The resurrection of Rob Ford: How the Scarborough subway fiasco may have saved the mayor

In what has to be one of the worst decisions in Toronto City Council's history,  an unlikely alliance of self-serving and short-sighted councillors have brought back mayor Rob Ford's favourite fantasy, the Scarborough subway, from the dustbin of history to which it had rightly been consigned. While the new approval of council is allegedly contingent on funding sources that may or may not exist, a point that makes the decision even more ludicrous, this reversal gives the province and the federal government even more ammunition to, ultimately, do nothing to build transit in the country's biggest urban centre and to be able to, not entirely disingenuously, blame it all on the duly elected coalition of right and left that has rejected a comprehensive and actually funded, started and achievable plan for a far smaller, dramatically more expensive illusion.

This is the latest chapter in the long, twisted and tragic tale of Toronto's transit woes, and it means that not only will far more extensive and far-reaching transit infrastructure in neighbourhoods and communities that desperately need it and are woefully under-serviced now not get built, but also that Rob Ford, in spite of the complete catastrophe that he has been as a mayor, and despite his own political incompetence and grotesque personal misconduct, may yet get reelected and may have seen his political future revived.

In the present context, the mayor's long push to build a Scarborough subway simply makes no sense at all. While ideally subways may be preferable in some cases, though not in all, to LRTs, they are far more expensive to build. Building a single Scarborough subway line means, by the city's own acknowledgement,  that many other transit lines, some of which had been accorded a higher priority in terms of need, will almost certainly have to be cancelled, postponed or scaled back, including other transit lines in Scarborough itself, making it a net loss for the community, not a gain.

As a background report prepared by the City Manager in conjunction with the CEO of the TTC put it:

Based on ongoing preliminary work the top five unfunded rapid transit proposals include Waterfont WestLRT, Don Mills LRT, Downtown Relief Line (East), Scarborough Malvern LRT and Waterfont East LRT. The Bloor - Danforth subway extension places in the next five rapid transit proposals that also include Jane LRT, Steeles West LRT/BRT, Downtown Relief Line (extension to Eglinton Avenue), and Eglinton LRT extension to Pearson Airport. The decision to adopt subway technology could impact the ability to fund the other priorities that are ultimately established through the current Official Plan review process.

   
The push for subways is entirely political. Subways sound good. They appeal to the notion that they will zip along underground, out-of-sight and mind and the right, for some unknown reason, has embraced them with a populist  zeal that they have woven into a ridiculous narrative that portrays LRTs as street destroying, car impeding, neighbourhood annihilating disasters, which is not at all the case.

LRT systems are widespread in Europe and have proven highly effective in American cities like Portland and San Diego. They  allow for far-flung, rapid transit lines without either the intensity of construction disruption or the cost of subways.

As a recent editorial in the Kansas City Star noted, calling on Kansas City to emulate the Portland model:

The most noticeable difference between the Kansas City and Portland metropolitan areas, however, has nothing to do with geography and nature....
You see it as you leave Portland International Airport, from the freeways leading to the city center, and in the suburbs. This difference is pervasive, intentional and man-made.
Public transportation is a priority in Portland. Despite having about the same number of citizens as Kansas City, Portland’s transportation system far exceeds anything that Kansas City dreamers dare to imagine. In 2011, Portland riders boarded buses and trains 100 million times. The east-west segment of the light-rail system carries 26 percent of evening rush-hour commuters leaving downtown Portland.
I lived in Portland when they began building the light-rail system. The initial 15-mile segment that opened in 1986 has expanded to 52 miles. I suspect that strident voices spoke disparagingly when construction started but I don’t remember them. A person would be hard pressed to find many naysayers today.
Forty-three percent of adults in the Portland area use public transportation at least twice a month. Eighty-four percent of the riders have a car available, but they still choose to use buses and trains.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/07/12/4341812/portlands-transit-success-can.html#storylink=cpy

For a city that considers itself, almost pathetically so, to be "world class", however, Toronto, its residents and its politicians are incredibly insular and unusually lacking in the long term visions that make truly "great" cities great. They are seemingly beholden to narratives that are meant to benefit their own immediate re-election chances or to aid the efforts of one or another of the political federal or provincial parties that they are, despite the absurd claim that parties do not exist at City Hall, the municipal mouth pieces of.

How else does one explain the former Deputy Mayor, Doug Holiday and provincial Tory leader Tim Hudak, campaigning in a provincial by-election at Kipling station in Etobicoke, praising (and Holiday subsequently voting for) a Scarborough subway plan that would basically ensure that the riding they are trying to take from the governing Liberals, Etobicoke Lakeshore, would get less transit infrastructure and funding, not more? Outside of the inane context of what has become of Toronto politics, this makes no sense at all.

The fact is that the subway vs. LRT debate is not really about subways and LRTs. If it was, the outcome would be obvious. The Public Works Chair, a right-winger who is generally a Ford ally, Denzil Minnan-Wong called the subway plan "a fiscally irresponsible “vote-buying exercise.”", which it clearly is. But it also more than that. It is part of a right wing revolt against what they see as an assault on a suburban, car loving, self-indulgent lifestyle by downtown "elites".

It is impossible to explain totally idiotic comments like Tim Hudak' claim that he favours subways because:

“The world-class cities, they build subways, they build underground,” Mr. Hudak told reporters under a scorching morning sun. “You don’t rip up existing streets and make traffic even worse.”

This is mind-numbingly wrong and stupid. He seems to think that subways are built with no digging at all, but it also is an outright lie about what LRT's look like once they are built. Here is a video of an actual LRT:

As can be plainly seen, Hudak is simply either completely misinformed or lying.

But he is not alone. Hence Rob Ford, in this video debating the normally snooze inducing centrist Josh Matlow, manages to talk about LRTs in a manner that bears no resemblance  to reality:

It is worth noting, that basically nothing the mayor says here is correct. The comments are baseless and completely unfounded.

This is made obvious, for example, in the letter from Metrolinx President Bruce McCuaig to the city which states, among other things (emphasis added): 

The conversion and extension of the Scarborough RT to an LRT has been the policy of the TTC, the City and Metrolinx for a number of years. The upgraded and extended line will be operated on a fully grade-separated corridor, on its own right-of-way, separate from roads  and streets. It will travel at speeds similar to subways. It serves a large population with its station locations along the existing corridor, as well as the extension to Sheppard Avenue. The line will meet forecasted levels of demand for the foreseeable future, and has room for growth beyond. It is part of a longer term plan to extend rapid transit further to other communities in Scarborough.

Yet Rob Ford, as part of his self-proclaimed counter assault against the "war on the car" that helped to bring him to power in 2010, made "car friendly" subways a cornerstone of his campaign. Essential to this was to paint LRTs in a farcically negative light that, to anyone who has ever even traveled to a city with one knows,  is demonstrably false.

Given that the mayor's power and influence over policy were in absolute free fall coming out of a spring of drug scandals and total ineffectual governance, and given that City Council itself had repudiated the subway idea in favour of LRTs, it took a stunning series of developments to bring it back to life again.

Royson James of the Toronto Star summarized it very well:

By some political fluke, the Scarborough subway debate has been resurrected. Last year, Toronto council voted for an LRT instead of the more expensive subway to replace the Scarborough RT. (Mayor Rob Ford refused to apply property taxes to the project so council balked.)

Ford threatened to campaign against the Scarborough councillors who didn’t back his unfunded subway plan. Then when two councillors revived the subway option, Ford again voted against the subway because a property tax increase was required. The matter seemed dead.

Then a number of unexpected and strange things happened. The provincial Liberals, who are funding the entire project, found themselves needing to win an Aug. 1 byelection in Scarborough. Polls show high support for a subway in the area.

Then city council voted on a funding plan for transit in the GTA and rejected everything but a sales tax increase. Tacked onto that vote was a motion to consider a subway instead of LRT. It passed.

The provincial Liberals saw an opening to move some Scarborough votes into their harbour and soon Scarborough councillors with ties to the Liberal government were arguing for the very thing they rejected not long ago.The final unlikely alignment came last week when Mayor Ford, realizing he would again be offside on an issue that is his to win, politically, agreed to a property tax hike for a Scarborough subway.

In other circumstances the fact that Ford and City Council, who had previously had their heads in the sand pretending that a city can build mass transit without anyone paying for it, had now accepted the necessity of tax hikes might almost be seen as a victory. But in this case it is not as the sudden embrace of a still entirely insufficient taxation plan is simply a way to win a specific vote. One that Ford still should have lost.
 
However, in a surprising development, Ford also got the support of erstwhile allies like Karen Stintz and supposed "progressives" like Joe Mihevc (this is particularly ironic given that Mihevc was relentlessly demonized by the right in Toronto for his support of the St. Clair streetcar right-of-way project that they use, completely falsely, to attack LRTs) who seem to have felt that it would somehow benefit them or their objectives to have been seen as being onside with the mayor with this one.

Intentionally or otherwise they have also thrown the embattled mayor a desperately needed lifeline. They have made him relevant again. They have handed him a victory that was both completely unnecessary and that was a repudiation of where council previously stood. They have endorsed his falsehood that a subway is inherently better than an LRT and they have de facto accepted his premise that subways are what the "taxpayers" want, that LRTs will damage neighbourhoods, that one subway line in a low density part of an area that does not need it is preferable to several LRT lines in neighbourhoods that do, and they have given him, whether the subway is ever built or not, a narrative upon which to run for re-election.

They have brought the Ford Administration back from the dead. One has to hope that whatever sad political  calculation that led them to do this was worth it, because they threw the city and its citizens under the proverbial bus, or subway, by doing it.

Sexual harassment on the street: Taking misogynist hate speech seriously

As a society we need to start discussing and confronting one of the last broadly practiced, widely condoned, accepted and excused forms of public hate speech and shaming in Canada. The regular and chronic abuse and violation of women by men through street sexual harassment and intimidation.

Just in the last few days I have personally seen and heard of several explicit examples of male street harassment of women in my own immediate neighbourhood. In one case, as I was taking my kids home on the streetcar I saw a car with two men in their early twenties slow down to yell degrading comments at a young woman of no older than sixteen.

I was also told of two men yelling negatively across the street at a woman, just outside where I work, laughing that she was so "fat" that they were "F****** amazed you can even pull your pants on B****", and then joking and being rude when a woman called them out on it.

Then, just a couple of days ago, a woman who is a close friend of mine, walking in the rain, was accosted by men on the covered patio of a local bar as she passed by, one of whom leered that he liked his "women wet".

This was in a single week. In a small neighbourhood. That one person has witnessed or been made aware of.

I have, sadly, heard of and seen examples of this my entire life, as have we all. I have, however, not ever had to suffer this terrible form of degradation, belittlement and sexual abuse for the simple reason that I am a man. No man has ever had to endure this in any meaningful sense. But it is a daily, regular, ugly, appalling, inherently violent and disgraceful abuse, visited by men upon women. And it is an abuse and degradation that has to end.

It is, as we all know, incredibly pervasive and, if not embraced, it is excused in ways that equivalently demeaning and dehumanizing speech towards other communities would not be.

As the Vancouver Rape Relief & Women's Shelter put it "Virtually every woman has experienced street harassment - whistles, sexual remarks, or touching by strangers in public places."

The Sarnia Sexual Assault Centre notes:

Under the Ontario Human Rights Code, sexual harassment includes: repeated sexual remarks that are demeaning or physical contact that is degrading; sexual advances or invitations made by a person who is in a position to grant or deny a benefit to another; and threats or reprisals against the person who rejected the sexual advance. Almost exclusively, it is men who sexually harass women.

As with many other seeming male entitlements, like pornography and prostitution, street harassment is often defended or excused with tired and sad refrains.

The most common is the truly intellectually empty and boring line that "this is just the way it is" and that it is "normal", a line that has been used by every single member of or supporter of institutions of oppressions since history began. It is the argument of a person playing the intentional imbecile seeking to justify their own actions or inaction. Either way it is pathetic. Nothing is the "way it is". People make what "is" and can change or excuse it.

Occasionally, as illustrated by the celebration of being a pathetic dirty old man penned by Ian Brown, it is argued that the objectification and harassment is actually good for women, because, you realize, obviously this is what women really want. An old man getting off on their good looks. Male attention is what defines them according to men.

What is more common, frankly, is that men simply do not care. The men who make these comments, who treat sixteen year old young women as sex objects, who humiliate women they perceive as "fat", who feel an entitlement  to impose their sexual desires and inadequacy publicly on women, do not care, at all, what the women think. It is not about women, it is about their sense that as men they have the right to inflict themselves and their opinions upon women, whether women want to hear these opinions or not.

It is about their notion that they, as men, can do and say anything they want about women.
And they know full well that in the vast majority of cases that women are not interested in hearing it. They know women will feel intimidated and embarrassed by it. That women will be upset or scared by it. That women have to live their entire lives confronted by unwanted male "opinions".

When women reject the "advances" or "compliments" of assailants like this, are they met with apologies and an attempt to try to understand why the behaviour was wrong? We all, even the stupidest males among us, know that this is not the case. Women are almost always met with anger, hostility and violence. As if what was wrong was that that they did not want to accept the "advances". As if this is somehow a sign that they are a prude or "anti-sex", terms regularly trotted out by men to attempt to downplay very real anger and concerns expressed by women and to deny their legitimacy.

Because sexuality should, it seems, be defined by saying that we should all accept what the lowest common denominator male says it is. However pathetically expressed or practiced. Somehow, this aids the cause of "freedom".

I suppose it does aid the freedom of the male penis. Other than that, I see it as a narrative of oppression, little different from all the other lies about "freedom" force fed to its alleged beneficiaries.

We live in a time of broad online and public hate campaigns against women. From Anita Sarkisian, to women standing up against the misogynist pig Tyler the Creator, to women calling out sexism in "comedy", to women trying to establish a high school feminist group.

And we have the continued hate speech women are confronted with daily on the streets. Young women. Girls. All women. When will this end?

When will we acknowledge the reality that this speech is no different than racist or homophobic speech? That it is just as personally demeaning and harmful to women, all of whom have to endure it, and that it is unacceptable in every case and in every circumstance, as is all other hate speech.
More than ever it is time for men to stand up and say that these narratives are wrong and that they show a total disregard for women's dignity. That this ongoing vocal misogyny is unacceptable. That this disgraceful and daily objectification of women is what it is...an insult to and violation of the basic rights of women.

Public, vocal, sexual degradation of women and girls is a form of hate speech. And it needs to be opposed as such.

Happy Father's Day; celebrate it by standing up for women's rights.

Happy Father's Day.

It seems that there are those out there who would tell us that there is nothing to be happy about at all. Who would claim that fathers should be up in arms. Militant. Standing up for the apparently declining rights of men in the face of the onslaught of feminism and discrimination, by women, against men.

Thus we find that relic of the "Iron John", "male bonding" days of 1990's reaction, Lionel Tiger, coming recently to Toronto to support the launch of yet another idiotic campaign to fight the rise of the supposed "misandry" and "obstacles" faced by men.

But maybe, in celebration of Father's Day, it is time to call out these frauds and bigots. To call out the obvious imbecility of statements like this, that appeared in The National Post, that claim to show that the current state of "maleness" consists of a world:

...in which schoolboys are drugged with Ritalin to make them behave like girls; university-aged men have lost long-standing mating systems in the name of sexual liberation; universities themselves wholeheartedly embrace feminist victimology; and the worst is assumed about any adult man who ends up in family court, or is accused of domestic violence.

Seriously?

These claims, as well as many others by the reactionary opponents of feminism, the Men's Rights "Movement" and a variety of other half-baked far right wing journalists or politicians, are truly easy to refute. Many of them I have already refuted right here on rabble. There is no truth to them at all and they do not withstand even the slightest serious scrutiny.  They require a level of credulity and willful stupidity that is almost beneath contempt.

Sadly, though, they are not held solely by "men's rights" reactionaries. From lefties (mostly male) dismissing allegations of sexual assault within the left or against "heroes" like Julian Assange, to the near daily cries of "sexism" against men that one sees all over the internet, this idea that somehow, somewhere, discrimination against and intolerance towards men really, honestly, truly, does exist, is surprisingly widespread.

And it is totally false.

There is no such thing as "sexism" against men in any legitimate sense of the term. It simply does not exist. For Sexism to have meaning as an idea, it has to be a systemic issue, and there is no systemic discrimination against men. The notion that sexism against men is possible is an invention of those opposed to feminism. "Misandry" is a lie.

Yes, there are many men who, due to issues of class, race or marginalization, have suffered terrible injustices. But no men, anywhere, in any country, anywhere in the world, suffer systemic discrimination due to the fact that they are men.

Nor do men suffer the daily trolling, violent, angry, belittling online hate speech that famous women,women who post about women's issues, women who make comments on posts, or women who are, simply, women and "guilty" of being women on the internet suffer. Always. In virtually every online context.

As a father of three children, I, of course, love Father's Day. Despite the nonsense of the so-called "Men's Rights" types, my kids all come home with things that were made in class, in the school,  celebrating me as a father and fathers in general.

Yet it is hard to celebrate knowing the realities of rape culture, fathers who either eschew or are angry about their obligations, the fact that women are far more likely to be poor in Canada, and the fact that so many dismiss or denigrate mothers, especially single mothers.

I think I would enjoy the day far more if the reality of women's oppression was broadly recognized by fathers and men generally and if I was not certain that so many men will spend Father's Day hating women including the mothers of their own children.

Rob and Doug Ford's Excellent Adventures: Dangerous addictions, hypocrisies and illusions in Toronto

This is a repost of two articles and a radio interview that bridged them. My complete take on the Ford fiasco as I am moving on to other issues! These were originally posted here, on rabble.ca and on The City, a Vancouver urban affairs radio show.

Dangerous addictions: Toronto, right wing hypocrisies and Rob Ford 

Another week in Toronto, and another scandal involving our sideshow of a mayor, Rob Ford.

This latest one, in case somehow you have not heard, involves an apparent video of the mayor allegedly not only smoking crack cocaine but also using homophobic language to disparage Justin Trudeau and describing the players of the high school football team he coaches as "just fucking minorities".

It really is one thing after another with Ford. For example, very shortly after entirely credible claims were made regarding apparent drunken sexual misconduct by Ford by Sarah Thomson back in March, new allegations that the mayor, prior to this, was asked to leave a different public social function also due to apparent intoxication burst onto the headlines.

Despite the overwhelming and constantly mounting evidence to the contrary, Ford himself and many of his allies have continued to insist that all the allegations are simply a fabrication of his enemies and the "liberal media", most especially the Toronto Star.  (In the specific case of the latest alleged video, this is especially silly given that the story was first published by an online American publication). This is almost humourously delusional for a bunch that presents itself as hard-headed, no-nonsense "realists".

Even before this latest and extremely serious allegation and regardless of its specific veracity, however, Ford has to be seen as having come to symbolize the basic unfairness of our society. If there has ever been a more obvious personification in the Canadian context of the reality that rich white men can get away with actions and behaviour that absolutely no one else would be able to, I am not aware of it. And, not just get away with the behaviour, but get elected to office and defended by otherwise self-described "law-and-order" right wing types despite it! From drug possession, to driving under the influence, to repeated domestic assault calls (and, indeed, charges), to not being held to account for violating campaign finance laws, to avoiding any repercussions for having violated conflict of interest rules, to seemingly using staff payed by the public inappropriately, it goes on and on and on as outlined in this Google doc. And nothing really happens to him as a result. The one and only time he was punished, the punishment was reversed on appeal.

There is an understandable temptation to regard all of this as a bad joke and an irrelevance or to see it as merely fodder for the international press and late night satirists to sneer at Toronto; which is already happening and is richly deserved. A temptation to see it as a distraction from the truly pressing issues facing the city.

But that, I think, is a mistake. First, if this is a distraction that has derailed the city's agenda, there is only Rob Ford to blame for that. But more importantly, the fact that this farce has played out for so long with so little consequence for Ford cannot help but to foster and reinforce entirely warranted cynicism in many communities about our society's claim, such as it is, to the equality of all before the law. It also emboldens the forces on our Far Right who have an essentially anti-democratic notion that their partisans are above the law and that the actions of their heroes, like Ford, should be dealt with and viewed in ways entirely different to how they would view them were they to be committed by citizens who are not white or wealthy and who are not populist folk icons.

Let us recall that many of the same Toronto media outlets, talk radio devotees and reactionary politicians  who are turning a blind eye to this pattern of both proven and alleged behaviour or pretending that it is all an invention of the media, were the same people who were driven to self-righteous rage when a TTC employee on medication for a serious illness (he has since died) and who was, in fact, an actual hero, fell asleep in a ticket collection booth during a shift and had the misfortune to be photographed. They regularly take sadistic glee in pillorying and publicly humiliating public employees and officials for far more minor transgressions than those Ford has been accused of, charged with and, in the case of campaign finance rules, found guilty of having violated.

In fact, of course, much of their whole narrative and vision of the world is based around lies about "wealthy" and "lazy" union workers, the supposed immorality or criminality of immigrant and minority communities, that the poor or people on welfare are the authors of their own misfortune and are usually scam artists, and so on.

How ingrained these ugly and racist views are in right wingers of Ford's ilk can be seen from the mayor's own false and derogatory comments about the young men on the football team he coaches. He has, completely insultingly and erroneously portrayed his coaching as some kind of heroic and charitable act that keeps the players out of jail and gangs (and, ironically, off drugs) and that keeps them in school. His comments so infuriated the parents and teachers of the high school (Don Bosco Catholic Secondary in Etobicoke) that many feel he should no longer be allowed to coach.

Yet, the irony is that it is Ford who has never had to work for anything, who has been caught in possession of drugs in the past, who treats his job as a joke, skipping meetings to coach football or leaving the floor of a council meeting to watch playoff hockey, and so on. Far from being "one of us" Ford is proof that rich and powerful men are not us at all. They get to play and live by an entirely different set of rules.

This toxicity and anti-social attitude on the part of the right has grown more shameless in direct correlation to the rightward drift of our politics and the mainstreaming of what used to be extremist ideas and viewpoints. Moreover it is gripped by a stunning hypocrisy in that many right wing commentators, politicians and voters feel entitled to make sweeping generalizations about the moral conduct and fiber of different communities, and to espouse social philosophies and narratives centered around the necessity of personal morality and "restraint" and the primacy of personal conduct in the determination of social outcome, disparaging notions of systemic oppression and denying the reality that there does not, at all, exist a level playing field or equality of opportunity in Canada, and yet they are completely unwilling to apply to these "principles" to themselves or those they support. It is meant for the "other", not for those in the club.

Otherwise how is Conrad Black, a non-citizen and convicted felon, who was sent to jail in the country that the right idolizes, the United States, in Canada at all? One need only ask oneself if a person-of-colour without the bank account and the lordships would also have been allowed this great courtesy by our supposedly tough-on-crime government to know the answer to that.
Punishment, mandatory minimums and prison are for ordinary people, people who cannot afford fancy lawyers, and people who they see as not really "Canadian". Compassion, understanding and second chances are for their own.

Did Rob Ford smoke crack cocaine with drug dealers while spouting off homophobic and racist comments. Who knows? That it seems completely believable says a lot, but it is, of course, possible that it is not true. It is also possible that the video will never see the light of day. It is possible that the allegations will be proven and that Ford, with near certainty should they be, will be forced finally to resign in disgrace.

But in some respects no matter the outcome the salient fact remains that the system that created Ford, that allowed his rise and that excused and forgave his many transgressions will survive him either way. While Ford may be an unusually buffoonish and ignorant child of social privilege there can be no doubt that a different set of rules are applied to all the other children of the rich and powerful as well, especially if they are male and white.

Rabble.ca Contributor Michael Laxer on Rob Ford | Inaugural Engaging Women, Transforming Cities Conference Brings Equity Lens to Urban Issues
Originally posted on The City FM


The Rob Ford saga shows no signs of dissipating. Is this the end of Mayor Rob Ford’s bumpy tenure at Toronto City Hall? On the podcast, rabble.ca contributor Michael Laxer weighs in on the ongoing Rob Ford saga. He provides a critical and progressive analysis of the Rob Ford affair in a recent article.

And in the second half of the show, we hear about the Engaging Women, Transforming Cities Conference from Associate Professor Margot Young (UBC Law). The inaugural national conference is designed to facilitate discussion about transforming our cities into places where women are more involved in electoral processes, and municipal governments are responsive to the priorities of women and girls in Canada’s urban centres. The conference applies an equity lens to a variety of urban issues, ranging from housing justice to environmental sustainability.

Find it on iTunes and subscribe to have the weekly podcast downloaded automatically.

The Right's perilous denial of reality: Rob Ford and anti-democratic fictions 

 Two weeks on and Toronto's ever evolving "crackgate" scandal seems to show no signs of going away as daily revelations alternately stun and bemuse Torontonians, Canadians and, to a degree, the international press. It has been almost surreal in its absurdity and in the spectacle of such things as city hall security guards escorting a mayor's aide to the bathroom, Doug Ford holding press conferences to allow his brother to sneak out the back door of city hall, and so on.

A comprehensive outline of developments was put together by a Toronto weekly, The Grid, though this excludes the latest days of news, such as the assertion by the Toronto Star that Ford, who has claimed no video exists, told his staff he knew where it was, as well as news that two more staffers in the mayor's office have resigned.

From the first allegation of Rob Ford smoking crack with drug dealers, to the Globe and Mail expose of Doug Ford as an alleged former major hash dealer and their portrayal of the Fords as a wealthy, white supremacist befriending, violence prone, drug dealing Soprano-style family, it is an astounding tale. Given the mayor and his brother's rabidly pro-police, "law-and-order" stances it would seem that the city of Toronto is run by people who truly redefine right-wing populist "tough on crime" conservatism.

The Fords, with typical bullying instincts, have either denied everything or failed to actually answer allegations. As has been their narrative from the beginning of their political career, they have portrayed their opponents and critics, especially in the media, as a coalition of downtown "elites" and public sector workers and unions or as somehow beholden to them.

Attempting to include John Stackhouse and the business newspaper the Globe and Mail in this grand pro-labour conspiracy, as Doug Ford did in TV news interviews, truly qualifies it for entry as one of the dumbest and least believable conspiracy theories ever put forward; on par with David Icke's contention that Reptilian lizard people control the world's governments. The mayor's farcical attempts to claim that his aides (four to date) are all quitting because his office was simply a stepping stone to better things and that they in no way indicate that anything might be wrong at city hall are also humourously delusional.

Ford's allies on council and more broadly are trying to distance themselves from the mayor and the clear absurdity of many of his and his brother's actions and claims. But even here the connection to reality is often tenuous. The Deputy Mayor, Doug Holyday, for example, stated the obvious and agreed that a video of Ford smoking crack exists, but held out hope that it was all a fabrication by some apparently highly skilled drug dealing cinematographers and film editors. Meanwhile Ontario Tory House Leader Jim Wilson, in distancing the once enthusiastic Hudak Conservatives from the idea of Doug Ford running in Etobicoke North in the next provincial election, soared to new levels of denial inanity when he acted like he barely even knew who Doug Ford was, stating "I don't even know the guy ... personally I've never even met him." I am sure Tim Hudak wishes he could even attempt to say the same.

But the whole Ford agenda and narrative, quite apart from this latest scandal, has been a dangerous fantasy from the start and was even before they were elected. The notion that the city government could cut taxes but increase spending on infrastructure and build things like subways, all by eliminating the supposedly wasteful government "gravy train", by privatization, and by beating down the unions was obviously a fiction in 2010, when they got elected on the basis of it as a platform, and it has proven itself as such. Now the Fords are reduced to making claims about an allegedly impressive "fiscal record" in office that reporters such as Metro's Matt Elliott, among others, have fairly effectively demolished.

And the Fords are not at all alone on the right in indulging in wholesale and profoundly socially and economically damaging denial of reality. It is, in fact, the right's new normal in this country and more broadly.

From the spectacular failure of what Paul Krugman has described as "the austerity delusion" that is still widely accepted as economic gospel by right wingers like Ontario's Tim Hudak, to the truly environmentally suicidal attempts to either deny climate change or the seriousness of its implications by the Harper government, the right has completely embraced  false and destructive narratives. They have over the last quarter century created a new populism around lies about supposedly entitled welfare recipients milking the system, and nonsensical assertions about "special interests" and "powerful unions" and so on. In doing so, they attempt to turn the actual power relations in our society on their head, and assert that it is workers and the poor who are lazy, exploit the system, live off of the labour of others, shirk work, have politicians and "big government" in their pocket, etc., as opposed to those who actually indulge and benefit most in such patterns of behaviour and power: corporations and the wealthy.

They have been very successful in changing the discourse so that, for example, many in the media will talk about unions and corporations as if they have equal social, political and even financial clout and political power, a clearly false assertion. When faced with the fight and struggle of women, native people, marginalized communities and others for equality and justice they retreat to cries of "reverse racism" or "reverse sexism" to attempt to claim that it is actually those who have benefited for centuries from colonialism, racism and patriarchy who are now the "oppressed". This results in simply idiotic notions such as those that "men's issues" exist at all independently of race or class, or that white people are being disadvantaged by no longer being automatically granted the superior social statuses and outcomes that they were as a group in the past.

These ideas are ugly and angry and often succeed in enlisting those who have been left behind or who constantly face destitution due to the economics of the neo-liberal era. Further, they thrive on this anger and an increasingly extreme and vitriolic partisanship for them to continue to exist for the very reason that they are false. In this same way they undermine democracy as they are not based on rational discourse at all. They depend on a constant assault and lashing out against their opponents and enemies, real or perceived, in order to maintain their appeal.

The right wing politicians, media and core base in Toronto knew full well that Rob Ford was a bigot with a nasty and violent past, that he lacked self-control and that his platform was pure fantasy before he was mayor and yet they embraced and helped to elect him anyway. That many of them are turning on him now is simply opportunistic, not principled.

Ultimately this is why the scandal continues to matter and is not simply a sad spectacle or a case of personal misconduct. It is both an epic tale of the right's fundamental hypocrisy and an indictment of its anti-democratic false narratives.

Photo: flickr/ashtonpal

The Right's perilous denial of reality: Rob Ford and anti-democratic fictions

Two weeks on and Toronto's ever evolving "crackgate" scandal seems to show no signs of going away as daily revelations alternately stun and bemuse Torontonians, Canadians and, to a degree, the international press. It has been almost surreal in its absurdity and in the spectacle of such things as city hall security guards escorting a mayor's aide to the bathroom, Doug Ford holding press conferences to allow his brother to sneak out the back door of city hall, and so on.

A comprehensive outline of developments was put together by a Toronto weekly, The Grid, though this excludes the latest days of news, such as the assertion by the Toronto Star that Ford, who has claimed no video exists, told his staff he knew where it was, as well as news that two more staffers in the mayor's office have resigned.

From the first allegation of Rob Ford smoking crack with drug dealers, to the Globe and Mail expose of Doug Ford as an alleged former major hash dealer and their portrayal of the Fords as a wealthy, white supremacist befriending, violence prone, drug dealing Soprano-style family, it is an astounding tale. Given the mayor and his brother's rabidly pro-police, "law-and-order" stances it would seem that the city of Toronto is run by people who truly redefine right-wing populist "tough on crime" conservatism.

The Fords, with typical bullying instincts, have either denied everything or failed to actually answer allegations. As has been their narrative from the beginning of their political career, they have portrayed their opponents and critics, especially in the media, as a coalition of downtown "elites" and public sector workers and unions or as somehow beholden to them.

Attempting to include John Stackhouse and the business newspaper the Globe and Mail in this grand pro-labour conspiracy, as Doug Ford did in TV news interviews, truly qualifies it for entry as one of the dumbest and least believable conspiracy theories ever put forward; on par with David Icke's contention that Reptilian lizard people control the world's governments. The mayor's farcical attempts to claim that his aides (four to date) are all quitting because his office was simply a stepping stone to better things and that they in no way indicate that anything might be wrong at city hall are also humourously delusional.

Ford's allies on council and more broadly are trying to distance themselves from the mayor and the clear absurdity of many of his and his brother's actions and claims. But even here the connection to reality is often tenuous. The Deputy Mayor, Doug Holyday, for example, stated the obvious and agreed that a video of Ford smoking crack exists, but held out hope that it was all a fabrication by some apparently highly skilled drug dealing cinematographers and film editors. Meanwhile Ontario Tory House Leader Jim Wilson, in distancing the once enthusiastic Hudak Conservatives from the idea of Doug Ford running in Etobicoke North in the next provincial election, soared to new levels of denial inanity when he acted like he barely even knew who Doug Ford was, stating "I don't even know the guy ... personally I've never even met him." I am sure Tim Hudak wishes he could even attempt to say the same.

But the whole Ford agenda and narrative, quite apart from this latest scandal, has been a dangerous fantasy from the start and was even before they were elected. The notion that the city government could cut taxes but increase spending on infrastructure and build things like subways, all by eliminating the supposedly wasteful government "gravy train", by privatization, and by beating down the unions was obviously a fiction in 2010, when they got elected on the basis of it as a platform, and it has proven itself as such. Now the Fords are reduced to making claims about an allegedly impressive "fiscal record" in office that reporters such as Metro's Matt Elliott, among others, have fairly effectively demolished.

And the Fords are not at all alone on the right in indulging in wholesale and profoundly socially and economically damaging denial of reality. It is, in fact, the right's new normal in this country and more broadly.

From the spectacular failure of what Paul Krugman has described as "the austerity delusion" that is still widely accepted as economic gospel by right wingers like Ontario's Tim Hudak, to the truly environmentally suicidal attempts to either deny climate change or the seriousness of its implications by the Harper government, the right has completely embraced  false and destructive narratives. They have over the last quarter century created a new populism around lies about supposedly entitled welfare recipients milking the system, and nonsensical assertions about "special interests" and "powerful unions" and so on. In doing so, they attempt to turn the actual power relations in our society on their head, and assert that it is workers and the poor who are lazy, exploit the system, live off of the labour of others, shirk work, have politicians and "big government" in their pocket, etc., as opposed to those who actually indulge and benefit most in such patterns of behaviour and power: corporations and the wealthy.

They have been very successful in changing the discourse so that, for example, many in the media will talk about unions and corporations as if they have equal social, political and even financial clout and political power, a clearly false assertion. When faced with the fight and struggle of women, native people, marginalized communities and others for equality and justice they retreat to cries of "reverse racism" or "reverse sexism" to attempt to claim that it is actually those who have benefited for centuries from colonialism, racism and patriarchy who are now the "oppressed". This results in simply idiotic notions such as those that "men's issues" exist at all independently of race or class, or that white people are being disadvantaged by no longer being automatically granted the superior social statuses and outcomes that they were as a group in the past.

These ideas are ugly and angry and often succeed in enlisting those who have been left behind or who constantly face destitution due to the economics of the neo-liberal era. Further, they thrive on this anger and an increasingly extreme and vitriolic partisanship for them to continue to exist for the very reason that they are false. In this same way they undermine democracy as they are not based on rational discourse at all. They depend on a constant assault and lashing out against their opponents and enemies, real or perceived, in order to maintain their appeal.

The right wing politicians, media and core base in Toronto knew full well that Rob Ford was a bigot with a nasty and violent past, that he lacked self-control and that his platform was pure fantasy before he was mayor and yet they embraced and helped to elect him anyway. That many of them are turning on him now is simply opportunistic, not principled.

Ultimately this is why the scandal continues to matter and is not simply a sad spectacle or a case of personal misconduct. It is both an epic tale of the right's fundamental hypocrisy and an indictment of its anti-democratic false narratives.

Photo: flickr/ashtonpal

Dangerous addictions: Toronto, right wing hypocrisies and Rob Ford

Another week in Toronto, and another scandal involving our sideshow of a mayor, Rob Ford.

This latest one, in case somehow you have not heard, involves an apparent video of the mayor allegedly not only smoking crack cocaine but also using homophobic language to disparage Justin Trudeau and describing the players of the high school football team he coaches as "just fucking minorities".

It really is one thing after another with Ford. For example, very shortly after entirely credible claims were made regarding apparent drunken sexual misconduct by Ford by Sarah Thomson back in March, new allegations that the mayor, prior to this, was asked to leave a different public social function also due to apparent intoxication burst onto the headlines.

Despite the overwhelming and constantly mounting evidence to the contrary, Ford himself and many of his allies have continued to insist that all the allegations are simply a fabrication of his enemies and the "liberal media", most especially the Toronto Star.  (In the specific case of the latest alleged video, this is especially silly given that the story was first published by an online American publication). This is almost humourously delusional for a bunch that presents itself as hard-headed, no-nonsense "realists".

Even before this latest and extremely serious allegation and regardless of its specific veracity, however, Ford has to be seen as having come to symbolize the basic unfairness of our society. If there has ever been a more obvious personification in the Canadian context of the reality that rich white men can get away with actions and behaviour that absolutely no one else would be able to, I am not aware of it. And, not just get away with the behaviour, but get elected to office and defended by otherwise self-described "law-and-order" right wing types despite it! From drug possession, to driving under the influence, to repeated domestic assault calls (and, indeed, charges), to not being held to account for violating campaign finance laws, to avoiding any repercussions for having violated conflict of interest rules, to seemingly using staff payed by the public inappropriately, it goes on and on and on as outlined in this Google doc. And nothing really happens to him as a result. The one and only time he was punished, the punishment was reversed on appeal.

There is an understandable temptation to regard all of this as a bad joke and an irrelevance or to see it as merely fodder for the international press and late night satirists to sneer at Toronto; which is already happening and is richly deserved. A temptation to see it as a distraction from the truly pressing issues facing the city.

But that, I think, is a mistake. First, if this is a distraction that has derailed the city's agenda, there is only Rob Ford to blame for that. But more importantly, the fact that this farce has played out for so long with so little consequence for Ford cannot help but to foster and reinforce entirely warranted cynicism in many communities about our society's claim, such as it is, to the equality of all before the law. It also emboldens the forces on our Far Right who have an essentially anti-democratic notion that their partisans are above the law and that the actions of their heroes, like Ford, should be dealt with and viewed in ways entirely different to how they would view them were they to be committed by citizens who are not white or wealthy and who are not populist folk icons.

Let us recall that many of the same Toronto media outlets, talk radio devotees and reactionary politicians  who are turning a blind eye to this pattern of both proven and alleged behaviour or pretending that it is all an invention of the media, were the same people who were driven to self-righteous rage when a TTC employee on medication for a serious illness (he has since died) and who was, in fact, an actual hero, fell asleep in a ticket collection booth during a shift and had the misfortune to be photographed. They regularly take sadistic glee in pillorying and publicly humiliating public employees and officials for far more minor transgressions than those Ford has been accused of, charged with and, in the case of campaign finance rules, found guilty of having violated.

In fact, of course, much of their whole narrative and vision of the world is based around lies about "wealthy" and "lazy" union workers, the supposed immorality or criminality of immigrant and minority communities, that the poor or people on welfare are the authors of their own misfortune and are usually scam artists, and so on.

How ingrained these ugly and racist views are in right wingers of Ford's ilk can be seen from the mayor's own false and derogatory comments about the young men on the football team he coaches. He has, completely insultingly and erroneously portrayed his coaching as some kind of heroic and charitable act that keeps the players out of jail and gangs (and, ironically, off drugs) and that keeps them in school. His comments so infuriated the parents and teachers of the high school (Don Bosco Catholic Secondary in Etobicoke) that many feel he should no longer be allowed to coach.

Yet, the irony is that it is Ford who has never had to work for anything, who has been caught in possession of drugs in the past, who treats his job as a joke, skipping meetings to coach football or leaving the floor of a council meeting to watch playoff hockey, and so on. Far from being "one of us" Ford is proof that rich and powerful men are not us at all. They get to play and live by an entirely different set of rules.

This toxicity and anti-social attitude on the part of the right has grown more shameless in direct correlation to the rightward drift of our politics and the mainstreaming of what used to be extremist ideas and viewpoints. Moreover it is gripped by a stunning hypocrisy in that many right wing commentators, politicians and voters feel entitled to make sweeping generalizations about the moral conduct and fiber of different communities, and to espouse social philosophies and narratives centered around the necessity of personal morality and "restraint" and the primacy of personal conduct in the determination of social outcome, disparaging notions of systemic oppression and denying the reality that there does not, at all, exist a level playing field or equality of opportunity in Canada, and yet they are completely unwilling to apply to these "principles" to themselves or those they support. It is meant for the "other", not for those in the club.

Otherwise how is Conrad Black, a non-citizen and convicted felon, who was sent to jail in the country that the right idolizes, the United States, in Canada at all? One need only ask oneself if a person-of-colour without the bank account and the lordships would also have been allowed this great courtesy by our supposedly tough-on-crime government to know the answer to that.
Punishment, mandatory minimums and prison are for ordinary people, people who cannot afford fancy lawyers, and people who they see as not really "Canadian". Compassion, understanding and second chances are for their own.

Did Rob Ford smoke crack cocaine with drug dealers while spouting off homophobic and racist comments. Who knows? That it seems completely believable says a lot, but it is, of course, possible that it is not true. It is also possible that the video will never see the light of day. It is possible that the allegations will be proven and that Ford, with near certainty should they be, will be forced finally to resign in disgrace.

But in some respects no matter the outcome the salient fact remains that the system that created Ford, that allowed his rise and that excused and forgave his many transgressions will survive him either way. While Ford may be an unusually buffoonish and ignorant child of social privilege there can be no doubt that a different set of rules are applied to all the other children of the rich and powerful as well, especially if they are male and white.

Rob Ford's confederacy of dunces: Doubling down on dumb on transit in the GTA

If it were not so terribly serious, one could almost be amused by the latest sad battle cry of Toronto's deeply confused politicians, calling on the province to give them subways that they ultimately want no one, at all, to pay for. To paraphrase Dire Straits, they seem to want to get their money from nothing and their transit for free.

And dire straits are exactly what transit plans for Toronto are in, now depending on a minority Liberal austerity government, whose only potential de facto budget "partners", the NDP, have outright rejected the proposed dedicated transit taxes and whose Hudak Tory opponents would no doubt cancel most existing transit plans, just as their 90's equivalent Mike Harris did. While the Liberals have indicated a willingness to support what is known as the "Big Move", the $50 billion long term  plan to expand and integrate transit in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and beyond, they have also made it clear, very recently, that they are open to rethinking it.

In the midst of this already negative political context for transit advocates and funding,  Toronto City Council this past Thursday (May 9) has voted to ask the province to reject thirteen potential revenue tools for the Big Move, and refused to actually endorse the two revenue tools that it did not ask to be outright rejected!  They have also muddied the waters even further by changing their mind, yet again, after signing a legal agreement just a year ago, on whether or not they support a Sheppard St. subway expansion or LRTs. This development is a complete fiasco and a truly serious setback given that the council meeting and vote itself were held against the wishes of Mayor Rob Ford and his Executive Committee and was expected to have been a moment of triumph for the pro-transit wing of council.
But, with a handful of notable exceptions, many councillors got cold feet. In a move of almost unbelievable political short-sightedness and cowardice, the council has all but handed the Wynne Liberals, who thanks to a generation of tax cuts dating back to the mid-90's find themselves cash strapped, the perfect way out of future dedicated funding commitments should they chose to seize the opportunity.

In a shocking and explicit admission that what had transpired was an outright manifestation of crass gutlessness, we have one of Toronto's least principled elected officials, Josh Colle, speaking of his role in this farce:

Centrist councillor Josh Colle said he proposed councillors vote against, rather than for, specific levies to give tax-shy colleagues “cover” to leave some on the table, in effect endorsing them.

“We as a council endorsed revenue tools as something to use. Obviously when it got down to the specifics there was less willingness to cite them,” he said, adding the province will view the vote as endorsing a regional sales tax and one-time development charges.

The city manager’s report estimates the two levies together could generate up to $1.5 billion per year.

What neither the article nor Colle note is that even if this estimate is true, it is at least $1 billion short per year of what is required for the Big Move.

After this vote the Liberal austerity government can simply say that Toronto's elected officials have flip-flopped so many times on the nature of the transit that they wish to see built, and are so clearly unwilling to have a serious discussion about dedicated funding sources for it, that no consensus exists to get anything done. Who, they could note, are they to implement a plan against the will of the people's representatives in Toronto?

This was all very predictable in a way. Why, given the fantasy world our political leaders and, obviously, the business "community" seem to live in when it comes to taxes, would we expect anything different to happen?

The Toronto Region Board of Trade, while finally becoming a rare business group to acknowledge the reality that new revenue tools were required for the government to achieve an objectively necessary investment in infrastructure, went about it in a totally self-serving way. While all of their specific proposals are worthy of consideration, and three of the four primary revenue generating proposals would also aid in the critically important environmental objective of creating a disincentive to driving, they notably leave out corporate and personal tax increases. (To be fair, in the case of personal tax increases, no one else is remotely proposing them either).

The provincial NDP eschews the dedicated revenue tools altogether, and has, as I have written of previously, chosen to propound a "Gravy Train" style fiction that it can all be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes; a claim that is demonstrably and manifestly false. Sadly, some left-leaning councillors like Maria Augimeri, possibly looking towards a future in provincial politics, have parroted this line to the detriment of their constituents.

The "left wing" case, such as it is, against some of the revenue tools proposed is that they are regressive. For example, opponents of the idea of a fuel or gas tax have a farcically retrograde tendency to wax poetic about "poor" car drivers in the suburbs of Toronto who have to drive to work to survive and who will, presumably, be impoverished further by this.

Yet when it comes to consumption taxes, such as the fuel tax, that also achieve a completely obvious social and environmental objective both in terms of how the revenue accrued  will be spent and how it will impact on the driving behaviour of those paying it, this anti-tax narrative is dangerously misguided. Instead of talking about the "poor" car drivers, insofar as they exist, one might note the enormously positive impact of putting the fuel tax revenue into public transit, an investment from which far more poor and working class commuters, if that is who we are actually worried about, will benefit.

Further though, and equally apparent, is the fact that if we had an extensive and efficient, properly funded transit system in Toronto, with low or even no fares, maybe that "poor" driver would leave their car at home and take the subway, bus or LRT. And what, exactly, would be wrong with that? In fact, well beyond the borders of Toronto, the future of the planet may well depend on such changes.
In reality, however, these politicians are not really talking about the poor at all. The "poor", in this case, are being used as a transparently flimsy excuse to oppose a socially and environmentally progressive tax as they wish to avoid being seen as advocating for something that they are worried will alienate middle class suburban convenience drivers.  And convenience drivers are what almost all GTA drivers who do not car pool are.

This is a textbook case of how "progressives" joining into phoney notions of how taxes "hurt" working people are the best allies the Right has. They soft sell a reactionary message.
As to Toronto's Right, they are are now feeling greatly emboldened. And so they should. Some of their number have been somewhat circumspect, perhaps realizing the potential backlash to celebrating an attack on essential transit expansion too publicly.

Typically Rob Ford, however,  is loudly hailing what has transpired as a victory for "taxpayers", that mythical person that the Right has created to replace the more civic minded sounding "citizen" of bygone eras. Veritably gushing with enthusiasm that any serious commitment to funding desperately needed transit in the city he is mayor of has now been repudiated by the city government itself, Ford, with his usual lack of coherence or grip on reality, effused:

“I’d advise her [Wynne] to not even talk about revenue tools any more,” said a jubilant Ford. “I feel fantastic. We fended off the wolves today and saved the taxpayers at least $1,000 a family, a household, and I couldn’t be happier."

“This is one of the greatest days in Toronto history,” said the mayor who had earlier chided councillors for daring to support taxes he said the provincial government couldn’t be trusted not to stick in a “slush fund.”

Given that what the councillors had just voted against was supporting dedicated funding for transit, the "slush fund" that the mayor is referring to is, in fact, public transit.

He may get his wish. Wynne may yet stop talking about revenue tools. If she does, the city's transit expansion plans will be stalled and stymied yet again.

And maybe that was the point all along.