Big business wins in Toronto election
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Big business scored a big win in the Oct. 28 Toronto municipal election. While vot ers rejected the mayoral bid of ultra-con servative Councillor Doug Ford, they put Bay Street big-wig and corporate fixer John Tory into the top job in Canada’s biggest city. Ex-New Democrat MP Olivia Chow marginalized herself with one of the least effective city campaigns in memory. Doug Ford was a last-minute stand-in for his drug-addicted, cancer-afflicted, young er brother Rob Ford. For four years, Rob was Toronto’s right-wing populist rogue mayor, and the butt of international latenight TV comedy.
Tory won with 40 per cent of the citywide votes cast. Ford attracted 34 per cent, and Chow trailed with 23 per cent. The turnout was 61 per cent, a significant rise from 51 per cent in 2010. In Mississauga to the west, only 36 per cent bothered to vote. At his victory party, John Tory, who was briefly leader of the Ontario Progressive 8 SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 2014 Conservative Party, and for a longer stint was CEO at the Canadian Football League, crowed that the result put an “end to the di vision that has paralyzed City Hall.” The pro-Liberal Party Toronto Star seemed to agree, hailing the “return to normalcy”. A look at Tory’s platform reveals that it has much in common with the Fords’ agenda— minus the soap-operatic drama.
Tory pledged to privatize garbage collec tion on the east side of the city, following the Ford union-busting initiative west of Yonge Street. Tory promised no new taxes on the rich. He offered no social housing construction plan, and no measures to al leviate poverty and hunger in the city. His answer to traffic congestion, now at epic proportions, is a pie-in-the-sky scheme that involves borrowing billions and hoping for higher property tax revenues at future rapid transit stops.
Olivia Chow, widow of deceased federal NDP Leader Jack Layton, led in opinion polls from January to June, but faltered over the summer months.
Chow’s vacuous message “New Mayor. Better City,” and her weak style, led es tablishment and middle-class forces, who were desperate to purge Toronto of the Ford embarrassment, to rally behind John Tory’s “sensible” option.
It is no wonder that the two campaigns were so similar in their blandness. Chow’s was run by Liberal and NDP honchos. Tory’s was headed by Conservative and Liberal wags. It was a difference without a distinction.
Chow shifted slightly to the left after Labour Day. She advanced the idea of a higher property transfer tax on residences that sell for over $2 million. But it was too little, too late.
For 10 months she said nothing about po lice racial profiling and deadly shootings by cops, nor about the imminent flow of enviro-threatening bitumen through Pipe