So the election for a new Toronto mayor has come and gone. The result has been as predicted. The questions now are; so what, and now what?
As I observed at the beginning of the election, no candidate will be able to do much about the problems Toronto presently faces, within the limits of the present rules. If there is no willingness to force a rewrite of the rules of the game, there is little point to seeking public office. You might say it does not matter who won.
However, that is not exactly true. Having a really ‘progressive’ mayor will mitigate the damage being caused by raging neoliberalism. It will especially benefit the underclasses, the people being slowly killed by those policies.
However, all Chow and the other progressives on council can do is to slow down the decline of the city. The city has no power to reverse the decline. To repeat, the present rules within which the city government works must be rewritten.
As I and an increasing number of other people have written in social media recently, there will be no such rewrite of the rules from within the existing rules. There is also no way Toronto will fix its problems by itself. The same basic problem exists throughout the “western” ten percent of the world.
It is also pretty much confined to the western world because most of the rest of the world is beginning to solve these problems and to move on from capitalism. In the west, the solution of these problems will start at the local level and build into national movements. Toronto is a good place to start and a really good Toronto mayor would be a good person to start it.
Miss Olivia is a very nice lady but she does not have the capacity to deal with Toronto’s challenges. The only candidate who looked as though he might was Josh Matlow. I even voted for him in the advance poll.
I never thought he had much chance of winning. He seems to be laying the groundwork for a more serious run in future. He is young.
So Chow has taken on the ‘mighty mayor’ powers created by Doug the Thug when he thought most big city mayors in Ontario would continue to be conservative. She has announced she will not use them. That is a silly thing to say; of course she will use them.
From the moment she gets her butt into the big chair at city hall, she will be under intense pressure to use this power. She has a counter social majority on council. They will prevent everything she needs to do or tries to do if she does not use every stick she has available.
The narrow elite which thinks it has the right to run the city has learned how to keep progressive tendencies under control. They promote numerous ‘fake front’ councilors. These make a big show of being left and moderate and progressive, while always voting for retrograde measures.
Most people have difficulty knowing how their councilors actually vote. This is one of the big reasons why political parties were invented. This in turn is why conservative forces in Ontario are so determined to prevent political parties from forming in local politics.
This is one very good reason for a ‘progressive’ mayor to use the mighty mayor powers, an American style executive veto over the legislative branch, which can only be overridden by a two thirds vote. As about a third of councilors are genuinely ‘progressive’, we have a way to stop any more knuckle dragger motions coming out of council.
There are other left/progressive uses for the mighty mayor power. There is trouble with councilors doing the old ‘nimby’ thing of blocking needed projects such as low income housing, hostels, or safe injection sites. Many humane and sensible measures could be proposed by the minority of real progressive councilors, and knocked home by the power of Mighty Mayor.
It must be kept in mind that the reason Ford and Tory brought in these powers was because their counter social agenda was increasingly being frustrated. These measures were also very unpopular. Community groups have begun to be more organized and ‘unreasonable’, causing many fake progressive and other councilors to back away from regressive measures.
Chow should use this power to the maximum possible extent for as long as she has it. Let ‘Ford Nation’ howl and explain why he created this power in the first place. Such a legislative blitz could include raising property taxes on those who can pay, knocking down the Gardiner freeway, and pouring concrete into the ridiculous Scarborough subway.
Of course the biggest stick Chow could use would be a really mobilized public. This is not about getting more white, middle class nimbuses holding more polite protests or doing their three minutes at the wailing wall at city hall. It is about using the city’s resources to enable a serious mass movement in the city.
Generating effective action is a topic in itself. It must become standard practice that when provincial governments start trying to make decisions by fiat, destructive to the public’s interest, and are engaging in obvious corruption, then they are out of office by the side door, like quick! It does not matter if he or she got ninety nine percent of the vote last week.
The kind of interim structures needing to be put into place to insure that governments serve the public interest, until we perfect a really democratic system, is a topic for many blog posts. It would be a topic for citizen’s discussion groups. For these deliberations to have results, they must be mediated by the kind of honest information system which the city’s resources could enable.
I am really moonshining here. I really do not believe Chow has the capacity to govern effectively in the public’s interest. She is basically an NDP operative.
No NDP government has ever been able to carry out a social agenda. They are crushed and brought into conformity by local establishments. The problem is, they never have a real program, real ideas, and they usually have no fight in them.
Usually, NDP is unable to run an effective campaign, even where they should easily win. We have seen this lately in provincial elections in Alberta and Ontario. Chow showed the same NDP disease in her previous run for mayor.
Her political record seems to show she only wins elections against very weak opponents. This time she had a tougher stance, and even some ideas. However, I have the sinking feeling that her success in this campaign was due mainly to the conservative opposition being caught out, surprised and divided.
Most people are noticing that politics is rapidly getting nastier, at the local level up to the national. More people are grasping why. There is a ruling class or oligarchy, there is class war, old style oligarchy is losing power as their economic system fails, they are becoming more vicious as they try to maintain control.
Opposition to these counter social forces will have to be very tough to have any effect at all, or even to not be destroyed. It is worse for local governments of large cities, because oligarchs are always intensely anti urban. Big cities are where revolutions start.
It is cities which are hit hardest when political/economic systems are breaking down. They are left to deal with most of the trouble with few resources. The power to fix the problems afflicting cities lie with higher levels of government.
Thus, for the most part all that Toronto will be able to do is to cope with the economic crisis until higher forces are able to correct them. Increasing property taxes will relieve budget problems only slightly. None of the city’s tax powers are enough to solve this problem, even if used to the maximum.
Building more low cost housing will solve nothing if the country keeps trying to solve its economic problems by flooding the country with immigrants, if there is no system of rent controls, and nothing can be done to stop real estate speculation.
So, Miss Olivia; the good fairy has granted you the ruby slippers. Now the wicked witch, er, warlock, is very angry with you. Do not be fooled by his smile. If you are not able to use the power the magic slippers give you, you will be eaten alive.
Addendum; Watching the TV coverage of the election caused a brief scare. Ana Bailao was briefly ahead in the count. She is the exemplar for the phony councilors who present as being left or centrist according to the audience, but are really hard right.
The conservative command signaled that Bailao would be the ABC, “Anyone But Chow”, candidate for conservative votes to consolidate around. They even overrode Ford about it, which is interesting. In typical conservative style, they waited until the last week, so the Chow campaign could not focus on her.
The best comment of any of the TV commentators was this; Doug Ford has been mayor of Toronto for ten years. He has been using Tory as a front.
John Tory, BTW, is the previous mayor whose romantic fling with a city hall staffer caused him to resign in disgrace, bringing about this special election.
That’s all from Toronto the Good.