WhatFinger


That’s life in the realm of municipal elections

Toronto’s Municipal Election Another Big Yawn


By -- Christine Van Geyn, CTF Ontario Director——--October 23, 2018

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Toronto’s Municipal Election Another Big Yawn Yesterday’s Toronto election was like most municipal elections, a big yawn, in the one level of government where voters rarely, if ever, manage to overturn the apple cart of the status quo. Municipal elections are dogged by voter apathy, and have been for decades, the main reason why incumbents of the most useless kind continue to be re-elected every few years.
In the case of the Province of Ontario, the most exciting news had already happened back in the summer months when newly-elected Premier Doug Ford cut Toronto City Council down to size. The big news last night wasn’t that incumbent Mayor John Tory was reelected with 63& of the vote, leaving his closest opponent, chief city planner Jennifer Keesmaat at 23%. it was instead a rueful return by the media to Ford’s having cut Toronto city council by half. “The moment polls closed in Ontario’s municipal elections Monday, CBC turned its online coverage to a woman denouncing Premier Doug Ford for chopping the size of Toronto city council. (National Post, Oct. 23, 2018)
“It was unfair, she raged. It was undemocratic. It was savage. It was brutal. It was also over with, and the election had gone ahead without evidence of any permanent damage to democracy, but what would the CBC be if it couldn’t open the show with a diatribe against that horrible man who had somehow become premier?”
In spite of CBC, Canada’s main news carrier, subsidized by $1-billion a year from the taxpayers’ purse, Premier Ford’s council cutback was over, just like breakfast. Keesmaat, offering “progressive proposals” was late in getting into the race, didn’t have much in the way of an election budget and talked about the possibility of senior levels of government coming up with the scratch needed for some of her post-election dreams.
“Did anyone really think Doug Ford, accused by many of slashing the size of council out of pure spite, would suddenly shower untold millions on a city he claims is a model of “dysfunctional government and … political gridlock?” The one that hounded his brother and removed his powers, handing them to the deputy mayor, Norm Kelly (who, coincidentally, lost his seat on the new, smaller council Monday).” (National Post)

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Keesmaat, who because of her experience as the city’s chief city planner, should have known better, was not the only one who seemed to not know about Toronto’s political state of an all but unmovable status quo. It was more than a Google advertising cut-off 48 hours before election that kept candidate Faith Goldy from being elected mayor. The Toronto Establishment is anything but tolerant of upstart newcomers. The mainstream media contends that Goldy finished in third place, but some 25,000 Torontonians bought into her message. Not bad for a newcomer. Even in same-old, same-old elections like Toronto’s last night, there were a few surprises in the outcome. Norm Kelly, who raised the resentment of the Ford Nation folk when he nonchalantly took over from Mayor Rob Ford, at the behest of council, lost his seat. Conservative Patrick Brown came bounding back to win the City of Brampton’s mayoral race, 10 months after being ousted as Ontario’s PC leader on sexual misconduct allegations dating back to his time as an MP. Brown garnered about 44% of ballots cast, and beat Linda Jeffrey who served as Brampton Mayor since 2014. The media reluctantly reports that Brown is already working with Premier Ford. Some will be sad that Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, Toronto council’s longstanding most colorful and plucky member lost his seat in Humber River--Black Creek: . That’s life in the realm of municipal elections.


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Judi McLeod -- Christine Van Geyn, CTF Ontario Director -- Bio and Archives -- Judi McLeod, Founder, Owner and Editor of Canada Free Press, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in the print and online media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared throughout the ‘Net, including on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

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