I can still picture Councillor Doug Ford’s bellowing face in the media ordering Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne to “get her own house in order.”  Now Ford’s brother, Mayor Rob, and his council followers, are content to have $1.4- billion bled from the lean provincial treasury and squandered on a subway to serve, not people, but future development.  To pay for a subway, development has to be high-density.

Look at Mimico Lakeshore where residents are fit to be tied over ever sky-reaching condo clusters that are on the map for their area. Tall buildings aren’t being welcomed at the best of times.

The Sheppard subway dooms neighbouring communities to accept towers in places where they don’t really fit. 

Didn’t Karen Stintz launch her political career fighting tall buildings? Now, by backing Rob Ford’s Subway, she plays handmaiden to the very developers who salivate for high density building approvals.

I live on the proposed Sheppard LRT route.  From 1985 to 1995 I was the communications lead on the joint municipal lobby to get the Sheppard Subway built.  Bob Rae’s NDP government was ready to fork over 75% funding for four new subway lines.  At the eleventh hour the province added the sweetener of offering to finance at zero interest the municipal funding share for the first three years of the deal.  An ensuing decade of neo-Conservatism in Ontario shuttered the program.  Transit system growth in Toronto stalled.

That train has left the station. Here we are today – a provincial offer of $1.4 billion on the table that Stintz, as transit commission chair, says is not enough to build the subway.  She fails to appreciate that most people in Scarborough don’t want and won’t be served by the Sheppard Subway plan as drawn.

 The influential mayoral ally Denzil Minnan-Wong has the absolute right take on this.  As a councillor he, too, was active in North York during the original subway debates.  He knows the current Sheppard Subway plan is dastardly. It disadvantages an entire swath of Scarborough commuters whose clean, fast, high-tech, above ground LRT trains would deliver cleaner air and a nicer streetscape at a better cost, not to mention modestly scaled development that is compatible with existing communities.

A Sheppard Subway at this late juncture delivers the least bang for the buck and is fiscally irresponsible.

“Deputy Mayor” is largely a trumped-up title that means very little to anyone.

Therefore, it was amusing to see Toronto’s Mayor Friday night generating a carnival atmosphere in Scarborough as the backdrop for his announcement of Norm Kelly as deputy mayor.  It was peculiar, too, because the current deputy mayor Doug Holyday is still there, on a leave of absence to run in a provincial by-election.  That city councillors can “seat-warm” – vacate an elected post to seek an upper-tier office – is another story.  (Two sitting councillors are vying to be Etobicoke-Lakeshore’s next MPP.)

Ribbon cuttings, flag raisings and community events tend to flow the deputy mayor’s way.  He or she is on the mayor’s rubber chicken dinner circuit, rubbing shoulders, pumping fists, shaking hands, reading out proclamations and prepared texts.

Tiny Township, Havelock, South Stormont, Amherstburg, Georgina, Deseronto, Perth, Melancthon, Adjala and Midland have deputy mayors, along with places such as Toronto.  This is a small number compared to those who don’t.

There’s a difference between a deputy mayor and an Acting Mayor.  Usually a city will have a system of monthly rotation for councillors to serve as Acting Mayor when the real mayor is out-of-town, unwilling, ill, (or in rehab).  This is a fair and responsible way to divide the responsibilities that a mayor cannot do. 

A Deputy Mayor serves for the life of the term of office, or at the mayor’s pleasure. In Toronto, deputy mayoralties need to be questioned.

The chosen councillor becomes pointedly beholden to the mayor. If he wants to hold on to the high-profile perquisite, he must agree with the mayor, vote with the mayor and promote the mayor’s agenda even though a majority of his constituents did not vote for the mayor.

Nothing against Norm Kelly, he’s practically a barnacle on the political bandwagon he’s been around so long. My issue is this business of Toronto having an appointed figurehead, not elected citywide, doing the work a mayor ought to be doing and shutting out other members of council.  That doesn’t breed a collegial environment. You don’t have to live in Toronto to know that the place is politically dysfunctional, if not downright toxic.

As Tom Mills, of Sun Media, points out perceptively in his Sault Star column on this in February. “A deputy mayor allied with the mayor might intensify battles.”

Read Tom’s article, “The Deputy Mayor Question”, here.  

Saturday’s sudden death of Peter Kormos brought to my mind the many times we worked together in an outstanding capacity between 1998 and 2003.  Peter always supported my outside-the-box ideas as NDP communications director.  He was my media star.

I write this to remember Kormos and to explain something.  Remember his genius at delivering to the waiting microphones and cameras, and explain the context behind a few of the TV images that eulogized the popular politician.

Like, why was Kormos leading a pony around Queen’s Park, a prominent image in CITYtv’s montage?  Why was he sprawled out on a chaise lounge sipping an umbrella-topped drink and being fanned by doting staffers?

I never laughed as hard or as long as I did when Kormos brought my dog and pony stunt to life.  It was March 2003.  Janet Ecker was finance minister to Ernie Eves’ premiership in the year of the Magna Budget.  Some Tory operative’s best idea for escaping public scrutiny of the province’s finances in an election year was to present the annual budget via television at the Magna auto parts plant to a stage-managed crowd. 

Prorogation may have its warts, but what bigger pock on democracy is there than the outright removal of the budget from the Legislative Chamber on Budget Day?

That’s when we landed Kormos in front of the grand old parliament building resplendent with two four-legged props on budget day.  Midnight, my friend’s Pomeranian did a wonderful spinning trick. Princess, the rental pony, delivered in spades, (so agile she could have walked up the front steps to the main door, I found out later.)  Kormos was a delight to script.  He gave grace to the written word, one of his loves.

The NDP’s Dog and Pony show dominated the news, mocked the governing Conservatives and sent opposition, heir-apparent Liberals, ignored, scowling and pouting, back to their offices.  It was an event, the veteran MPP from Welland told me fairly recently, that people continued to mention to him a full decade later.

Kormos was always a player in these efforts and relished my schemes.  I had him selling pencils outside Old City Hall in Toronto defying rigid laws proposed against panhandling.  He paraded a team of NDP colleagues to the parliamentary parking lot to squeegee MPP car windows, protested nursing fee increases in a rocking chair marathon.  Wherever there was action there was Kormos, master of creative media arts, always hungry for the next bite.

My team conjured up the ‘lawn chair press conference’ where Kormos held court basking in the sun and calling for two new statutory holidays a year.

For all his depth, Kormos remained ever the nuanced actor, who embraced the simple idea that fun communicates, fun sells.

The strangest thing just happened. I received a phone call to my home from the development company responsible for an illegal rooftop sign that I complained to the City of Toronto about. Aren’t complaints to the city supposed to be anonymous?

That was the case in 1999 when I wanted to know the identity of the person(s) who complained about my election signs as they awaited pick-up at the printer. (See blog 03/12/12) Back then, complainants’ anonymity was closely guarded, guaranteed, and I never was able to confirm with certainty that the source was a rival candidate for the city council seat.

Now I’m off the phone with someone at Tridel, whose illegal rooftop sign has been wedged solidly in my craw since the day of its installation six months ago.

She tells me that the project manager asked her to phone to determine the nature of my complaint.

“How did you get my number?” I ask. No clear answer there. Someone gave it to the project manager.

The Tridel assistant doesn’t think the sign is illegal. I explain to her that I have conversed with Robert, the guy at the city who knows this stuff chapter and verse. His team boasts an impressive 90 per cent compliance rate when it comes to the removal of rooftop signs. The regulations came to be in 2010. They were drafted with developers and city staff working together. Tridel was one of the developers at the table. Surely , in helping to design it and investing employee time in the exercise, Tridel was aware of Toronto’s sign bylaw. The thing’s only three years old!

I suggest to the employee that she speak to Robert. “I shouldn’t be in the middle of this,” I said. “I’m the complainant. You should be dealing with the city.”

She tells me the Metrogate condo project, where people now reside, is “a construction site”.  You still need a permit, but why am I the one telling her this?  That would be the job of the councillor.  Hmmmmm ... 

Here’s what I think happened:
 
Instead of making an easy inquiry on my behalf to city staff about the legality of the vexing sign, the local councillor’s aide made an inquiry to the developer.  After many months I went independently to city staff through the main switchboard, and that’s how I met Robert. I knew through Robert that investigators were to visit the site today.

I was phoned at 4 pm. The project manager, I’m assuming, received his surprise afternoon callers. My Tridel contact, in all likelihood, obtained my phone number and knowledge of my complaint from the councillor’s aide.

I know Robert respects the anonymity of complaints. We talked about that. You can feel completely at ease making reports about illegal rooftop signs, or any other matter, to city departmental staff. I think the problem here is one of a political staffer referring my complaint to a powerful developer who might want to squash me like a bug.

Robert’s department receives one complaint a day, a total of 260 a year.
It tells me I’m not alone. I’m not the only one who feels a skyline should be unfettered by garish displays of commercialism and condo ads yelling from great distances at the neighbourhoods the new buildings surround.

If you have a rooftop sign peering at you or big banner advertising on a bridge disturbing your view, you can report it to 3-1-1 and have it looked into. Unless approved, these signs are in violation. At that point, the offender is expected to remove the sign or apply to make it legal within 14 days.

The developer's rep says she will get back to me next Wednesday. My friend says I should file a report with the city’s integrity commissioner. I’ve written this blog in lieu.

I’m abuzz ‘cuz I just took on the big guys and may have won.

Tridel, deep-pocketed developer, stuck a logo in my face and I’m sticking it right back to them.

As it turns out, the builder of a gigantic condo cluster at Kennedy and Hwy 401 has skirted the laws regulating rooftop signs.  The glaring red Tridel trademark emblazoning the east and west sides of one of the company's tower tops is there illegally and without permission, according to Robert Bader, supervisor with the City of Toronto’s sign department.

A developer must follow an expensive process to apply to Council for a rooftop moniker.  Even if approved, the sign can be in place for one year at most.

Tridel, seasoned as it is at navigating development law and the related maze of regulations, did not seek anyone’s say-so before hoisting its advertising marks to the sky overlooking the highway where no one for miles could miss them.

Who else, but Tridel?  The company slogan virtually screams at me as I view the offending tower from my backyard a mile away, and it waves, like a red flag to a bull. 

Who else indeed? Corporations aren’t allowed to logo-line the rooftops.  Even if they were, exposure like that is worth a lot of money.  Tridel has been reaping the benefit of free advertising from its signs for the past half year.  Now it must pay.

“Heads up, Tridel.  You are about to have a site visit from the city inspectors."  

The signs will have to come down.  The developer may even face violation notices and have to cough up a big chunk of change for fines and lawyers.

That's what should happen when you slam a community right between the eyes with your garishly illegal rooftop logo.

***

Normally a person contacts the city councillor for help in situations like this.  That’s what I did, but in the end I couldn’t let any more time go by.  The councillor and his staff were absolutely useless.  Sent the complaint to Tridel!  It was only when I called Toronto city staff directly today that I received prompt attention, the information and appropriate consideration I had been seeking since early December.

In a previous blog I said to keep an eye on the Ontario government's international travel plans.  The government could stop provincial parliament in its tracks for four months, but it couldn’t stop booking trips and missions for soon-to-be-outgoing ministers.  In listening to the Throne Speech Monday a bemused smile visited my face in hearing of the government’s plan to expand its markets through trade missions and the like.

Why, just last week on Ontario News Watch I had to note that international outreach may be just the ticket for Dr. Eric Hoskins, the new minister of economic development and trade and a premier wannabe.  His boss, Premier Kathleen Wynne, may know exactly what she’s doing keeping Hoskins busy away from home.  But aren’t we in tight times?  It’ll be interesting to chart the expenses he chalks up.

I’ve been predicting that a new style will come to government under Wynne’s hand.  Testosterone levels in the place are way down.  Watching the legislature this morning I’m like a lot of folks, I guess, offering my advice to the television screen.

To Kathleen Wynne:  Ramp up your French tutorials to high speed.  It’s clear you’ve been working on your second language, now bump it up in priority.  Practise every day.

Tim Hudak:  Stop advancing shaky policy ideas.  A lot of people in the mushy middle who wanted to take you seriously can’t now.  You could have taken a soft right turn and won over more minds. Ontario isn’t ready for the radical right again under a team that’s 50 Shades of Mike Harris.

Andrea Horwath:  Study Hudak for style points on delivering questions in Question Period.  That guy is a master of performance.  And watch out for the media.

I did say four leaders.  Where is the Green Party in Ontario?  My advice to its leader, Mike Schreiner, is to be activist and relevant again.  Take actions that signal you aren’t content for Greens to be merely a fringe party or a parking lot for protest votes.

You stay or you pay.

A politician should have to serve for a full term unless death or unlawful activity cuts short the career.

If you run for a four-year term, you serve a four-year term, or until the next election is called.  That’s your obligation as a candidate, what you signed on for when you ‘answered the ad.’  Let’s just say it’s in your contract with the voter.  I won't disagree if you tell me four years is too long.

Politicians who leave mid-term for their own convenience lay open seats to be filled in expensive by-elections.

We have two such examples in the Province of Ontario right now with Dwight Duncan (Windsor) and Chris Bentley (London), both MPPs and cabinet members making quick exits.  They’re flying the Queen’s Park coop: A premature evacuation?

That’s an expensive exit strategy!  The cost of a provincial by-election must be in the quarter million dollar range.  Under my scenario these elected legislators continue to serve as MPPs until the next general election or they pay the cost of refilling their seats. 

People living in an area represented by an early-quitter are disadvantaged for up to six months.  Their legislative legs just walked out on them and they have no voice in parliament. Then all of Ontario joins in to fork over the dough to run forced by-elections.

Suggesting that candidates pay the cost of a by-election is neither new nor is it unprecedented.

I learned as a municipal candidate that it is possible a government will demand payment for the cost of a by-election.  I go back to a letter I received from the City of Toronto Clerk in 1999 informing me that if I won the contested seat (a vacancy due to a death in office) the city would come after me for the cost of a new by-election.  “For your information the cost of a by-election is between $165,000 and $200,000,” said the letter from top bureaucrat, Novina Wong.

Okay, this was over a logo dispute that was tame compared to the one that bubbled up in Surrey BC recently.  The town launched and then withdrew a lawsuit against a local t-shirt maker who parodied Surrey’s logo on apparel. 

Here I still have in my possession a letter suggesting I pay for a by-election for reasons both silly and nonsensical. So what about these guys who step down early from their well-paying, elected posts and saddle the public with an expensive election exercise?  

The cost of many a by-election could be avoided altogether if politicians stayed put and lived to the terms of their agreement, as many have.  I concede this does make it hard for them to jump to other levels of government mid-term.  Jury's still out on whether that's good or bad.

Did I tell you the one about the city logo?  The line drawing of city hall was a no-go logo for me after my printer put it on the election signs for my first campaign as a candidate for Toronto City Council.  

My sign printer was a sitting councillor, Howard Moscoe, and the company he represented, Adanac.  His idea to have a picture of city hall graphic instead of words 'Elect' and 'Councillor' was really quite brilliant.  He didn’t tell me he was lifting the design from the city’s Millennium logo.  This was in 1999.  It was a summer by-election in Scarborough wards 43 and 44.

Before I even received my sign order from the printer, I received a call from the city clerk’s office saying they had had a complaint about them.  No, they would not release the name of the complainant, but they wanted to see samples of my materials.  Soon after, I was told to scrap my signs and literature ($11,000) and cease and desist using the little logo.  I took time out of campaigning to go to City Hall to be served with a formal letter signed by Clerk Novina Wong and copied to six different senior staffers.

The letter said if I won the by-election, the city would attribute the outcome to my use of the logo and would be forced to hold a new by-election.  The letter left no guessing.  The city would come after me in court for the cost of a new by-election, the Clerk stated.

“For your information the cost of holding a by-election is between $165,000 and $200,000.” 

This was in reaction to a minor and totally innocent trademark infringement issue.   There was no law against putting the city hall logo on an election sign at that time.  The city’s sign by-law was changed later that year to add what I still dub “the Sheila Clause”, prohibiting the use of the city logo on candidates’ election materials.

Never understood until now why I kept that letter.  I can wave it around  and make the point that Rob Ford should pay for his own mayoral by-election, if the city must have one.  For his information, the cost of a new by-election is in the range of $7 million.

What's fair for the goose ... ?

In Toronto’s urban history I was the first person to take Rob Ford to the city’s integrity commissioner and win in 2005.  Ford had mailed out business samples and used his city business card to promote his printing services.  The ruling concluded that Ford had breached the city’s code of conduct, had used the city logo for private purposes.  It recommended council impose no penalty on him as his error was ruled to be “inadvertent.”

I laughed when I read Ford’s rebuttal to my complaint, although I was sorry that his sister was shot in the face on his deadline day for dealing with it.  Naturally that unfortunate incident of criminality created a delay in hearing Ford’s integrity case.  But his letter stated his belief that my complaint was part of a left wing conspiracy and that he had done nothing wrong.

Flash forward seven years.  Breaking the rules and being admonished by then-commissioner David Mullan hasn’t hurt Ford one bit.  As Mayor of Toronto now he has stumble bummed his way into a conflict situation, refusing early on to do what was required to resolve it.  I tell you, that man is hooked on rule breaking.  Some might call it disrespect.  Ford’s track record is there for all to see: brushes with integrity commissioners (not just one, but two) and the city ombudsman, trips to court on various matters, deposed senior city officials, insults hurled.

Rarely am I bewildered, but this whole scramble to save Ford’s bacon has me staring into space shaking my head. 

I proved him to be wrong in ’05. Here he’s still mucking about in 2012.   Only one conclusion can be drawn.  The code of penalties and enforcement governing the conduct of people elected to city council needs to be stronger.

The same rules that ensnared our hare of a mayor have entangled this writer in the past.   Little sympathy for Mayor Rob Ford’s plight do I feel, and this is from someone who has encountered legal challenges wrought from the unforgiving clauses of Ontario’s municipal election laws. 

My transgression?  I was one day late filing a second financial statement after losing as a candidate for council in a 1999 by-election.  Had I not penned my case, found a judge to hear me and made my presentation to the court within seven days, I would have been banned from running for municipal office for seven years.  

Diane Alexopoulous, who sought office in Toronto in November 2006 and came close to winning, didn’t do what I did.  Rather than go through the legal process, she didn’t respond to her letter from the elections branch of the city clerk’s office and forfeited her right to try for public office again for seven years.  How many others have similarly faced this law full tackle, like I did, or with a defensive fumble like Diane?  This was a woman who earned 46.1 per cent of the vote and came within 20 votes of toppling an incumbent titan.

Regular folks affected by election legislation don’t have politicians like Ontario Conservative Leader Tim Hudak and his federal cousins demanding an urgent review of the law governing politicians, wannabes and try-hards.  Golly, I thought Conservatives were the Law & Order party.  What does it mean? That all candidates are treated equally under the law unless they're a big Tory named Ford?  Is the next Tory campaign slogan going to be, “Give the big guy a break. The law is an ass.”

The entire Ford Family will be thrilled that I’m not a court justice.  When I fought for my rights in court, the law was the law no matter who you were.  It was tough, but evenhanded. 

My penalty for Ford would be banishment for seven years.

I wouldn’t let that rabbit run away from what he’s done.