Comrade Miller's Demise...

Hume: Miller leaves city divided as never before

August 25, 2010
Christopher Hume

Only David Miller knows for sure whether he’ll miss being mayor of Toronto, but it’s a safe bet he won’t miss council meetings.
As he presided over his last such gathering on Wednesday morning, it was business as usual. That meant talk about everything from cash-in-lieu-of-parking in North York and waste-activated sludge control to a monumental flagpole in Emery Village and the plight of elephants at the Toronto Zoo.
As gripping as these issues undoubtedly were, things didn’t get going in earnest until council addressed itself to the city’s newly harmonized zoning bylaws.
How appropriate that one of Miller’s last acts as mayor was to deal with an issue that dates back 12 years to amalgamation.
If council approves the new 2,700-page zoning bible, it will mean that there will be only one legal definition of apartment, not five. It will also set minimum height in downtown Toronto at three storeys.
“We can’t ignore this forever,” chief planner Gary Wright told those assembled. “It’s time now to enact this law.”
Indeed, but as so often seems the case, no matter how critical city business may be, it has about it the whiff of ridiculousness. The councillors don’t help a whole lot, even when on their best behavior.
Still, the occasion could not have been lost on Miller. He has talked publicly about his pride in what he accomplished as mayor. But at what cost?
At this point, Miller’s legacy could best be summed up in two words: Rob Ford. Miller might like to talk about Transit City, Toronto, “the greenest city in North America,” or the Mayor’s Tower Renewal, but for many voters he is the guy who caved to the unions last summer and raised vehicle registration fees and real estate transfer costs.
Though a recent opinion poll claims Miller would win re-election easily, many Torontonians are so enraged at him they’re willing to vote for Rob Ford. In fact, they have put the Etobicoke councillor in the lead to be the city’s next mayor. Ford now sits more than 10 points ahead of his closest rival, former provincial cabinet minister George Smitherman.
But as the harmonized bylaw debate made clear, Toronto still hasn’t come to terms with amalgamation; the current election is all about the unfinished issues created by that forced union.
What Miller — and many others — didn’t realize is that a progressive urban agenda does not play well in the suburbs. What seems obvious and necessary to city-dwellers comes as a direct threat to suburbanites.
Toronto has become a community divided as never before. There is anger in the city, anger looking for a target on which to focus. Who better than our city councillors?
But watching council going through the motions this week, it was clear the Miller’s time is over even before it has ended. There was a feeling that the players were simply going through the motions, that they recognized the action has moved to a different stage, and that council itself has become strangely irrelevant.
Miller did his best to stay focused, delivering an impassioned defence of the harmonized bylaw. But the first question, from Scarborough’s Mike Del Grande, killed any hopes for intelligent debate.
Isn’t it true, he asked, that the new bylaw will mean one size fits all? When not even councillors bother to read the fine print, you know the city’s in trouble.
But given the din of the campaign being waged beyond its walls, City Hall seemed quiet and peaceful; the calm before the storm.
Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca