February 3, 2003
Who will Toronto City Council choose as the 'interim' to fill new NDP leader Jack Layton’s council seat in March?
Count on this 44-person council handing the seat over to Layton’s first or second personal choice, radical rookie school board Trustee Paula Fletcher, or NDP stalwart Mina Wong.
Why?
Layton wants them. The NDP councillors, including his wife Olivia Chow who dominate city politics at the Twin Towers, want them.
These are high-flying times for the NDP.
Buoyed by the recent landslide return of COPE (Coalition of Progressive Electors) in Vancouver municipal politics, Toronto’s NDP is on a mission to take over the Toronto mayoralty. As far as they’re concerned either lefty Councillor David Miller or left-leaning Liberal Barbara Hall will do.
What about so called centrist councillors, those who ostensibly live loosely under right wing or Liberal leanings?
Even at the best of times, they’re never up to speed with NDP councillors. As this is an election year, they’re further hampered by looking-out-for-number-one mode.
In 2000, council adopted a policy of appointing an interim councillor when a general election is less than a year away. Should council stick to that policy, the city clerk will invite qualified individuals to apply for the job. Council would meet with each applicant and elect a replacement for Layton at either a special meeting or at its regular March 4 meeting.
Here’s the kicker: The chosen candidate will be recommended to council by the East York Community Council. Five of the seven East York Community Council members are NDP. Council rarely turns down the recommendations of its community councils.
The person chosen to replace Layton will serve only until the Nov. 10 municipal election, earning $7,000 a month.
Councillors have said that they will elicit a promise from the chosen one that he or she will not run in the next election, allowing no one the luxury of incumbency.
Council says one thing. Toronto’s director of elections, Greg Essensa, says another.
"If the individual determines that they are going to run, council cannot stop that person," says Essensa. "There is nothing that can legally bind the individual from not running if he or she chooses."
Can city taxpayers trust the judgement of a council about whom it is repeatedly written in the mainline media, that they had no prior knowledge or gave any approval for a computer contract that ballooned from $45-million to more than $100-million? Can city taxpayers trust a council that voted to have a $2 million public inquiry into a $100 million scandal that has already spiraled to $15 million and is still growing?
This is the background of one of the candidates for ‘interim councillor’ that council will try to saddle us with.
Riding on Layton’s coattails in 2000 municipal elections, Paula Elizabeth Fletcher was elected as a trustee on the Toronto Board of Education. Although known only as an activist in Toronto, Fletcher enjoyed a bigger profile out west where she was a former leader of the Communist Party of Manitoba. Fletcher served as Communist Party leader from 1981 to 1986 before returning to Toronto "for family reasons".
Fletcher did not have to work hard on the hustings, but was a virtual shoo-in at her first attempt to gain public office in Toronto, courtesy of Jack Layton. A union mail-out supporting candidates described her as a "solid progressive in safe seat with Jack Layton. Wife (of) John Cartwright, Carpenters Union."
During the last municipal election campaign, Layton’s prolific "Back Jack" municipal election signs prominently displayed Fletcher’s photograph over the banner "Paula Fletcher for Toronto School Board".
There were no coattails on which to launch her career during Fletcher’s unsuccessful bid to win a seat on the Winnipeg School Board in 1980. Voters also spurned Fletcher when she ran under the Communist Party of Canada’s flag federally in Winnipeg North Centre.
Fletcher remained active in the Communist Party on her return to Toronto, serving on the Central Executive Committee of the CPC, and serving as a representative of the CPC on the 14-member Coordinating Committee of the Toronto Disarmament Network.
On the local municipal front, Fletcher served as executive assistant to the late City Councillor Dan Leckie until he decided not to run in 1997. Fletcher worked for Layton before her election to the school board.
Her husband John Cartwright, Business Agent of the Carpenter’s Union, also has a long history with the CPC.
Soon after election, Fletcher joined up with the media-dubbed "dysfunctional" trustees, known as "the caucus", the 11 trustees who refused to balance the board’s books with a $90 million deficit budget.
In appointing Fletcher as Layton’s replacement, councillors will leave an empty seat at the local school board, which may or may not cost taxpayers for a by-election.
Other candidates besides Wong, an executive assistant for NDP MPP Marilyn Churley, have put their names forward to replace Layton, including Toronto Greens candidate Greg Bonser.
In the last municipal race, Linda Lynch was the first runner up. Environment Watch owner Lynch, who stepped into the fray only one month before election day, garnered almost half of Layton’s vote tally, in a race that saw Layton’s plurality plunge to the lowest it had been for the past 15 years.
But candidates like Bonser and Lynch will be left out in the cold by NDP councillors who dominate council and by other councillors who cannot be counted on to actually bother to read their resumes.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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