Shortchanging Toronto voters

In a saner world, one where Doug Ford wasn’t rampaging through the City of Toronto, busting up things that aren’t broken, at least part of Monday would have been spent discussing public safety in Canada’s biggest city.

It’s an important issue, what with the worrying rise in gun violence and proposals for a ban on handguns and assault rifles. Mayoral candidate Jennifer Keesmaat released a fivepoint “action plan” for community safety on Monday and Mayor John Tory’s record on security and police reform is well worth debating.

But were Torontonians engaged in such a worthwhile discussion? No, they were not. Instead, once again their attention was hijacked by Ford’s obsessional drive to cut city council in half, and damn the consequences. The spectacle of the legislature pulling an all-nighter to ram through Ford’s changes blotted out everything else.

There has already been much tallying of the costs of this move, both in terms of the damage to local democracy and the worrying precedent set by an Ontario government going where Queen’s Park has never dared go before — using the notwithstanding clause of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to brush aside a court ruling it doesn’t like.

These costs are very real. But just as important is what hasn’t been happening. Toronto’s municipal election has effectively been obliterated since Ford dropped his bombshell at the end of July. Even if Bill 31, the law now being rushed through the legislature, passes by the end of this week, the whole effort will have completely dominated the city’s public life for eight weeks — time that would normally have been spent discussing actual issues. Voters and politicians will have barely four weeks to do that, leaving aside the minor details of figuring out who will run where and getting campaigns up and going.

Four weeks (considerably less, really, given those enormous uncertainties) to air such matters as affordability, housing policy, transit, traffic, property taxes, policing, pedestrian safety, the opioid crisis, homelessness, privatization of services, social housing ... the list goes on.

A maximum of four weeks for voters to assess Tory’s record after four years and take the measure of Keesmaat and others seeking the mayoralty. And, just as important, for voters to decide who will best represent them on council, not to mention who is even running in their neighbourhood.

This is a serious disservice to the people of Toronto, one caused entirely by Ford’s personal vendetta with his old enemies on city council.

What could make this worse? If anything, the very real possibility that the election on Oct. 22 will fall short of the standards of transparency and fairness we have a right to expect. Toronto’s city clerk, Ulli Watkiss, warned council late last week that it will be “virtually impossible” to hold a fair election on that date.

She said she isn’t sure if it will be possible to organize advance polls in that timeframe, potentially depriving many people of their vote. Even if there are advance polls, they can’t be done over Thanksgiving weekend, when many students will be home from college, or there may be fewer of them.

None of this is likely to promote public confidence in the integrity of this election. If things go according to Ford’s plan, we’re likely to have a campaign that is short on the issues, confusing about who is running where and more difficult for people to vote.

Thanks, Premier.