reducing waste in government will not be enough to restore Toronto’s financial capacity to keep up with changing times. So, other things will have to be tried: rather than only raising taxes, why not get out of businesses that no longer need to be the business of government?

The other guy’s hate and rage

“Fifty-three per cent isn’t a good turnout (Toronto municipal election) — it’s time to swallow our pride and start either paying citizens to vote or mandating that they do — but it does mean that the voters who decided the election were positively tattooed with rage.”

-Heather Mallick, “Voters were filled with largely pointless rage,” Toronto Star, October 27, 2010 

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/881542--mallick-voters-were-filled-with-largely-pointless-rage

It’s the rage these days to find consolation in electoral defeat by doubting the mental health of the electorate.  Maybe, it has something to do with a waning enthusiasm for the fight or it’s a clever strategy to discredit opponents when they win.  As a young lefty long ago myself, I’m attracted to the latter.  In any event, the easy suggestion that anyone to the right of Paul Martin Junior must be either brain dead or full of hate and rage should be called out.

The favoured targets of the moment are Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Rob Ford, the mayor-elect of Toronto as well as those who voted for them. One is an overweight introvert and the other is a fat big talker. Both can embarrass. But, does the Prime Minister survive merely on hate and hinterland paranoia? Was the mayor elected by hundreds of thousands of raging bigots? After a quick scan of the post election media, friends at Starbucks, and the positive reception to Lawrence Martin’s biography, Harperland: The Politics of Control, you would think that both men personalize and profit from a deep distemper in Canadian politics.

Whatever you call it, it isn’t new. Liberal partisans and progressives should know that there is nothing novel or particularly Albertan about “hating” Liberals. Red-Tories and New Democrats—when together in opposition, drinking beer at the Press Club—heartily loathed the “natural governing party”.  For its part, the leadership of that party raged about vile separatists year in and year out, from coast to coast, for the last forty years.  Lawrence Martin reports that Harper resents the way the Reform Party was treated by the Liberals in the 1990’s. Wow!  You don’t have to be a paranoid to recall that Preston Manning and the Reform Party were savagely branded as un-Canadian Republican stooges.

How we feel about any politician driven by an abiding determination to “get even” often depends on whether we are on his side or not. Along with Nixon and likely Harper, the Kennedy boys, Winston Churchill, Bill Clinton and Jean Chretien were also motivated by and, in crisis, sustained by pride and righteous competitiveness.

The appeal of an awkward everyman like Rob Ford is not easy to define and usually impossible to anticipate. However, his use of the anachronism “oriental” and his observation that the city is strained by the recent volume of immigration doesn’t make him or his appeal racist. Those who voted to “stop the gravy train” may be disruptive, but let’s not confuse that with unthinking rage.