City council put the kibosh on taxes that would have forced every car dealer and real estate agent in Toronto out of business. Thank goodness. Where would the city be without car dealerships and real estate agents, and with all the former salespersons and agents lined up at food banks and welfare offices which are stretched to the limits already?
Then the provincial government refused to bail the city out of the bind it's in because council put the kibosh on new taxes.
McGuinty to city: "Take a flying leap into the hole you keep digging yourself deeper into."
So, while Toronto has made itself a safe place for car dealers and real estate agents, what about the rest of us? Can we be rescued?
Yes we can. By the Olympic Games. It's that simple.
When you have the Olympics, you're like that family where the father makes book on the corner, and the mother makes illegal gin, and so on. The Olympics are a fiscal bonanza. My God, how the money rolls in.
But every time we've bid for the Games we've lost out, either because the International Olympic Committee had never heard of Toronto, or if it had it was because of some funny ideas the mayor picked up from an old copy of National Geographic at his dentist's.
What we need is a novel approach, one no other city would dare. Call it an honest approach. Rather than pointing out what a fabulous site Toronto would be, explain how, if we don't get the Games, there will be nothing left in the city but car dealers and real estate agents. Everybody else will have starved or moved away. Throw ourselves on their mercy. There would be no need to mention cannibals at all. Or even Africa.
And then – and then!
Just imagine.
At last! A brilliantly developed waterfront. Luxury condominium towers stretching along the shore from the existing row of luxury condominium towers to the Ashbridge's Bay sewage treatment plant, interrupted only by the gigantic beachfront hydro generating station the province is building. The existing, mothballed, beachfront hydro generating station will be turned into an exciting "urban park" where children can fall off things and hurt themselves.
At last! A brilliant new subway system to replace the one we have that was designed by somebody who qualified for the job by getting the skill-testing question wrong when CHUM phoned with an offer of free tickets to the CNE grandstand show.
At last! A jewel in the crown of city sports venues: a velodrome. How thrilling to think Toronto might be the first Olympics city to come up with an idea for what to do with its velodrome after the Games end. (Suggestions please! Send them to Toronto Olympics Chairman Mad Dog and Billie, Under the Gardiner Expressway, M5R 2X3.)
At last! Affordable housing. Athletes' dormitories turned into comfy accommodation for the poor until the land they're built on is found to be toxic, when they will be bulldozed, the land detoxified, and replaced with luxury condominium towers with a view of the luxury condominium towers along the waterfront.
At last! An efficient bus service to collect the homeless off sidewalk gratings before the Games and drop them off in North Bay. If they return, efficient, attack-trained Olympic volunteers will drop them off the CN Tower.
If we don't manage to get the 2012 Games, there is always 2016. And failing that, 2020. And 2024. 2028? 2032? With any luck, sometime in the 21st century Toronto will get the Olympics it needs to pull it out of the 20th century.
Slinger's column appears Tuesday and Thursday.
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