Toronto's next Mayor - what is at stake on October 25

Toronto will elect its next mayor on Monday October 25, 2010. There are 3 head line candidates, of which only 2 have a chance of winning. I have heard all of them speak live and these are my conclusions.

The 2 candidates with a chance of winning are Rob Ford, a current councillor, and a Liberal Party insider, George Smitherman.

Rob Ford - you get what you see. Someone hard-working, committed to his word with rough edges. He plays hockey and gets into fights on the ice, drinks beer and has smoked weed. In other words, a typical Canadian, which has not go down well with the media elites in Toronto. He is not a great speaker, but his content is clear and straight-forward, and always attempts to do what he says. You may not like his ideas (I do actually), but like Margaret Thatcher, there will be no ambiguity about what he aims to do.

And Smitherman, who should be regarded as the Liberal Party's poor choice to support when they had Rocco Rossi. However, it is all about internal connections on that front. When speaking, Smitherman came off as smug, mouthed some platitudes and like a good career politician simply did not answer the relatively easy questions asked, but went off at tangents. It was surprising because the questions were right along his sweet spots of art & culture, Pride and transit, and the audience was probably most skewed towards him at the outset. All candidates were asked about Toronto funding for the gay Pride parade in light of the inclusion of the anti-Semitic QAIA group, yet Smitherman was only concerned with the effect on the gay community, not the fact that city money was supporting hatred of a minority. Because some in the gay community happen to be racist, the issue of funding became complicated for him and even though they are taking tax-payers' money, it is up to the gay community to sort out. I cannot imagine Smitherman thinking that a homophobic group wanting to join the Santa Claus parade that receives city funding should be allowed to do so in the interests of free speech, nor that the determination of the homophobic group should be left to Santa Claus, his reindeer and the elves. Rob Ford, to his credit, said the issue is not complicated and that property tax-payers money should not go to any group, parade or institution which includes hate-speech in its programs.

It seemed to me that Smitherman thought he had already won the election from the way he spoke. He had an air of arrogance about his pseudo-intelligent responses befitting a career politician. So I looked into his background achievements and I just don’t see a track record of competency.

When Smitherman was the Minister of Health, there was the eHealth fiasco over which he had control and cost Ontarians approximately $1 Billion for a system that does not work. On October 21, the Ontario Auditor-General released a report finding great fault with the sole-sourcing of contracts at the Ontario Ministry of Health, leading to over-priced and inefficient service when Smitherman was Minister of Health. When he was in charge of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission, we had numerous scandals with the lottery sellers stealing prizes from the rightful winners and no investigation, never mind action, was ordered by Smitherman. Smitherman was Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's deputy, a man who promised no new taxes in his manifesto and literally on the day he took power instituted a health tax of nearly $1,000 per year per person. He called it a fee, not a tax, so that was alright with the electorate when re-election came round. It was also alright with the electorate when a winning campaign that bordered right on the edge of racism was used to attack equal school funding for minorities. We also have Smitherman's time as Ontario Energy Minister pushing for green energy with solar energy rebates to big businesses who can afford to put in such panels (i.e. Ikea) at approximately 5.5 times the cost of current electricity costs. I must admit, I do not know much about Toronto's time with Barbara Hall as its mayor and Smitherman as her deputy, but I do hear that she was not missed when she went. That is also reportedly a time when Smitherman was a "party drug" addict for 5 years, whatever a party drug is. Whilst we may forgive that faux pas of 5 years, do we really need to forget that someone who represented the city's interests during that period was high?

In summary, Smitherman has proved his incompetence at various levels of provincial and municipal politics. He is a career politician and has had no accountability for his failures. To me, he appears to have rightfully earned the nickname of "Slitherman". Can Toronto afford another incompetent mayor for 4 years and still retain a decent quality of life?

That is what is at stake on October 25.