Better questions than ‘who’s gonna win?’
We should examine whether ideas candidates are bringing forward should be implemented
“Who’s gonna win?”
These days, depending on which outlets you read or watch or listen to, that can seem like the only question sports commentators are asking. Hockey analytics expert Cam Charron recently noted that very thing in a column in The Athletic: “It seems like over the last few years, public analytics discussion has been a race to rank teams and players …”
The thing is, the games themselves are the perfect forum to rank teams and players. We don’t need to ask who’s gonna win. We can watch the game and see who wins.
If you’re a gambler, then I guess “Who’s gonna win?” is a question that makes sense. But if you’re a fan, it’s useless. For fans, the main question is, “Who do we want to win?” Or, “What are the stories behind these teams?” “What’s at stake for these players? And for the teams and fan bases they represent?” “Can we expect an exciting game?” “Which players should I watch to see the most creativity or skill or explosive potential?” Stuff like that.
The same is even more true of elections. Even as media outlets across North America have become evermore obsessed with predicting elections, it remains true that voters decide that on election day. During the campaign, the useful questions might not be handicapping that result, but instead discussing the kinds of things voters might think about when making that decision.
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But here in Toronto, in the midst of a municipal election campaign, what have I been hearing?
“Who’s gonna win?” Not just from my colleagues in the media, and not just from folks around city hall, but from people I talk to in the street.
Granted, they don’t always phrase it as a question. Often, they say, “Tory’s gonna win.” This is as true of people who think that’s wonderful as it is of people who think it’s a disaster. Honestly, most people I talk to don’t think it’s either of those things, they just think it’s a boring inevitability, like humidity in July and slush in February. Players gonna play, haters gonna hate, Tory gonna mayor …
Acase where the result seems preordained makes who is going to win an even more useless question to focus on, since the answer appears obvious. Instead, like sports fans, we might focus on who we want to win, or what is at stake, or who the players are and what creativity or excitement they could bring.
So, is what I’m saying the same boring mantra of civic scolds everywhere in every election — let’s focus on the issues? Well, I’m not not saying it. But I also think we want to talk about the people, about character, about leadership — about the issues, yes, but also all the other things that are important to deciding our collective future. All the things more helpful than guessing who will win.
For starters, I and my colleagues at the Star started asking this week, and will continue asking in weeks to come: “Toronto, can’t we do better?” Embedded in that is the question of whether in the biggest, richest city in the country, we are maintaining the infrastructure and services needed to make a big city a great place to live. It’s a question raised not just by streets checkered in potholes and asphalt patches and by busted, overflowing garbage bins, but by a planning approval backlog and a library system asked to flatline its budget in a time of record-high inflation.
Are we willing to pay for things we consider priorities?
Speaking of paying: can we even still afford to pay enough to live here — and will our children be able to?
Is two-term Mayor John Tory articulating a clear vision of what kind of legacy he’s trying to build by running for a third term? And if he gets that third term, what kind of city council is going to serve with him? Who will pull him to the right, as outgoing deputy mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong has? Who will pull him to the left, as outgoing board of health chair Joe Cressy has?
And why does Tory think it’s OK to avoid accepting debates (so far he’s agreed to only two that I know of ), where he might be asked to talk about these things?
Recently, the Star editorial board has been visited by two of his challengers: Gil Penalosa and Chloe Brown. They are very different candidates, but both brought impressive energy to the room, and a cavalcade of ideas. Penalosa has learned a lot about improving public spaces from work consulting around the world, and believes that a great, equitable city starts with reclaiming streets and parks for people to walk on, ride bikes on, and enjoy. Brown, a millennial policy analyst whose education in the school of hard knocks includes living in a homeless shelter while fully employed, believes the city needs to be a bulwark for its residents against the effects of capitalism, and frames the stakes of the election as whether she and a huge chunk of her generation feel like they can even stay.
So here’s a question: whether we’re ready to vote for them or not, are there ideas these candidates — and others — are bringing forward that we should implement?
Brown suggested that with a premier like Doug Ford, the city needs to have a mayor willing to “be the bigger bully.” It’s not clear to me how that will work, exactly. But the Ford question looms over this race: The guy at Queen’s Park insists on using Toronto as his political sandbox, so what’s the best way to approach dealing with him?
I don’t know that there’s an obvious answer to that question. But that’s the handy thing about an election campaign: we ask the questions, and the candidates are supposed to provide the answers. And then we get to provide the answer to the question of who’s going to win.
But if anyone still must ask that, I’d answer with another question of my own: is there a scenario in which the people of Toronto win? And if so, how do we work to make that the result?