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COVER STORY

Dennis Quixote: Dumping the UN on Toronto

by Judi McLeod

August 11, 2003

President George W. Bush and Company owe Canadian backbencher Liberal MP Dennis Mills--big time. Prominent Americans, including former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, want to kick the United Nations out of New York City. Mills, still heady with the success of what he touts as, "The Concert of the Century", wants to move the UN--kit and caboodle--to beautiful downtown Toronto. On a roll, Mills brought the Rolling Stones to Toronto’s Downsview Park on July 30, and last summer helped stage a love-in for Pope John Paul 11 from the same site.

Why would anyone want to dump the world’s largest bureaucracy on Toronto’s waterfront? Not for the revenues generated from parking by 10,000-plus, tax-free UN employees. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is still fuming about UN deadbeat diplomats who owe the Big Apple more than $22-million in unpaid parking fines since 1997.

The biggest huckster since P.T. Barnum, Mills hints at immortalizing Canada’s refusal to join the United States in the war in Iraq. But Canadafreepress.com believes the backbencher, who claims to have "stage-managed" former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, is doing it for Prime-Minister-In-Waiting Paul Martin. Martin, readers may recall, has only recently taken up a UN appointment from Secretary General Kofi Annan, and leans heavily on Canadian-born UN heavyweight Maurice Strong, who some say will really be running the show in the PMO.

For sure, the UN would be much more at home in socialist Canuckland, nestled on the waterfront of the metropolis, long touted by Liberals as global Diversity City.

Ever since the Stones concert, Mills a four-term Liberal backbencher now headed for a fifth, has become a victim of his own press clippings.

How else to explain why the backbencher, described in the National Post as shy school boy-cum "melodramatic extrovert" would want to dump the world’s largest bureaucracy on an unsuspecting City of Toronto?

Part of Mill’s scheme is to link the new UN headquarters up to the downtown core with a $25-million monorail that could be built by Bombardier. That’s bound to be news for proponents of the Toronto Island Airport, and to Transportation Minister David Collenette, not a big fan of Mills Quixote.

…"It’s been a crazy day," was the voicemail message on Mill’s well-used cellular telephone when CFP tried to catch up with him during the height of his bring-the-UN-to-T.O. publicity.

A crazy day? No kidding, Mr. Mills.

Is Mills ‘Rolling-Stoned’ in the heady aftermath of "The Concert of the Century"? Does the unabashed Paul Martin acolyte really believe that he and sidekick Liberal Senator Jerry Grafstein can pull this one off on Canadian taxpayers?

The July 30 Downsview concert, Mills and Grafstein said, was staged in order to send out a message worldwide that Toronto is SARS-free. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way to success, the event was media-dubbed, SARS-Stock, linking forever the City of Toronto to SARS.

According to Gillian Cosgrove, who wrote a fawning column on Mills in the National Post, in order to deliver on the concert Mills and Grafstein "had to blackmail governments out of $5.5-million."

By dawn on the day after the concert, there were "525 mentions on the U.S. broadcast media, including major networks, and 8 million webcast hits."

Describing himself to Cosgrove as a "hard, hard lefty", Mills who once studied as a Catholic priest, said next to Trudeau, Mother Theresa is his "other inspiration".

Mother Theresa would hardly have approved when he launched a public "No Liberal Coronation" Internet contest--when he was already in the Paul Martin camp.

The bottle green, glass spaceship-like, UN Manhattan headquarters has been a mammoth bureaucratic cash drain since its inception. Among other things, the UN can boast its own in-house mystic, who claims to have been Thomas Jefferson in another life. But now the UN’s top manager says its buildings pose a safety hazard, and are in pressing need of billions of dollars in repairs. Before Mills stepped up to the plate, the UN had already approached the United States, its prime enemy, for a $1.3 billion loan to cover some of the costs.

The way Canadian Liberals throw around money, the billions needed to repair the UN are not likely to dampen the enthusiasm of their backbench.

Can Paul Martin’s acolyte bring the UN to Toronto?

There can be no doubt that most of the dreams of Dennis Mills are in Technicolor.

Last December, he invited the author of this article to the Palace Restaurant, where he was found admiring his back-to-the-camera pose on a picture promoting yet another waterfront scheme, on a Christmas card mailed out to constituents. First question he asked: "Should I run for mayor (of Toronto) or for Prime Minister (of Canada)?"

"Neither one," she silently hoped.

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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