Paula Fletcher’s idiot turn: Editorial
As the former head of the Communist Party of Canada, Coun. Paula Fletcher should know better than to start channelling the late U.S. Sen. Joe McCarthy at a public meeting called to get citizen input into Toronto’s 2010 operating budget.
Fletcher 'our own homegrown Tasmanian Devil'
She didn’t deliver it in person but Councillor Paula Fletcher apologized Tuesday for her combative exchange with the public the night before, during which she challenged a heckler to run against her, saying “Come on down, baby.”
Fletcher flips her lid
The Communist Party leadership in the former Soviet Union was ornery and miserable before they fell, too.It’s never easy for communists to let go of power!
Perhaps, this would explain Councillor Paula Fletcher’s disgraceful, anger-filled dressing down of an average citizen at a public budget consultation meeting on Monday night.
Maybe that’s how average citizens are dealt with in a communist regime.
Although the Ward 30 councillor curiously does not have it mentioned in her biography on her City of Toronto web page, she was the president of the Communist Party of Canada — Manitoba, from 1981 to 1986.
Whether it’s a factor or not, she treated a concerned taxpayer like he was a piece of gum under her shoe. With her out- of-control, intimidating and combative tone toward a Toronto voter, Fletcher took the whole City of Toronto into the gutter with her. And it’s not even her city.
The truth is that taxpayer John Smith is her boss.
The Etobicoke resident and downtown business executive, who recently moved back to Toronto after four years in Ottawa, was wondering why it is that council raises its salaries 4% every year while regular citizens don’t get such increases.
Fair question. Fletcher — part of Mayor David Miller’s failed Red Army on council which has the city mired in debt to the tune of almost $3 billion — didn’t think so.
“Are you suggesting I should cut the daycare budget to full fee parents in this city?” she barked.
“Do you support that cut? Yes or no?”
Her tirade got worse when she directed her angst toward Newstalk 1010 radio host John Tory, who was sitting in the chambers, as she screamed Smith was “hauled down here by the John Tory show.”
She then issued Tory a challenge by saying: “Come and run against me. Come on down, baby.”
“I was astonished,” Tory told me yesterday, adding people like Smith is “who you work for!”
Councillors Bill Saundercook, Adam Vaughan, Denzil Minnan-Wong and Paul Ainslie all echoed the same sentiment. Freedom of speech and a difference of opinion are democratic cornerstones.
This is not Cuba or North Korea.
Now Fletcher did offer a so-called apology on Tory’s show to Smith, saying she “lost it” and had displayed “bad manners.” She later told me “we made up. We are both happy ... And that is that.”
She doesn’t control a free press and doesn’t get to decide when something is done. In light of this, I still think she needs to answer the questions about her communist background — an area of her past glossed over by her and the media.
Remember, this country spent more than 40 years in a cold war against what was for many considered an evil, totalitarian regime. It eventually failed, but was still vibrant when she was a leader in the movement.
What was her part in that? Did she ever go to the Soviet Union?
I mean, she works for us.
She wouldn’t comment last night.
“Joe. I have made my apology. That is my statement. I think that is enough. Got to go. Bye.”
I didn’t get to ask her if she is still a communist but I am hoping, like the ones who ran the once-mighty Iron Curtain, her time in office will wind down, too.
joe.warmington@sunmedia.ca
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