Unprecedented honour for Ford
Former mayor will lie in repose at city hall for public visitation
Beyond the headline-grabbing scandals and gaffes that dominated much of his mayoralty, Rob Ford leaves behind a legacy of conflict when it comes to how Torontonians get around, transparency in government spending and the urban-suburban divide. The war on the car When Ford declared former mayor David Miller’s light-rail Transit City plan dead immediately after taking the mayor’s chair, he, in the same breath, announced the “war on the car” over. That fight is still being played out today and is most acute in the debate over what to do with the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway.
A showdown last year saw Mayor John Tory — who battled the Fords in the 2014 mayoral campaign — defending a new elevated section, which critics say would be saving just a few minutes in the commutes of a small number of drivers. Recovering from surgery, Ford showed up to city hall to vote in favour of keeping the crumbling expressway as is. “Let’s just maintain it and move on,” Ford said. Though he would be the only one to vote for that option, the winning hybrid plan ultimately won out over the “city building” boulevard alternative as reasons for appeasing those behind the wheel prevailed. Subways vs. ‘fancy streetcars’ The most lasting rhetoric of the Ford era may be the chant of “subways, subways, subways” and the widespread belief that all other transit modes are inferior. As mayor, Ford pushed to take all transit underground despite signed and funded agreements to build light rail, likening that alternative to “fancy streetcars.” He invoked images of the St. Clair streetcar to falsely claim that LRTs proposed to run in their own right-of-way on Eglinton Ave. and in Scarborough would “rip up the roads.”
Today, the push to bury the Eglinton Crosstown leaves the current route under construction unconnected to the airport as originally planned (though “Crosstown West” and “Crosstown East” extensions are now back on the table) and a proposal for a more than $2-billion subway in Scarborough instead of an LRT that was fully funded by the province, is moving ahead. Spending exposed From the day he arrived at city hall promising to defend taxpayers, Ford’s focus on spending has put budgets and councillor expenses under the microscope. Always using his family wealth to pay for all or most of his office expenses, Ford criticized the bills submitted by his colleagues and began posting them for public viewing on his own website. After embarrassments for spending on items like espresso machines and bunny suits, council eventually adopted a policy to post all expenses online, which they now do quarterly. After years of complaining as a councillor, as mayor Ford earned small victories like cancelling the snacks provided to council during meetings. (He was less successful in cutting funds for plant watering). Rise of the suburbs The stark divide on the map was undeniable on election day in 2010 — the suburbs had overwhelmingly supported Ford; the old city and downtown core, anyone but. Though the urban vs. suburban divide existed long before the city was amalgamated and Ford was a household name, it was a wave that carried Ford to the mayor’s office and an undercurrent that remains at city hall today.
Though Tory ran on a platform of uniting the city — “One Toronto” — the sentiment that the suburbs have long been ignored lingers. It’s no more pronounced than on the transit file — where councillors and citizens alike still disagree on whether a “downtown” relief line or a subway for Scarborough or a “North York relief line” should be first priority. The 2014 election map still showed battle lines drawn, with the majority of Scarborough and north-central Etobicoke casting ballots for Rob’s brother Doug.