Something To Think About As Our Birthday (cancelled by city/cupe) Approaches

City of Toronto is falling off the same cliff as General Motors

Marcus Gee

Toronto – Too big to fail?

June 26th, 2009 by Joanne

David Miller’s problems are closing in on several fronts. The garbage strike and the street car fiasco are only the two latest crises to plague the Toronto mayor who seems to think that he and his city are “special”. Dalton McGuinty is certainly one of the enablers of this egocentric behaviour.

Just as wise parents realize that they do their child no favour by encouraging irresponsibility, the higher levels of government need to stand firm against Miller’s whining. At least the Federal Government knows that tough love is the only answer.

Today Toronto City Council will meet at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in an 11th hour effort to try to figure out what to do about the street car dilemma. (City Hall is no longer an option because then they’d have to cross the picket line, and that would never do. Leave picket lines for the citizens of Toronto to deal with where they have to stand in long lines to drop off garbage and face the evil eye of bylaw officers when they idle their cars or try to leave their garbage in the wrong place.)

David Miler thought Toronto was ‘special‘ and didn’t have to adhere to the rules of the stimulus funding. He figured that John Baird would give in for political reasons just as Dalton McGuinty does time and time again because that is where the votes lie. But the Feds didn’t play the game and now Miller is in trouble.

The Globe’s Marcus Gee compares the City of Toronto to the General Motors situation both in terms of past generous labour settlements and incompetent, over-paid management. I also see a common thread of arrogance, but GM was finally humbled.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal Government is one of the enablers that is allowing Toronto to act like a petulant child, but the true enablers are the Toronto taxpayers and voters who grumble but then reelect this type of incompetence. And by extension, Ontario taxpayers are also enabling Toronto to act irresponsibly when they elect a union-pandering provincial party to power.

Time for a reality check and some tough-love, or we’re all going down with them.

* * * *

Update: Mary T is first out of the gate with a very practical suggestion for David Miller:

Perhaps Miller could ask all the stores to donate the nickle/bag to the city to pay for the trains.

Maybe that’s the kind of thinking that Terence Corcoran was referring to this morning – Transit needs ideas, not money.

And on that column about dysfunctional public transit systems as noted by Corcoran, no wonder the union finally declared it would not picket the Metro Toronto Convention Centre because the streetcar deal creates “good jobs.”

This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 8:45 am and is filed under Appeasement never works, Dalton McGuinty, David Miller, Entitlement, Toronto dumb as it gets, economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1. MaryT said:
   June 26th, 2009 at 9:01 am

   Perhaps Miller could ask all the stores to donate the nickle/bag to the city to pay for the trains.

2. Joanne said:
   June 26th, 2009 at 9:04 am

   Oh, that’s good Mary T.

   I wish I had thought of that. And it’s environmentally-friendly to boot!

3. Liz J said:
   June 26th, 2009 at 9:21 am

   Yeah, environmentally friendly, right up Miller’s ally.

   It appears some of the heavy Socialist balm has seeped into McGuinty’s hide since he’s been hanging out in Millerville as King of Queen’s Park.
   McGuinty and Miller, what a team to pave the road to destruction of anything that resembles common sense. The nanny state rules.