So: One Toronto? That was a cute idea. Sounds nice in speeches. Makes a comforting tagline to get the rubes feeling all soft n fuzzy.
But when it comes to important stuff like appointing city councils executive and the chairs of the committees and agencies that will handle the citys business, new mayor John Tory wasted no time in deciding on a different governing theme. More of a LetsGetReadyToRumbleToronto kind of thing.
Its a weird choice for a guy who made moving on from the divisiveness of the Ford years the key plank in his election campaign, but here we are. Its hard to read Torys slate of proposed appointments, unveiled yesterday on the eve of councils first meeting, as anything other than a declaration of war against the downtown progressives who formed the opposition against Rob Ford.
Exhibit A: Tory suggests reappointing Frances Nunziata as council speaker, after a term in which she served as the constant symbol of the incompetent, truculent incivility of the Ford administration. As the moderator of council meetings, she never missed a chance to openly insult or shout down those she disagreed with, displaying little ready understanding of the procedural rules she was charged with enforcing, and little inclination to enforce them evenly when she did.
Further exhibits: Nine of the 13 members of Torys executive committee, which sets councils agenda, will be people who served in that capacity under Ford. Torys budget chief is Gary Crawford, a man whose dronelike fealty to Ford was so complete that his single newsworthy accomplishment last term was painting a portrait to hang on Mama Diane Fords wall.
Not a single councillor from the old city of Toronto will head up a standing committee (though two mushy middle councillors Ana Bailao and Mary Margaret McMahon will serve at-large on the executive). Not a single member of the NDP has been given any position of influence at all.
The one token gesture to progressives is the naming of Pam McConnell from Toronto-Centre Rosedale as one of three ceremonial deputy mayors. (The others are the mostly silent Ford stooge Vincent Crisanti and Slinky-like ward-heeler Glenn De Baeremaeker.) These extraneous deputy mayors have no statutory or procedural significance. They are human props to be trotted out for events that require ribbon cutting and civic-unity platitude uttering.
Now, the statutory deputy mayor that is, the actual deputy mayor is a different matter. Denzil Minnan-Wong will occupy that role, and seems set to be the second most powerful member of the government, after Tory himself. Minnan-Wong is going to sit on the boards, in Torys place, of both Invest Toronto and Build Toronto, as some kind of apparent development czar. Hes going to sit in Torys place on the board of Waterfront Toronto, an agency against which hes pursued a bizarre and spiteful vendetta for years. Hell head up the civic appointments committee, which will choose the people who run everything from libraries to community centres to the parking authority. Hell head up the striking committee that selects members of council committees, and head up the labour relations committee that negotiates with the citys unions.
Newly powerful Minnan-Wong is a smart conservative who has delighted in playing the moustache-twirling villain to downtown councillors for years, tying bike lanes to the railroad tracks and tossing lit-fused cherry bombs at pedestrian initiatives. He was the bad cop to Karen Stintzs good cop in opposition to David Miller, and has been the bad cop to the Ford brothers Keystone Cops since then. It was under his chairmanship of the public works committee that it produced vindictive surprise motions to kill the Jarvis bike lanes and the Fort York bridge.
When it came to firing up divisions in the city, the Ford brothers and Giorgio Mammoliti provided more explosive public flare-ups, but Minnan-Wong often more skillfully poured policy gas on the blaze. Effective? Often. But hes the opposite of a unifying figure.
Read more from the original source:
John Tory appointments put an end to the idea of unity: Keenan