{"id":6066,"date":"2010-10-27T12:25:51","date_gmt":"2010-10-27T16:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=6066"},"modified":"2010-10-27T10:42:31","modified_gmt":"2010-10-27T14:42:31","slug":"the-new-broom-in-toronto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/10\/27\/the-new-broom-in-toronto\/","title":{"rendered":"The new broom in Toronto"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a particularly hard-fought election campaign, Chris Selley<\/a> looks at the opening moves Toronto mayor Rob Ford will be making:<\/p>\n

\n

It\u2019s kind of funny to see people who\u2019ve spent the past 10 months trashing Rob Ford now insist he needs to extend olive branches to the progressive community. If I were Rob Ford, and I had an olive branch, I might be tempted to extend it rather violently towards my harshest critics. (Then, in accordance with my new and improved image, I\u2019d take two deep breaths and calm down.)<\/p>\n

Clearly Mr. Ford is sticking with his gravy train priorities off the top: departmental efficiencies, contracting out services, cutting councillor budgets and staff. At a media scrum on Tuesday afternoon, his message hadn\u2019t changed, that I could discern, from what it was during the campaign. Basically: Trust me. The money\u2019s there to be saved, and it won\u2019t hurt a bit.<\/p>\n

Still, Mayor Ford will have a city to keep happy. And while they received very little notice during the campaign, his platform included several populist, pro-democratic and dirt-cheap measures I\u2019d defy anyone to oppose and that could earn him some grudging praise from disaffected Pantaloons and Smithermanians.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The large turnout and the not-quite-majority of votes cast for Ford should at least quiet the claims that he “doesn’t have a mandate” for a little while. If he can actually deliver on some of his campaign promises to reduce spending and eliminate some of the least useful municipal programs\/initiatives, he’ll be a vast improvement over the last mayor. Even if he doesn’t — he only has a single vote on council, so it’s not automatic that he’ll be able to implement his agenda — it should be an interesting term in office.<\/p>\n

Kathy Shaidle<\/a> shows why Rob Ford had “hidden” strength in the campaign that the media couldn’t account for:<\/p>\n

\n

What is Rob Ford most famous for?<\/p>\n

No, not that he looks exactly like everybody’s drunk, abusive stepfather. No, not the “gravy train” line.<\/p>\n

Rob Ford is “the guy who returns every call.”<\/p>\n

That was always Ford’s claim to fame: that even if you didn’t [live] in his ward, he returned your call.<\/strong> If you were wrapped up in red tape and called Rob Ford, an hour or maybe a day later, the tape got snipped. The Wheeltrans showed up at your elderly mother’s door. That stupid problem you’d been screaming at bureaucrats about got taken care of.<\/p>\n

Everyone in Toronto knows a Rob Ford story like that.<\/strong> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a particularly hard-fought election campaign, Chris Selley looks at the opening moves Toronto mayor Rob Ford will be making: It\u2019s kind of funny to see people who\u2019ve spent the past 10 months trashing Rob Ford now insist he needs to extend olive branches to the progressive community. If I were Rob Ford, and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,53],"tags":[188,87,636,207],"class_list":["post-6066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-cancon","category-politics","tag-electionwatch","tag-ontario","tag-robford","tag-toronto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1zQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6066"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6069,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6066\/revisions\/6069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}