No easy answers to Toronto’s big problems

The outlandish promises we hear in our lifetime. And still we believe.

Actually, we don’t believe; we can’t. We are not that stupid. But, over time, we’ve sown the seeds of our own delusion.

We want to believe we can get something for nothing. We trick ourselves into thinking — even if only at election time — that Candidate A has solutions to decades-old challenges.

Specifically, we’ve convinced ourselves that city workers are a different breed from an unknown planet who didn’t go to the same universities as the giants of the private sector. So, whatever task the civic worker attempts can easily be done more productively, at a lower price.

Garbage collection? Take it away from those slovenly civic laggards. Privatize. Building a subway? Those TTC morons can’t deliver a two-train funeral. Let the private sector build transit.

Well, that’s what we’ve done with the Crosstown LRT project along Eglinton Ave. — secure in the promises of private sector management that will deliver the $5.3-billion project on budget and on time for passengers in 2020.

Oops! What’s that they now tell us? Construction is running late? Crosstown won’t move passengers before 2021? Hmmm. Can the budget uptick be far behind?

Yes, there are examples of civic screw-ups. The fact that we can find examples to buttress our arguments of civil service failures or shortfalls propel us to generalize, repeatedly. Such gullibility is what greases the machinery of politics and fuels politicians to tell us what comforts us. Remember the one about how there was $1 billion — no, $2 billion in savings, er gravy, at city hall and how it would all be lapped up without cutting a single municipal service?

Reality: Not nearly so much saved, and services cut.

Then this claim: Scores of privatesector investors are lining up out- side the mayor’s office, begging to shell out billions for subways, subways, subways. No taxes needed.

Reality: No investors uncovered, and an extra $40-a-year tax levied for 40 years for one subway to carry a few people that could be accommodated by a simple upgrade of the Scarborough RT.

Promise: Fix up the thousands of broken-down social housing units lickety-split. Just toss out the Toronto community housing board members who buy dinners on the public dime; show up regularly at the projects for photo ops; sell off some of the housing stock; watch the waiting list shrink.

Reality: The waiting list grows; the repair backlog tops $2.5 billion.

Traffic congestion is on everybody’s mind, so what’s up with those bozos who operate our traffic lights, or schedule road repairs? A handson mayor with a determined focus can surely lick this perennial irritant.

Reality: Mayor John Tory announced that the Don Valley Parkway will be closed for repairs at precisely the time 47,000 fans are descending on the stadium formerly known as SkyDome for a Blue Jays game. No matter how hard he and staff examined alternatives, the shut down — during a busy weekend in the city — could not have been averted. Toronto’s a happening city.

We want to believe. We elected our current chief magistrate on the promise he could build his SmartTrack transit line in “seven years, not 17,” in corridors not identified by city planners, using money no one has tapped, pursuing an initiative that conflicts with proposals already on the books.

Reality will expose the fault lines, repeatedly. And the mayor will do rhetorical somersaults to hide the obvious.

The citizen in search of good governance and evidence-based decision-making is forever in a quandary trying to navigate this game of false promises propped up by selective facts shielded from conflicting data.

What to think of contracting out waste pickup east of Yonge St.? You’ve been told there’s a slam-dunk case for privatizing the pickup, saving millions of dollars.

The counter arguments have always been there: the city workers have become more productive now that half the trash is picked up by competing private-sector workers; if the rest of the trash pickup is contracted out, the city has to accommodate all the workers who would lose their jobs so that would eat into any savings; and other cities have found that the private contractors become less accommodating and more cutthroat when they have contracts for the entire city as opposed to just half.

Sounds reasonable — unless you promised unequivocally to privatize, and your political opponents are ready to pounce on your broken promise.

As early as 420 B.C., Greek dramatist Aristophanes understood what drives the political mind. “To win the people, always cook them some savoury that pleases them.”

Too often, it leaves a bitter aftertaste. Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca