The mayoral race just got a whole lot more interesting…
Well, now.
If anyone was worried that this election campaign was going to be a battle of
personalities who disagreed on little — a couple Liberals and a couple New
Democrats trying to out-new-urbanism each other and debating the fine points of
streamlining bureaucracy and panhandling for cash from the province and the
feds — Rocco Rossi put those fears to rest yesterday, didn’t he?
The big,
bald bruiser made his first big campaign speech at the Empire Club,
and he came out with his dukes up: to his already declared plans to cut the
mayor’s salary and sell off Toronto Hydro, he added pledges to scrap bike lanes
on Jarvis and elsewhere, put Transit City on hold, contract out garbage
collection and other (as yet unnamed) services, take city councilors off the
TTC board and lay some serious muscle on public sector unions.
From a guy
no one’s really heard of before, this was a pretty astonishing performance.
He’s essentially setting himself up not just as someone who will be more
fiscally prudent than the gang who’s been running things, but as the
anti-Miller — a crusader against everything uTOpian.
As transit
guru Steve Munro was quick to point out on his blog (and Smitherman’s campaign
also pointed out, according to the Star story linked above), the whole plan to put Transit City on
a financial review may demonstrate
a misunderstanding of local issues in Toronto. After all, the program is
being paid for by the province, not the city. Rossi responded to Munro to say
he’s more worried about operating costs when construction is done.
But what an
energizing speech. He’s managed to crystallize a lot of people-on-the-street
talking points and put them forward as issues for debate. He’s giving
supporters of bikes and transit and public sector unions the chance to step up
and make the case for why his approach is misguided and why we’re on the right
track — or why a different direction is better. (That’s exactly what
Munro was able to do instantly yesterday.)
Now as an
agenda for governing the city, his proposals so far look to me like a
disaster. But as the start of a
conversation we desperately need to have about what kind of city we want to
live in and how it should be governed, this is fabulous.
As an
activist said in a message to me: this is gonna be some fun.