Mayor Rob Ford had a rare disagreement with his brother Doug on Thursday, noting that his position as mayor needn’t come with additional power like the ability to override city council decisions.
Doug Ford said this week that he’d like to see the Toronto mayor with the ability to wield power like Chicago’s mayor, Richard Daley.
The mayor, however, took some time to distance himself from his brother and from the commonly noted inference that Doug may be becoming a “mouthpiece” for Rob. “I was always happy with the power I have. I don’t know, I think my brother might be spending too much time in Chicago,” Rob Ford chuckled. “To each his own.”
Doug actually stood behind his proposal, advocating the idea that the mayor should be able to go over the top of council in order to get things done “more efficiently.” The way things currently stand, the mayor and each council member receive equal voting rights. His brother sees this democratic notion as a problem, adding that he’s not in favour of “absolute power” but would like to see Rob have the power to squash council ideas if they don’t line up with the mayoral agenda.
Sure. That’s not “absolute power” at all, Doug.
“If you win a majority, you have majority control,” Doug said. “At the end of the day he’s responsible for the city.”
Councillor Joe Mihevc disagreed. “[Democracy] is not about the mayor having more power,” he said. “I think we need to start talking about how we as councillors need to re-establish control of council so that there’s good dialogue, good discussion, good transparency… I think we’ve gone too far in the direction of uploading power to the mayor.”
The mayor of Toronto currently has the ability to do things like appoint committee chairs, something that hasn’t always come with the territory. The distinction to do so came around in 2006 under the City of Toronto Act.
It’s encouraging that Rob is distancing himself from his brother’s bizarre comments. To suggest the sort of leadership Doug advocates as any sort of rational, democratic way to run a city is, frankly, beyond the pale.
Opinion: Doug Ford Targets “Jobs for Life”
Councillor Doug Ford is setting an unsurprising tone with City of Toronto negotiators after targeting so-called “jobs for life.”
Ford is talking about the job security of Toronto city workers of course. He aims to lead the push to strip these workers of contract guarantees and in doing so is putting himself and the Ford council directly in the firing range against the unions. It’s a deliberate tactic, make no mistake about it, and it’s as much about the future as it is about job security.
Said Ford to the Toronto Star newspaper: “We’re going to target ‘jobs for life’ whenever we can, because nobody should have a job for life. I can tell you we’ll go after it in every negotiation we can. I can’t say we’ll be successful, but I can say we’ll give it one hell of a try.”
It’s kind of a strange ideology – “nobody should have a job for life” – but it positions the Ford crew right where they need to be and, as usual, doesn’t exactly express the point with clarity. The Ford plan involves a steady diet of contracting out work and privatizing things like the garbage services and grass-cutting. This is almost guaranteed to generated worker actions across the city and the Ford administration is gearing up for it.
Typically combative, Ford’s team has said that the only thing preventing them from contracting out the entire shebang of citywide garbage services is that annoying little clause about job security. And, as Doug Ford has said, “nobody” should have job security for life.
“Employment security is a No. 1 priority for Local 416 — it always has and always will be,” Local 416 president Mark Ferguson said Wednesday. “It’s not a clause that we are going to negotiate out of our collective agreement. If anything we’ll be looking to improve security provisions, because this current administration is looking to contract-out everything that’s not nailed down, and we can’t allow that.”
It looks like workers are once again over the proverbial barrel under right-leaning Canadian politicians. It also looks like Ford’s characterizations of “jobs for life” are, as expected, a little off the mark. As Ferguson noted, jobs in the private and public sector typically include various job security provisions – but none are “jobs for life” as the usual conditions regarding firing or other actions are still in play. Nobody’s job is entirely “secure” in that sense.
David Doorey, a professor of employment and labour law at York University, predicts a nasty go of things. “We’re going to have the same situation as (the strike in 2009), but instead of being about banking sick days, it’s going to be about whether people have jobs or not. We thought it was nasty last time? This time you’re going to have private collectors trying to cross the lines of picketers whose jobs are on the line,” he said.
How long will the Ford team’s aggressive standpoint affect real world issues among Torontonians? And should residents and workers expect anything less from the 64th Mayor of the city?
Considering that Mayor Ford once shouted down a couple at a Maple Leafs game, made ridiculously uneducated and ignorant comments about AIDS and otherwise contributed to an embarrassing coarsening of Toronto politics over the years, I should say expectations shouldn’t be high at all.