by arthur Weinreb,
March 2, 2005
Trees are a priority, it seems. Skateboard parks are a priority, it seems. Grants to community groups are a priority. But we don’t find fire trucks a priority? That doesn’t make sense to me.
Councillor Karen Stintz
While attempting to balance this year’s budget, Toronto City Council considered slashing $1 million that was earmarked to replace some of the city’s aging fire trucks. according to the Toronto Fire Department, 25 per cent of the department’s trucks are older than the 15 years that is the allotted time that the vehicles are considered proper equipment. But some members of council thought that the money could be better spent elsewhere, as Ms. Stintz says, on trees and skateboards.
In the last municipal election, the people of Toronto spoke. They elected a mayor whose main, and seemingly only priority, was to halt construction of the proposed bridge to the Toronto islands. as the long municipal election campaign wound down, it became a two-man race between Mayor David Miller and John Tory, now the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. Tory’s main priority was to do something about the violent crime on Toronto streets, while Miller’s main concern was that awful bridge. Rarely in the huffing and puffing of electoral races, do we see such clearly enunciated positions on issues. Yet when the ballots were counted, not only was David Miller the clear winner, but the voters gave him a council that would ensure that his socialist, pacifist philosophy would be carried out. We got the council that we had voted for.
It should, therefore not come as any surprise that Miller and his comrades do not want to blow a million bucks on replacing fire trucks when there are trees facing certain death. Not only do they not care about the safety of the residents of Toronto, they have little regard for the people themselves. They are guided not by what would make Toronto a clean and safe city in which to live, work or visit but by their ideology. No one should really be shocked or surprised that saving trees is considered to be a higher priority than saving people.
Toronto City Council shows the same contempt for the Toronto Fire Department that they show for the city’s police. On the occasional weekend when parts of the city resemble the Wild Wild West, David Miller never had too much to say about the violent exchanges of gunfire. He would undoubtedly feel differently if someone was taking shots at his kids in his trendy High Park neighbourhood, but young black men killing other young black men in Scarborough is no big deal to the mayor. To him and his fellow travellers, these young black males are not really people; they are simply a "group" to be used to achieve his manifesto. Crime and old fire trucks are not something that the socialist elite have to worry about. and besides, David Miller was far to busy engineering the exit of popular police chief, Julian Fantino, to pay much attention to what was happening on the streets of Toronto.
Miller and his gang simply don’t care about the safety of the city’s residents. When he and his Budgetless Chief, David Soknaki, were trying to get money out of the province, they threatened to take 125 paramedics off of the streets. Now, most of us knew that this was the political equivalent to throwing a temper tantrum, but there were undoubtedly some elderly and disabled people; the ones that the NDP love to refer to as "society’s most vulnerable" who were genuinely afraid that their lives could be in jeopardy because of council’s threats. But Miller couldn’t care less.
So it really is not a surprise, that Miller and the city mothers have no real interest in seeing that the Toronto Fire Department has sufficient equipment to protect Torontonians. Besides, it would be hard to pin fire deaths specifically upon old equipment, so they can get away with ignoring the need for new equipment. and if the home of a single mother with three children burns down, well hopefully they will survive and be added to the rolls of Miller’s beloved homeless.
Karen Stintz is a newcomer on Toronto City Council. a little more experience and it will all make sense to her.
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