Imagine a travelling delegation of city politicians having to discover Toronto in the faraway Netherlands.
From cosmopolitan Amsterdam the mayor, his councillors and bureaucrats reflected upon how promotion strategies by Tourism Toronto, a GTA-wide marketing alliance gets no results and is found lacking in the prime area of economic development marketing as well.
Tourism Toronto, on their own home turf, gets about $4-million annually from the same politicians who run the city.
How long they've been failing at the game of tourism for T.O. is anybody's guess. According to our illustrious mayor: Tourism Toronto "hasn't done anything to my knowledge. Not one penny of our money has gone to do anything for the City of Toronto. I haven't seen any business come in because of it."
When the five-person Team Toronto, including councillors Brian Ashton and Kyle Rae landed in foreign ports, it seems they found out that Toronto isn't even a blip on the European radar screen as a place that's fun and adventurous to visit.
It's a bit like councillors who predate the 10-year old chlorine contract being shocked and appalled that there's bid-rigging under investigation by the federal government into the same two companies who have monopolized the contract for more than a decade.
How is it that municipal politicians miss what is under their very noses, but the light goes on when they reach Europe?
While discovering how we've been missing the boat on promoting our city abroad, Toronto Team member Kyle Rae took some time out to insult one of the taxpaying hotels in his downtown ward.
Rae said Filmore's Hotel "is a magnet for men looking for sex" and could easily be turned into a brothel along the lines of some he visited during a 'fact-finding mission' in Germany, the week before.
"In my mind's eye, I can see a place like Filmores, which has been a strip club in a traditional area where prostitution already happens...being licenced for that purpose," said Rae.
Never mind, though, that the federal government will have to decriminalize prostitution before any legal brothels get the green light in downtown T.O.
Were city councillors intending on expropriating the Dundas St. East hotel in order to get their brothel?
Did they check in with the owner before winging their way to the Netherlands?
According to nonplussed Filmores' staff: Nope.
Nor did some of the staffers working to pay university tuitions and Christmas shopping realize they were the employees of "a magnet for men looking for sex".
"They insult us," said Howard Adams, a representative of Filmores' owner. "Filmores is the only club that has obeyed the law with no lap dancing, or physical contact."
The love affair between Amsterdam and globe-trotting Toronto municipal politicians goes back a long way. John Sewell was there. It was in 1974 when then Mayor David Crombie signed a twinning agreement between Toronto and Amsterdam. Since then, all Toronto mayors, except
June Rowlands, have travelled to the city.
Rowlands spent her travel dollars looking to improve Toronto business while visiting the Orient.
Aren't junket loving municipal politicians full of ideas when they're out on fact-finding missions in exotic ports of call?
Stay home more often, boys and girls of city council. Find a good map of T.O. and then study it carefully. Homegrown business needs your attention. Maybe if you're around more often, you won't be shocked and appalled to find suspicions of bid-rigging in a 10-year-old chlorine contract in that tax-and-spend, on shore haven known to the little people as Toronto City Hall.