by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
March 22, 2004
Well maybe not completely honest; but in politics as elsewhere, everything is relative. In Toronto we are governed by three new leaders, the 3 "M’s"--Paul Martin, Dalton McGuinty and David Miller.
Prime Minister Paul Martin spends almost every waking hour trying to convince us that although he was the Minister of Finance for most of the Chrétien years, if any monies went missing from the Department of Public works or the DND, he knew absolutely nothing about it. He is insisting on blind ignorance even when it is being revealed that some of his closest aides were ‘in the loop". Undoubtedly there will be future revelations regarding other departments and the befuddled PM will be required to make more protestations of complete and utter unawareness of what when on in his former department. Only in Canada can a person aspire to greatness by pleading ignorance. Pity.
We also have a new premier of Ontario who, when not breaking election promises is conducting focus groups to determine how the voters will react to the reversal of promises not yet broken. Enough focus groups and he just might be able to get the go ahead to increase taxes. Far from being the only Liberal to be liberal with the truth, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is the only one to have earned the designation of his party as the "Fiberals". Considering the lies and half-truths that have emanated from Ottawa in the last 10 years, this is quite an accomplishment.
The third member of the "M’s" is newly elected Toronto mayor David Miller. During the long election campaign, Miller promised that if he was elected mayor he would end plans to construct a bridge to the Toronto Island airport and promised little else. Miller has been in power for about four months and true to his word, he has scuttled the bridge and has done very little else. Well, he made a lot of other promises but they were all contingent upon other levels of government giving him the money. Dalton McGuinty is too busy crying poor and blaming the purported $5.6 billion deficit that the Tories left him to consider handing over any dough. and Paul Martin is too scared to give Toronto any money, perhaps knowing that any funds allocated to Canada’s largest city will probably wind up in some Quebec Liberal crony’s bank account. although Miller’s socialist vision of Toronto is likely to drive more business from the city, at least he hasn’t lied to us.
as happened with former Tory premier Mike Harris, you don’t necessarily get brownie points for telling the truth. With Harris and later with Miller, it is amusing to see the shocked reactions of people when those leaders actually do what they had promised to do.
although there has been a rash of recent murders in Toronto involving gangs and drugs, the problem existed during the last municipal campaign and crime became an election issue. Voters were given a clear choice between John Tory who wanted to increase the amount of front-line police officers and David Miller who made it absolutely clear that between a bridge to the island and people getting blown away by guns, the bridge was the more important issue. Miller was true to his socialist roots in promoting the theory that violent crime is decreasing and that more recreation centres and group hugs are the way to go to stop the violence. The Miller that we saw on the campaign trail is the Miller that we got.
Now the Toronto police are demanding more money from the cash starved city. The cops are upset that they are not allowed to find savings by replacing the unionized workers who clean police stations with cheaper non-union workers. Well, Miller never hid the fact that he is a union man through and through and will not tackle the city’s fiscal problems by reducing labour costs. The police are also using the spate of violent crime as a reason for the allocation of more funds.
Those demands should be ignored. We are not living in a police state--at least not yet. Crime was a clear issue during the last election campaign and the electorate has spoken. The voters clearly decided to elect a mayor and a left wing council who are clearly of the view that crime is not a priority and murders can be prevented if only the shooters had more facilities in which to play basketball.
at a time when the senior levels of government are lying and stonewalling, it’s nice to have a leader that tells it like it is, even if the "is" will result in economic and social decline.