Things haven't gotten off to a great start. In his first week, Ford has shown the same aversion to detail he displayed throughout his career, only now coupled with a dictatorial belief in his right to govern by decree. For example, on his very first day he announced the cancellation of Transit City, the Miller-era plan to bring fast and efficient regional transit to the suburbs in the form of new light rail transit. Ford (and not, interestingly enough, Karen Stintz Ford's puppet head of the TTC) made this decree without consulting council or the province, who is actually funding the plan, and is now claiming that his hand-picked TTC board has the authority to kill the plan without council's input. Ford has also proclaimed a freeze on property taxes next year without consideration of its impact on the city's finances (which will be expected to become even more cash-poor once Fat Bastard eliminated Toronto’s $60 vehicle registration fee). Compared to that, Ford's headline-grabbing decision to invite CBC talking head and noted loudmouth buffoon Don Cherry to the speak at the new council's investiture, which predictably degenerated into farce, is simply a sideshow.
None of these contradictions or the hypocrisies and glaring holes in the Ford platform and his policy directives seem to phase “Team Ford” (a moniker adopted by his court stenographers at the Sun chain and a tacit admission of this mayor's role as figurehead for a small cabal of backroom boys that includes Ford’s brother Doug and thuggish-looking chief of staff and wannabe Karl Rove Nick Kouvalis) and indeed, why would they? To his voters, the Ford camp’s oft-repeated campaign slogans and his average Joe persona were the platform. This was the evolution of bumper sticker politics from personal expression to political movement.
Right after the election, EYE Weekly’s municipal affairs writer Edward Keenan penned a “can’t we all just get along?” piece in which he talks about the need for the downtown left to respect the political concerns of the suburb-dwellers. To wit:
Those in drive-through country at the northern edges of Scarborough and Etobicoke are Torontonians just as much as those who live at Queen and Beaconsfield. As we see, their votes count every bit as much, but they’re also wrestling with real concerns about diversity and sprawl and transportation and poverty. Too often, the approach of urbane downtowners has been to consider the inner suburbs to be forgettable or second-rate, and to see primarily suburban concerns as unworthy of serious debate.I'm not entirely sure if Keenan has taken the time himself to actually talk or listen to the "regular folks, the poor, immigrants" who make up the bulk of Ford country voters, but that's neither here nor there. If there's one thing that this election showed, it's not simply that downtowners don't care about suburban issues; rather, the feeling is mutual
When those people hear drivers referred to as greedy know-nothing polluters, it must sting. When those people hear residents of largely white, middle-class neighbourhoods like the Beaches and the Annex trumpet diversity and sneer at supposed suburban small-mindedness, it must seem idiotic. When questions about $50,000 expense accounts and $11,000 parties and raises on $100,000 salaries are dismissed as small potatoes, it must seem galling.
It’s entirely likely that people in Etobicoke and Scarborough care about waterfront development and green roofs, but it’s also almost certain that they don’t believe downtown residents care about the issues closest to their suburban homes.
That detachment and dismissiveness by the city’s creative class — real or perceived — is wrong-headed. And it’s likely that much of what resonated about Rob Ford’s Regular-Joe message was the perception of genuine respectfulness for the concerns of those who felt left out of the city over the past seven years.
Progressives in Toronto have done a good job talking to each other about what’s best for regular folks, for the poor, for immigrants. But they’ve done a piss poor job of talking to those constituencies, and perhaps just as poor a job listening to them.
In choosing how to work with and work against Mayor Rob Ford, and in figuring out how to beat him in four years, perhaps Toronto’s NDP-Liberal-Red-Tory establishment could start by taking a page from his book and putting demonstrating respect for citizens — even Ford voters — at the top of their own list of priorities.
Ford's mantra of fiscal restraint and no-frills approach to government is nothing new or revolutionary. It's the common refrain of the Pothole People, a common species and are found in urban areas across the country. As the name suggests, Pothole People believe a city's responsibilities begin and end with the provision of the basic services essential to the day to day functioning of the city: the filling of potholes, the plowing of streets, and so on. The Pothole People care not for city-building, for grand visions: they are governed by nothing more than base self-interest.
So, based on their electoral choices, there's no evidence the outer 'burbs share the concerns of downtown. Based on their own rhetoric, that of their political representatives and self appointed media cheerleaders like the loathsome Sue-Ann Levy of the Sun there's no evidence they have any respect for the very people who hold views different from their own. That makes the Pothole People assholes in my book, and I don't care if they're brown, white or Kool-Aid Man red, filthy rich or just trying to get by. Why should I respect them? They're out to get me, and they can go fuck themselves.
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