The Corporation of the City of Toronto has been less than prudent in its appointments for the chairmanship of the local health board.
In the all important area of public health, the corporation continues to send councillors with political agendas to the board’s helm.
Before moving on as executive director of Greenpeace Canada, former Coun. Peter Tabuns was running the health show. Tabuns made an absolute fool of himself, other board members and even the city when he led the charge on a boycott of Harvey's Hamburgers. With long-time ties to animal rights activists, vegans and assorted eco-freaks, Tabuns has not been a proponent of beef. But when he went out after the hamburger chain, it was on the basis that it had donated money to the election chest of the provincial Progressive Conservative Party. Problem was that when the smoke had cleared, Harvey's could prove it had also donated to the coffers of both the Liberals and NDP.
Subsequent chapters of the local health board saw the arrival of Coun. John Filion, career politician from Mel Lastman's North York.
Back in the days when Filion was a young, radical, North York school board trustee, he wore sandals in any weather. North York board trustees created a public outcry when they built their very own restaurant on school board property. Janitorial staff of the day harbored resentment for Filion, who kept them on the run filling food orders.
It’s unlikely that Filion would be a welcome guest in any Toronto restaurant in this chapter of his political career.
Four weeks into his well-publicized crackdown on the local restaurant industry, which identified eateries with minor infractions on the front pages of daily newspapers, Filion was off on yet another council junket to the Orient.
Before leaving, he had shunned the good advice of colleagues and peers by going ahead to implicate Pizza Pizza as a link which kept more than 300 students home from two Toronto elementary schools. With Filion at a safe distance in faraway China, experts reported it was a highly contagious stomach virus and not food poisoning from pizza which kept the youngsters home from school.
As far as is known, there were no apologies to parents, students or Pizza Pizza from Coun. Filion.
Crusading politicians from the far left have always seemed to find postings on the local health board. In the 1980s, some of them had parents up in arms when they suggested that an infestation of head lice in school students was more of a communal rather than a health problem. This cavalier attitude earned a certain local politico the nickname, 'Jumpin Jack' Layton.
Everyone is concerned about public health issues. Restaurants with serious sanitation violations should be shut down. But panic can be infectious when the red flag is hoisted by politicians whose rhetoric borders on the irresponsible.
Shame on Mayor Mel for making remarks that compare restaurant food with rat excrement.
Thanks to the way he allowed the health board and inspectors to handle a cleanup of our restaurants, 'dirty dining ditties' from anonymous authors are printed in the mammoth circulation Toronto Star.
Where is the city report on a downtown restaurant where some local councillors get to eat for free?
About the crackdown, at least Deputy Mayor Case Ootes was showing some common sense.
'If there are serious violations that warrant closing, I support naming them. But if the violations can be corrected in quick order, I think we need to use some discretion.'
Agreeing not to identify restaurants with minor violations is the old story of too little too late.
A crackdown on the chairmanship of the Toronto Health Board is long overdue, because public health and politicians with political agendas are not a healthy mix.
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