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Toronto News

City mothers panic at Tory lead

by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
Saturday, January 21, 2006

Fiscal responsibility and accountability have never been the strong suits of Mayor David Miller and his left leaning council. although not entirely responsible for the state of the city of Toronto, Miller has done more than his share to help transform "Toronto the Good "into "the Home of the Homeless" where violent gun crime is escalating almost as fast as taxes are.

This council sees no necessity of living within its means. They throw money at their pet causes like drunken sailors (apologies to drunken sailors who at least spend their own money). Council spends money on what they consider to be noble and have a total disregard for those who work hard in order to pay more and more for less and less public services.

David Miller has turned the office of the Chief Magistrate into the office of the Chief Panhandler. Taking no responsibility for overspending, Miller has spent his entire mayoralty begging for money from the other levels of government. Each and every problem that arises in the city can be solved; if only the federal or provincial government will fork over the money. David Miller has turned whining and moaning, a favourite Canadian past time, into an art form. and he hasn't been too successful getting money from the other 2 M's, one of whom will hopefully be gone by early next week.

It is true that there are a lot of fiscal imbalances in Canada that resulted from Paul Martin's reign as finance minister when he slashed transfer payments to the provinces. The only way to remedy this is to give more power to the provinces to make them less dependent upon the ego of the federal Liberals who love to amass huge surpluses that they call "balanced budgets". Of course if anyone suggests to the prime minister that the provinces should have more power, he brings his new best friend Buzzy out to accuse them of being separatists.

Ontario has had to download services onto the municipalities because their transfer payments were cut. Premier Dalton McGuinty did a good job arguing to correct Ontario's $23 billion imbalance until the federal election was called and then he became silent, presumably upon instructions from his federal cousins. This period of quiet has been the longest time Dalton has gone without telling a lie.

So the city has legitimate grievances for being short-changed. But they fear that the funds for their reckless spending will be less than it otherwise would if the Conservatives form the next government. Council's lefties are in an absolute panic over the though that Stephen Harper might become the next Prime Minister of Canada.

Councillor and vice-chair of the TTC, Joe Mihevc, perhaps best illustrates how much disdain these local politicos have for the taxpayers. Stephen Harper has announced that his government would give a tax credit to those who purchase the monthly TTC Metropass. So what does Mihevc say about this? "Ha, ha ha", cried the councillor; we'll just raise the cost of the Metropass to take away any benefit that the riders might have. That'll damn sure fix Harper.

The only problem is that except for the occasional photo/op Stephen Harper doesn't use the TTC. Mihevc's statements about raising prices for the Metropass just because Harper will give a tax credit shows what utter contempt he and many other councillors have for the citizens of Toronto. They don't care about people; at least those who have homes. Ideology is everything.

and of course the councillors with their friends in the media (mainly the Toronto Star and CITY TV) are preaching doom and gloom scenarios about everything from daycare to infrastructure.

Hopefully the voters will not be bullied into rejecting the Conservatives because of threats levelled by the likes of Joe Mihevc.

Maybe; just maybe, a Conservative government will throw a little money to the city to fix up the gridlock on our roads. Now, that would be progress.


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