I’ve spent the past three weeks mercifully out of earshot of Toronto’s 2010 election follies. But a quick scan of recent events suggests to me that the campaign has yet to emerge from the rhetorical basement. Exhibit A: Rocco Rossi’s new and improved election strategy. Perhaps he’s got a very mischievous sense of humour, but it strikes me as rich indeed that Rossi would come out in favour of term limits — an idea that has never had much purchase in Canadian political culture — during the same week when he unveiled the retiring Mike Feldman as part of his buffed up campaign team. The target of Rossi’s pledge was almost certainly Howard Moscoe, who many think overstayed his welcome. But Feldman is surely also a poster child for term limits, having served since 1992, with not a great deal to show for his efforts. He’s a businessman who retired into politics and stuck it out for six consecutive terms, serving mostly as a cheering section for Mel Lastman, another inductee to the term limits hall of shame. By Rossi’s own proposed standard — a maximum twelve-year run for councillors — Feldman, as of 2010, is six years past his best-before date. What’s more, inherent in Rossi’s pledge is a pointed critique of Mississauga’s mayor-for-life Hazel McCallion. If memory serves, Rossi made a great big deal of sidling up to McCallion at an event early in the campaign, touting her support for his naïve plan for a GTA-wide economic development agency. With the embattled Mrs. McCallion twisting in the wind at the inquiry into her son’s business dealings, I guess it’s easier now for Rossi to impose a very short-horizon term limit on her implicit endorsement.

John Lorinc will return to his election coverage columns in two weeks. In the meantime, here is his column from the Summer 2010 issue of Spacing. With Toronto’s sports franchises giving us little to talk about, it appears that our newest preoccupation is laying waste to every aspect of David Miller’s record as mayor. If the city seemed to project its hopes on him in 2003, Torontonians today appear intent on tarring Miller with all their frustrations, real and imagined. Indeed, listening to the bellicose rhetoric of those seeking to replace him, an uninformed observer might conclude it’s been seven squandered years in Leftigrad. The faster we can undo the damage Miller has wrought, most of the mayoral candidates imply, the better. But there are several major civic issues the candidates aren’t talking about. Here’s the reason: those rhetorical omissions, all quite deliberate, silently tell a tale of (mostly unacknowledged) political success. Let’s look at four of the largest problems the city faced back in 2003: garbage, policing, corruption, and infrastructure. In all cases, Miller’s record has been strong enough to quiet potential successors (at least, so far). GARBAGE Though it seems like ancient history, Toronto’s waste management woes dominated council politics during the late 1990s and early 2000s as the City sought to replace the Keele Valley landfill. During the Mel Lastman years, Miller helped defeat the creepy scheme to ship Toronto’s trash to Adams Mine, but the backup plan — schlepping it all down to Michigan — morphed into an ugly international embarrassment for Miller after he became mayor.

Last Friday was something of a historic day for Toronto, because it will be remembered as the very last time John Tory’s name will be advanced for political office, here or elsewhere. Ever the switch-hitting batter who couldn’t decide which direction to aim, he chalked up strike three and exits stage left, a spectre of what might have been. He now joins a very small and very elite club that consists mainly of washed-up Liberal wunderkinds — John Turner and Paul Martin, of course, and maybe also John Manley and Frank McKenna. He won’t be out of place. The truth is that Tory is in almost every important sense an identical replica of a Bay Street Liberal. In fact, Tory reminds me a great deal of Martin, another son of privilege and power, a man told often that public life not only awaited him, but needed his brand of gravitas. Both made Bay Street their political base. Both were and are men of ideas and prodigious interests — indeed, far too many for the narrow confines of elected office. Martin’s brief tenure as prime minister can be read as a kind of trailer for a Tory mayoralty. These guys cultivated too many policy preoccupations, and lacked the ability to decide among them, which is the essence of political leadership. To govern is to choose, as the old saying goes. In their own ways, neither could. With Tory — I’m speculating, of course — because his indecision has been much more political than legislative. Perhaps he’d have run council with an iron fist in a sheepskin glove, driving hard at a few clearly articulated goals. The evidence suggests otherwise. The infuriating humming and hawing that became a leitmotif of his post-2003 career would likely have persisted in office, with council left to do its thing in the kind of leadership vacuum that has occasionally polluted Mayor David Miller’s tenure, as well as Barack Obama’s.

If I close my eyes when Adam Giambrone waxes on about an open payment fare system for the TTC, I could swear I was listening to the business-friendly pols from the Lastman/Harris days shilling for the rapid approval of various Triple-P schemes that promised the sky and delivered mostly trouble. Indeed, it is passing strange to observe how, in the waning days of an apparently progressive council, Giambrone, with the full support of Mayor David Miller, is charging ahead to negotiate a public-private partnership for a largely untested technology. There’s been virtually no broad public debate about the merits of a scheme that will affect a huge number of Torontonians on a daily basis. It’s precisely the sort of thing Miller would have fought against when he was a reform-minded councilor looking to purge City Hall of the lobbyists who routinely turn up, touting all sorts of miracles. Let’s start with the context: The TTC in June hired two consultants, for $1.3 million on an untendered contract, for about five months work (that’s a staggering $1.5 million of compensation per person on an annualized basis), during which time they will essentially adapt for the TTC an RFP document they prepared for Chicago and a few other cities considering open fare. There are no major North American transit authorities that have adopted open fare on a system-wide basis. The first, established in the Salt Lake City region, dates to early 2009 and is still not fully deployed. New York has a six-month trial that began in June, 2010 (Mastercard provided the card readers in exchange for a strong branding presence), while Chicago, Washington and Philadelphia remain in the RFP phase or delayed.

Here’s a question: How is it that Canadians were so blasé about the mass G-20 arrests, but now seem to be intriguingly hot and bothered about Tony Clement and Census-gate? And, as an admittedly tangential follow-up, what can this apparent contradiction in public opinion tell us about Toronto’s mayoral race? Starting with question one. Think about our national motto, and especially the second two imperatives. Canadians don’t veer towards the authoritarian, as happens in the United States, but we like to keep things tidy, and the scenes of mayhem from the G20 protests certainly cast the die on public opinion. But the same instinct is apparent in public reaction to the Conservative’s move to scrap the mandatory census long form. The census, apart from all its statistical usefulness, is an institution that imposes quantitative order on government and society, and therefore it supports our apparent craving (frequently unsatisfied) for “good government” (i.e., good = rational). In a country not given to ideological extremes and starkly shaded political principles, many people intuitively understand the relationship between data and decision-making. The census is, above all, a supremely pragmatic document.

In the early 1990s, the Ontario Commission on Police Services conducted an extended probe of the internal affairs unit of the Metro Toronto Police following accusations about problems in the way allegations of wrong-doing were handled by the force. The so-called Junger/Whitehead inquiry — the names refer to two police officers, Gordon Junger and Brian Whitehead who found themselves on the wrong side of the internal affairs unit — held 53 sessions and another 13 evening meetings, retained the services of a retired judge to investigate internal documents, and collected evidence from other law enforcement agencies, including the RCMP. The $1 million review made several stern recommendations about increased police accountability, at least some of which seem relevant to the G20 situation, such as...“The Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board should adopt a policy stating clearly and unequivocally the obligation of the Chief to report fully on cases involving alleged wrongdoing by members of the force if the integrity of the force or the public interest is affected.”

I normally have a lot of time for the Toronto Environmental Alliance, but the heat this week must have wiped out the organization’s institutional memory. How else to explain the perplexing and conspicuous omissions on TEA’s mayoral candidate environmental report card [PDF], released yesterday. For those who missed the evening news, Joe Pantalone comes out with solid grades, while George Smitherman gets frowny-cons and a rather catty put down (“needs to apply himself”) in the comment section. A little background on both is definitely in order: Pantalone, it’s true, has wrapped himself in the tree advocacy role for years. Whether this title has actually led to more trees being planted in Toronto is an untested proposition – municipalities plant constantly – and he certainly didn’t do much to ameliorate the plight of the thousands of pencil-neck trees that continue to die miserable deaths on our sidewalks. TEA gives him a smiley face on the 70% diversion goal question, but neglects to note that council has missed this target, as well as David Miller’s 2010 deadline, by a wide margin (residential diversion is at 46%, up from 40% in 2005). Pantalone was deputy mayor the whole time. Should he not be held to account for that failure?

In recent Canadian history, three previous political demonstrations led to confrontations with police and subsequent legal actions or official inquires: the 2003 inquiry by the Ontario government into the 1995 killing of Dudley George during a First Nations protest at Ipperwash Provincial Park; the RCMP Complaints Commission inquiry into the arrest of 52 protesters at a 1997 demonstration during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vancouver; and the trial of anti-poverty activist John Clarke following a militant demonstration at Queen’s Park on June, 15, 2000 (the charges were stayed). Notwithstanding the general public’s apparent indifference to alleged Charter violations that occurred during the G20 Summit, many important questions remain unanswered, and simply cannot be thoroughly addressed through the internal investigation/deputation process promised by the Toronto Police Services Board. Here’s my top ten list: 1. What role, if any, did OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino (and former Toronto police chief) play in the decision-making about police operations on the Sunday of the summit? 2. Did City of Toronto public health/building officials inspect the alterations to the film studio/detention centre prior to the summit weekend, what were their recommendations, and did they ensure these were followed? 3. Did the Prime Minister’s Office issue any kind of directive to the Integrated Security Unit (ISU) during the course of the weekend in response to reports about violence in the downtown, and what was the content of the order?

As has been widely reported, the Canadian government and various provincial tourism agencies have bought all the ads in the current New Yorker, presumably on the assumption that the New Yorker’s demographic is the most likely to connect the fact of the G20 to future travel or investment plans. The 80-page issue has approximately 22 pages of ads, all but a few of which are government sponsored (there are a handful of private-sector ads with a Canadian slant, including one for a bank, an investment advisor and an elite private school). Four of the ads depicit images of Toronto, but only one – the full-pager purchased by Tourism Toronto – actually dares to mention the city by name. More typical are the ads with photos of Bay Street’s bank towers over upbeat copy about the stability of Canada’s financial system. The Ontario government owns the inside back cover, featuring a glamour shot of the OCAD building on a bright evening. “You don’t have to go far to broaden your horizons,” reads the headline. The text continues: “Close to home and a world away, Ontario awaits. Thrill to architectural delights from Will Alsop’s award-winning expansion of the Ontario College of Art & Design and Frank Gehry’s sensuous transformation of the Art Gallery of Ontario to Daniel Libeskind’s provocative Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum. With new discoveries around every corner, there’s always more to see…” Would that be a corner in, uh, London, or Kingston? Maybe Sudbury’s sensuous Frank Gehry building? If you didn’t know you were looking at Toronto, the ad certainly doesn’t give it up. All this cultural bounty, one is led to understand, can be found in “Ontario.” (To be fair, the Quebec government doesn’t mention Montreal or Quebec City in ads clearly set in both cities.)

While ad creep has yet to make an appearance in the 2010 election, Joe Pantalone’s pastel hued Smart car (Daimler AG) gets the nod as the most visible example to date of politically conscious corporate branding (product placement?). The spiffy little vehicle is presumably meant to signal Pantalone’s environmental bona fides, and mesh with what his organizers promise will be a strategically upbeat, forward-looking campaign. So what’s with the grim, backward-looking rhetoric in his stump speeches, such as the one he delivered to a sparse Board of Trade crowd on Friday morning? Citing the decades of decline in three other Great Lakes cities — Cleveland, Detroit and Buffalo — Pantalone implied that a vote for his opponents could imperil our future. “There’s nothing written in the Bible, the Torah, the Koran or whatever else that Toronto will be a great city forever.” Après Miller, le déluge? Oh, please. Toronto — socially, economically, and culturally — has precious little in common with U.S. rust belt cities. Virtually all of our challenges involve growth, not exodus. Toronto doesn’t have the donut disease, and Pantalone, who’s been involved in downtown redevelopment decisions for three decades, should surely know that.