What with the Ford Follies in Toronto, the Senate Shenanigans in Ottawa, and Married to the Mob in Montreal, there isn’t much room in our public discourse for policy discussion.
Unfortunately, this stuff tends to discredit the entire political class. Canada looks like a bad sit-com rather than a serious country.
It isn’t every day one feels badly for Toronto, even when the Leafs blow a three-goal lead with less than 15 minutes to go in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. But Toronto is a major-league city, now the fourth largest in North America.
And while Toronto has often been mocked for its need to be noticed, it doesn’t deserve to be noticed in the way it has been lately, with CNN giving global coverage to the Rob Ford crack cocaine story. Toronto has also become the stuff of late-night comedy, with Jon Stewart and others having a field day.
There’s certainly no shortage of material. Did Mayor Rob Ford smoke crack cocaine, as alleged by the Gawker gossip website and reported by the Toronto Star, which says two of its reporters saw a video of Ford smoking something in the presence of two drug dealers, one of whom was later murdered in a settling of underworld accounts?
That’s just for openers. The Globe and Mail then reported after an 18-month investigation that the mayor’s brother, Coun. Doug Ford, himself dealt hashish as a young man back in the 1980s.
In all the consternation reigning at Toronto city hall, they might as well have installed a revolving door in the mayor’s office, where senior policy and communications advisers are hired and fired by the day.
Rob Ford denies he smokes crack, and says the video doesn’t exist.
Doug Ford denies he ever dealt hash.
Controversy seems to follow Rob Ford everywhere. In January, he won an appeal judgment overturning a lower-court ruling that he vacate his office in a conflict-of-interest case involving $3,100 for donations to the foundation for his high school football team. Earlier, he had apparently commandeered a city bus to transport the team. He’d also been seen talking on his cellphone while driving. And videos of reporters being chased from his driveway are now commonplace.
And yet the people of Ford Nation remain loyal. They live in the suburbs, and write off all of this controversy as a plot by the Star and downtown liberal elites. This isn’t the first time Toronto has had an eccentric suburbanite as mayor. In the 1990s, there was Mel Lastman, whose hairweave was so bad he carried before and after business cards. Mayor Mel famously called in the Canadian Forces after a snowstorm that he said “petrified” him.
But the Ford brothers have raised city hall dramas to unprecedented levels in Canada. And while they claim it’s all business as usual at city hall, it’s anything but. Among other things, Toronto is not moving forward on an intergovernmental discussion with Queen’s Park and Ottawa on funding for a proposed $34-billion urban transit upgrade for the Greater Toronto Area. Who’s paying how much for it? How much of the new infrastructure will be new subway lines, and how much surface transit?
Even if they were having this conversation, it couldn’t be heard against the loud furor of the Ford Follies. At some point, you’d think Mayor Ford might step aside until the matter is cleared up. Rehab might be another option for this man who also appears to have anger-management issues. But no, he can’t wait to run for re-election.
Quel gong show.
Meanwhile, the city of Laval has asked to be placed under provincial trusteeship, which means that until further notice Quebec’s third largest city won’t be keeping its own books.
And it seems that over the years, it’s been running a lot of cash off the books — cash in envelopes, offered by former mayor Gilles Vaillancourt to quite a few people, including it seems, Tom Mulcair back in 1994 when the NDP leader was a Liberal member of the legislature, and he walked away from the possible bribe. It took Mulcair rather a long time, 17 years, before he called the cops, when as a lawyer and legislator he should have blown the whistle immediately.
But that’s another story.
Vaillancourt has been charged with “gangsterism,” which is largely what the Charbonneau Commission is about. In the swirl of alleged scandal that sparked the commission of inquiry, former Montreal mayor Gerald Tremblay resigned last November. The former head of his executive committee, Frank Zampino, has been charged with fraud, conspiracy and breach of trust. The question isn’t who was on the take at Montreal city hall, but who wasn’t. Hockey tickets? No problem.
Weekends on Tony Accurso’s yacht? Sure.
Meanwhile, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Never mind.
Original Article
Source: ottawacitizen.com
Author: L. Ian MacDonald
Unfortunately, this stuff tends to discredit the entire political class. Canada looks like a bad sit-com rather than a serious country.
It isn’t every day one feels badly for Toronto, even when the Leafs blow a three-goal lead with less than 15 minutes to go in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. But Toronto is a major-league city, now the fourth largest in North America.
And while Toronto has often been mocked for its need to be noticed, it doesn’t deserve to be noticed in the way it has been lately, with CNN giving global coverage to the Rob Ford crack cocaine story. Toronto has also become the stuff of late-night comedy, with Jon Stewart and others having a field day.
There’s certainly no shortage of material. Did Mayor Rob Ford smoke crack cocaine, as alleged by the Gawker gossip website and reported by the Toronto Star, which says two of its reporters saw a video of Ford smoking something in the presence of two drug dealers, one of whom was later murdered in a settling of underworld accounts?
That’s just for openers. The Globe and Mail then reported after an 18-month investigation that the mayor’s brother, Coun. Doug Ford, himself dealt hashish as a young man back in the 1980s.
In all the consternation reigning at Toronto city hall, they might as well have installed a revolving door in the mayor’s office, where senior policy and communications advisers are hired and fired by the day.
Rob Ford denies he smokes crack, and says the video doesn’t exist.
Doug Ford denies he ever dealt hash.
Controversy seems to follow Rob Ford everywhere. In January, he won an appeal judgment overturning a lower-court ruling that he vacate his office in a conflict-of-interest case involving $3,100 for donations to the foundation for his high school football team. Earlier, he had apparently commandeered a city bus to transport the team. He’d also been seen talking on his cellphone while driving. And videos of reporters being chased from his driveway are now commonplace.
And yet the people of Ford Nation remain loyal. They live in the suburbs, and write off all of this controversy as a plot by the Star and downtown liberal elites. This isn’t the first time Toronto has had an eccentric suburbanite as mayor. In the 1990s, there was Mel Lastman, whose hairweave was so bad he carried before and after business cards. Mayor Mel famously called in the Canadian Forces after a snowstorm that he said “petrified” him.
But the Ford brothers have raised city hall dramas to unprecedented levels in Canada. And while they claim it’s all business as usual at city hall, it’s anything but. Among other things, Toronto is not moving forward on an intergovernmental discussion with Queen’s Park and Ottawa on funding for a proposed $34-billion urban transit upgrade for the Greater Toronto Area. Who’s paying how much for it? How much of the new infrastructure will be new subway lines, and how much surface transit?
Even if they were having this conversation, it couldn’t be heard against the loud furor of the Ford Follies. At some point, you’d think Mayor Ford might step aside until the matter is cleared up. Rehab might be another option for this man who also appears to have anger-management issues. But no, he can’t wait to run for re-election.
Quel gong show.
Meanwhile, the city of Laval has asked to be placed under provincial trusteeship, which means that until further notice Quebec’s third largest city won’t be keeping its own books.
And it seems that over the years, it’s been running a lot of cash off the books — cash in envelopes, offered by former mayor Gilles Vaillancourt to quite a few people, including it seems, Tom Mulcair back in 1994 when the NDP leader was a Liberal member of the legislature, and he walked away from the possible bribe. It took Mulcair rather a long time, 17 years, before he called the cops, when as a lawyer and legislator he should have blown the whistle immediately.
But that’s another story.
Vaillancourt has been charged with “gangsterism,” which is largely what the Charbonneau Commission is about. In the swirl of alleged scandal that sparked the commission of inquiry, former Montreal mayor Gerald Tremblay resigned last November. The former head of his executive committee, Frank Zampino, has been charged with fraud, conspiracy and breach of trust. The question isn’t who was on the take at Montreal city hall, but who wasn’t. Hockey tickets? No problem.
Weekends on Tony Accurso’s yacht? Sure.
Meanwhile, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Never mind.
Original Article
Source: ottawacitizen.com
Author: L. Ian MacDonald
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