We need a mayor who’ll set us free

There’s a chance for renewal and revitalization in Toronto with the hope we will elect an effective, rational new mayor unburdened by politial correctness or ideology. What stands in the way is the Mike Harris curse. Among the many evil legacies that dimwitted tool of the neocon establishment dumped on us are a giveaway of Highway 407 to foreigners and amalgamation of the former cities surrounding Toronto and calling that mess “Toronto.” He and his handlers constructed the precise big government they claimed to oppose. Remember their first pronouncement when they took power? It was, “We’re not the government. We’re here to fix the government.” As if we elected an ungovernment to unstrap us from control freaks and bureaucrats.

Then, by making it a monstrous conglomerated government, the Tory hypocrites handed control to a tidal wave of bureaucrats to produce what Tories claimed they oppose: huge government. Toronto is an ungovernable amalgamated mess with a massive council that sometimes seems on the brink of devolving into fisticuffs like parliaments in Bolivia or Azerbaijan. It makes it very easy for the well connected to have their ways at Toronto city hall without effective opposition. And now that the McGuinty regime has anointed our mayor of all the conglomerated former cities with near-presidential powers, that’s the most lucrative power spot in Canada: ruler of millions, elected by more voters than any premier or prime minister. Wow. That’s what a bozo can bring on cities to deprive citizens of democracy: destroy their municipalities and lump them into one gigantic pork barrel.