Guns, garbage, tax increases

David Miller's Legacy

The big item in the news last week was Toronto Mayor David Miller's filing to run for re-election. As he emerged from the clerk's office after paying his $100 entry fee, Miller held an impromptu press conference during which he claimed that he kept his election promises to Torontonians. He cited his dubious achievement of stopping the construction of a fixed link to the Toronto Island Airport as the largest of his kept promises. What he did not deign to talk about was the whopping tax increases the residents of Toronto were saddled with, while their services drastically declined.

As someone who was involved in the mayoral race of 2003, I distinctly remember what Mayor Miller's priorities were. They did not include a balanced budget, safe or clean streets, improved municipal services, improved public transit, elimination of traffic jams, getting the homeless off the streets, to name a few. The only one that he seemed to really care about was stopping that pesky bridge from the foot of Bathurst Street to Toronto Island. And to his credit, he did deliver on that promise, albeit it wound up costing Toronto taxpayers millions of dollars.

Let's examine the importance of what did not appear to be Mr. Miller's priorities.

Fiscal prudence did not appear high on David Miller's list of priorities. What money he couldn't gouge from the residents of his city he sucked and whined to get from the province and the feds. In addition to everyone paying more, the quality and number of city services available have declined.

Safe streets. With 52 gun-related murders in Toronto's streets last year, it's clear that safety also wasn't high on hizzoner's list. In fact, as the numbers were mounting, Miller engaged in a bizarre kind of denial, blaming the United States for those shot to death in Toronto's streets. His answer to the problem now? He wants to "invest" money in an effort to make those killing each other in Toronto feel "included".

John Tory, who was Miller's strongest opponent, had a plan that included more cops on the streets, which probably would have cost as much as canceling the Island Bridge. Except that expenditure might have yielded some concrete results.

As for cleaner streets, take a look for yourself. Almost anywhere you go in Toronto today, you will find trash in the streets, graffiti on buildings and aggressive panhandlers demanding spare change.

While Miller has claimed that Toronto's municipal services have improved, many residents of Toronto beg to differ. Having "garbage police" write tickets to people who accidentally put cans with cardboard is hardly an improvement in municipal services. Neither is saddling residents with the onus of having to sort their garbage into countless multi-colored bins to simplify pick-up.

The city's garbage has been carted to the United States for years and rumblings are afoot that this might soon be put a to an end by the Americans. Yet neither Mr. Miller nor his NDP city council seems to be very concerned about that prospect. From all accounts there is no plan B to deal with the eventuality of having to find a new dumpsite. What's more, with hundreds of trucks heading for Michigan daily to dispose of Toronto's garbage, the quality of the air between here and there can't be getting any better.

Miller's answer to improved public transit was to approve a fare increase that was touted as potentially increasing ridership. I believe this claim falls under the heading of socialist mathematics. Concomitantly, the traffic gridlock plaguing the city isn't getting any better. The ideas that have been floated by Miller and his council to deal with it have ranged from the novel to the bizarre. Needless to say that most involve making drivers pay more money to discourage use of the roads.

Finally, homelessness seems to be David Miller's favorite project, as it has sprouted a thriving industry in Toronto. Homelessness has become such a big problem that the city is adamantly against even counting the number of homeless to see how bad the problem really is, but has no qualms about hiring 15 to 20 new "counselors" to try to convince homeless people to come in from the cold during the especially cold winter months.

So the question Torontonians should be asking themselves is: can Toronto really afford to have David Miller as its mayor for another three years?