Miller's Wet Dream

Miller's dream is all wet

By SUE-ANN LEVY

Good thing the rain had already dampened my spirits or else I'd have been really depressed listening to Mayor David Miller serve up his latest waterfront wet dream yesterday.

As His Blondness repeated his now tiresome mantra about envisioning waterfront that is "clean, green and beautiful," I felt like I was once again being force-fed gruel -- and very thin gruel indeed.

Miller had the audacity to suggest that after three years of "hard work, planning and partnership" under his watch, the waterfront has "begun its transformation" from an industrial wasteland to a "vibrant meeting place" that attracts new residents, new jobs and new tourism.

"Good things are starting to happen at the lake," he declared. We've already accomplished much."

He pointed to some 625 million in new waterfront projects he's initiated in the past year -- a soccer stadium at Exhibition Place and a film studio and media complex, name two -- that have "shovels in the ground."

If granted the keys to the mayor's office for another four years, he told us, he intends to complete the 750 acres of new public spaces and parks planned along the waterfront from Scarborough to Etobicoke.

In typical Miller fashion, he didn't know the exact cost to create said parks, citing instead "tens of millions" of dollars. (We later learned it will be $160 million ... and counting.)

"I will connect Toronto across the water by constructing waterfront trails from Scarborough to Etobicoke ... we will clean up Lake Ontario and make Toronto's beaches more swimmable," he said. "The waterfront will be Toronto's calling card to the world."

(My goodness, who writes his material?)

Look, I'm all for creating more green space and "vibrant" meeting spaces in this city -- although vibrant is a moot point if those spaces are rife with litter and the homeless.

That said, yet again, in my view, Miller is all wet. I'd like to know where, exactly, can I find that "transformation" he so readily boasts about? All I know is that as recently as two weeks ago -- while on one of my training runs for this Sunday's Toronto International Marathon -- I happened by a "good section" of the waterfront the mayor claimed to have transformed. It looked pretty much like the same dusty, dismal wasteland it's been for years.

Given his track record on the Island Airport, I'd say Miller has very little to brag about when it comes to the waterfront.

If the last three years are any indication, we'll be lucky to see 10% of what the mayor promises in the way of new public spaces and parks.

His one big promise from 2003, to kill the fixed-link bridge to the airport -- a pledge that was delivered using environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as an expensive prop -- has been a bust. Like the phoenix rising from the ashes, Porter Airlines boss Bob Deluce is set to take off with daily flights to Ottawa from a revitalized Island Airport in a week's time.

I'd argue there's been as much, if not more, development at and around the Island Airport over the past year as there has been on the entire waterfront during Miller's reign as mayor.

(This doesn't include the 500 jobs that will be created, eventually, by the airline, or the $500 million U.S. in firm orders from Bombardier for Porter's 10 Q400 planes.)

Still, that didn't stop Miller from engaging in his second favourite wet dream yesterday: Pulling the plug on Porter Airlines.

"I will continue to strongly fight against the resumption of commercial flights that put the private interests of one businessman against the public interest of all Torontonians," he said. "A busy, commercial airport is inconsistent with a vision of a clean, green and wonderful waterfront."

Like I said, he's all wet.