Ford's Attack on Toronto: The End of Local Democracy As We Know It?
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- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1657 ... August 30, 2018
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Ford’s Attack on Toronto:
The End of Local Democracy As We Know It?
Tim Heffernan and Greg Albo
There’s a lot to be said about the new Doug Ford-led Conservative administration in Ontario, but it is Ford’s unilateral and radical reduction of the size of Toronto City Council in Bill 5, the Better Local Government Act, that has drawn much of the initial attention and opprobrium. We need to consider the reaction to it from the local left and how the new situation may open up a new terrain for the socialist left to intervene in the October 22 Toronto election (and other local elections across the province).
Despite the initial dissent from expected quarters -- political junkies, the so-called ‘downtown elites’, community activists,... this opposition will not necessarily damage Ford. Even if these measures are authoritarian and anti-democratic, as with Trump, Putin, and many others in this political moment of right-wing populism, they will not necessarily hurt Ford. And, behind the "dysfunctionality" rhetoric that Ford invoked to justify the attack on the representative structure of Toronto’s council, his real intention has less to do with savings, efficiencies and better decision-making and more to do with ensuring a council with a strengthened hard right, neoliberal element.
That being said, the Ford attack on Toronto’s local democracy is ‘meat and drink’ to the Ford Nation constituency; and even outside of that constituency there is likely to be large levels of popular indifference. Opinion polls to date do not reveal a groundswell of resistance from the people. The Toronto Star, on July 29, had this less than inspiring headline "Nearly half of Torontonians oppose Ford’s plan to slash city council, poll finds." Opinions have not budged much since, even as various legal and other challenges have sprung up.
