Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Friday, April 06, 2012

Which way if up for Rob Ford?

“A historic day for labour peace in Toronto,” proclaimed Mayor Rob Ford.

Council’s ratification on Monday, April 2, of the deal reached last week with inside workers means Torontonians can go to bed at night knowing there will be no labour disruptions for the next four years. Hallelujah.

Two of the four bargaining units represented by CUPE Local 79, including part-time Parks and Rec employees (disclaimer: my wife is one), had yet to vote on the terms of the tentative agreement at the time of the mayor’s big announcement. (They did so on Tuesday.)

But you’ve gotta give the mayor cred for getting out ahead of this story, putting his spin on contract talks. A few councillors, recent adversaries among them, were quick to offer their compliments for what the mayor didn’t do – i.e., not throwing “oil in the flames,” as Councillor Josh Matlow not so eloquently put it.

Meaningless pap or attempts to get back into the mayor’s good books post-Sheppard-subway bloodletting?  At this point, throwing Ford a bone seems harmless – even if it is just intended to create the illusion that opposition councillors are still willing to work with him.

But let’s get real. The mayor threw plenty of fuel on the fire, threatening to lock out employees and impose a contract if city workers didn’t accept the terms offered. That may not meet some councillors’ definition of incendiary behaviour, but whatever accommodation was found clearly wasn’t undertaken in the spirit of cooperation. In fact, the city refused to negotiate, prompting the union to file “bargaining in bad faith” charges.

The inside workers union, seemingly bullied by the city’s threat to impose its own contract, in the end opted to save what language it could. Polls showing the public’s lack of appetite for a strike even if contract conditions were imposed turned the tide for a union leadership that at least in the early stages seemed motivated to fight this one to the wall.

Few councillors sought to challenge the mayor’s claim that the contract with inside workers would save $50 million over the next four years. What price, though, should be put on morale, which is now at an all-time low in the public service?

The inside poop is that the city could have saved taxpayers much more if it had accepted the union’s concession on benefits instead of insisting on the “flexibility” to privatize people out of their jobs.

The reality: taxpayers will pay more for reduced services when workers start to be shown the door, including in crucial areas like Public Health. An exodus among Parks and Rec staff – the folks who teach your kids to swim and play T-ball, ladies and gentlemen – has already begun after a provincial arbitrator harmonized salaries downward for many.

But no matter how much the mayor trumpets this labour turn as a victory, his is an administration adrift. Which direction it’s headed is anybody’s guess. All Ford could muster in a scrum with reporters last week when asked about his future agenda was something about continuing to find “efficiencies.” Hardly visionary.

With the mayor’s office seemingly intent on focusing on smaller bread-and-butter issues (see his pledge to get tough on off-leash dogs), the rest of council faces the tricky work of consensus-building.

Post-subway-versus-LRT debate, council’s most lucid moment of this term, the business of governance has been left up in the air. The prospect of council sustaining that momentum and carving out an agenda sans Ford is the biggest unknown.

Is the left-centre-right coalition that set the terms for the subway debate willing to take the lead? If it’s now the responsibility of council to establish a vision for the city, new protocols will have to be developed. Does professional advice from city staff get cycled through council, instead of the mayor’s office, and then sent to the various committees for debate?

Karen Stintz, who showed the way during the Sheppard debate, talked Monday, in the glow of the mayor’s labour triumph, about council’s need to up its game. Not sure if she was including the mayor in that scenario. Ford seems disinclined to change his evil ways.

On Thursday, March 29, the striking committee stacked with Ford allies and charged with recommending appointments to council’s various standing committees, elected Ford’s choice, James Pasternak, to fill the vacancy created by Michelle Berardinetti, who resigned last month to concentrate, she says, on constituency work. (Although, it’s no secret she’s been uncomfortable taking orders on how to vote from the mayor’s office)

Pasternak’s appointment, which must be approved by council, is notable for another reason: the passing over of Jaye Robinson, the Don Valley West pol who sits on the mayor’s executive and expressed in no uncertain terms her distress at the lack of leadership from the mayor’s office during the subway-versus-LRT debacle.

Those strong words are a switch for Robinson, who’s been careful to say or do nothing to distance herself from Ford. Now she’s threatening to quit the executive if he doesn’t get his shit together. We’ll see.

There’ll be many opportunities for council to come together and steer a sensible course.

There is, for example, the port lands development (or is that “redevelopment”?) to revisit. The original Waterfront Toronto plan for the massive plot east of the downtown core, a decade in the making, was thrown into disarray in September by the mayor’s brother Doug, the councillor for Ward 2, whose backdoor dealing conjured visions of monorails and Ferris wheels on the water’s edge.

Council voted, after huge public push-back against Ford’s ideas, to explore opportunities to fast-track development in the area – mostly to appease Ford & Co. when it looked like they had the votes to push through their plan for yacht clubs and hotels.

Last weekend, Waterfront Toronto aired its findings at public sessions after hiring consultants (some of the best on the planet, it should be noted) to assess the market for condo and other development.

Not surprisingly, those experts came to the same conclusion as officials who have been working on the file: redevelopment of the port lands is a long-term endeavour complicated by a number of factors, not the least of which are the realities of the current marketplace.

There’s also the fact that the entire area south of Front is infill and heavily contaminated by years of industrial activity, and sits on a flood plain, so flood protection provisions must be made before any development can take place.

Even using the most optimistic development projections, less than 10 per cent of the entire 400 hectare site could be built out over the next 10 to 20 years.

Doug Ford immediately dismissed these findings, the intricacies of integrated planning not being his forte. Which may have something to do with his rumoured close relationship with the head of the Toronto Port Lands Company, the outfit charged with managing and leasing property in the port lands and currently holding about 40 per cent of the parcels in the area.

This one, too, is shaping up to be a Sheppard-subway-like misinformation campaign. Over to you, good men and women of council.

Original Article
Source: Now
Author: Enzo Di Matteo 

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