Rob Ford's Fiscal Conservatism is Awfully Expensive

All through the Toronto mayoral campaign I maintained that Rob Ford is not a conservative, fiscal or otherwise. He's a populist, and those are two very different things. Populism isn't a philosophy with central governing principles. Rather, it primarily feeds and feeds off of public anger in bad economic times. Ever notice that there wasn't a strong populist movement during the tech boom of the late 1990s?

Of course, nobody listened to me about Ford and he wound up winning by twelve points. He took office this morning, and hit the ground running in his quest to waste a shitload of money and demonstrate just how little he actually knows about big time politics.

Look, inheriting your daddy's name, fortune and political machine is pretty simple. Personal wealth and a big fucking mouth are fantastic assets if you all you want to be is the King of Etobicoke. But as mayor of Canada's largest city, Rob Ford now has to balance what he wants for the city against how much the provincial and federal governments are prepared to give him. The City of Toronto doesn't have a pot to piss in - a condition that was more responsible than anything else in getting Ford elected - and therefore can't pay for big-ticket items on its own. The city can't put up a goddamned stop sign with federal or provincial matching money.

Ford's platform was cynical in telling voters that he would somehow get that money as he flushed municipal revenue from land-transfer and vehicle registration taxes down the toilet. And Mayor Ford has big spending plans. For example, he wants tens (or hundreds) of billions of dollars worth of subways going everywhere.

Sadly, Ford's platform directly conflicts with the Transit City arrangement that the outgoing Miller regime reached with the province. As a matter of fact, construction on the Sheppard Light Rail Transit (LRT) extension has already begun. Ford promised to cancel it all and start over again. Most of his supporters were either idiots, or they assumed he was lying.

Well, on Day One of the Dark Age of Ford, we learned that he wasn't lying.

An emphatic Mayor Rob Ford declared victory for motorists on his first day in charge of the nation's largest city.

"The war on the car is over," Ford said after stepping out of his office to face reporters for the first time as mayor.

The former councillor from suburban Etobicoke said his first meeting was with Toronto Transit Commission Chief General Manager Gary Webster, during which Ford made clear he wants an end to surface light rail projects.

"I just wanted to make it quite clear that Transit City is over," he said. "I told him that everything moving forward is underground. He accepted that and I look forward to working with him."

Transit City is the $8 billion, provincially funded project to bring light rail to underserved areas of the city.

It was championed by former mayor David Miller but Ford has argued against it, saying it would slow vehicle traffic and people would rather go underground.

"We’re going to build subways," Ford said.

"I was elected on that mandate and I’m going to deliver my promise to the taxpayer. Subways will be built in this city and I look forward to meeting with (Premier Dalton) McGuinty about the funding with respect to subways."

The great Mike Brock at The Volunteer pointed out just how dumb this is during the closing days of the campaign, so I'm not going to re-state his argument. I want to focus on the money and politics involved.

In an editorial this morning, the Globe and Mail addresses the costs already incurred and those to come if the mayor gets his way.

The city is getting a great deal. The province is footing almost all of the bill for billions of dollars in projects.

Most importantly, the projects are under way. Construction on the Sheppard East line has been going on for a year. Tunnel-boring machines have been ordered for the Eglinton West project. Around $130-million has already been spent. If Mr. Ford were to get his way, this money would be squandered. Breaking an existing $770-million contract with Bombardier for new streetcars would cost untold millions more. These results would be at complete odds with Mr. Ford’s prime, stated mission, to cut government waste.

Keep in mind, all of that money is either already spent or won't be recouped if Transit City gets killed. Ford is going to have to start from scratch. But from his perspective, that's fine. After all, it's hundreds of millions in provincial money that Ford's throwing away.

For whatever reason, Mayor Ford thinks that he can build the Sheppard extension for $3 billion, which ignores history. The Sheppard line - Mel Lastman's legacy vanity project - was 100% over budget and took twice as long to build than was projected and it still hasn't been paid off, eight years after it opened.

Yet the mayor thinks that he can get Queen's Park to eat the cost of the initial construction, cancellation fees and pony up what is going to be at least $3 billion for his new subway. Simply put, he's hallucinating. That he's counting a provincial election next year to get what he wants only proves just how little he knows about politics.

The City of Toronto is in the hole right now for about $382 million, which sounds pretty bad until you understand that the province is running an $18.7 billion deficit. And the feds are mired in an annual $47 billion sinkhole. How exactly would it be good politics for provincial and federal politicians, with their astronomical budget shortfalls, to give Rob Ford money, when he just began his term of office by throwing away hundreds of millions of dollars for no reason at all? The mayor may not know this, but everyone in Ontario and Canada actively despises Toronto.

Ford campaigned against wasteful spending, but he thinks that he convince Dalton McGuinty to finance his "good money after bad" subway project. McGuinty is a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them. He knows as well as I do that Robtown has no idea how to pay for this, other than through handouts. So how does he fight back against a Tory fiscal discipline campaign while helping Ford actually bury several billion dollars in the ground of Toronto?

Ford also knows that Toronto taxpayers, who he claims that he's protecting, are also Ontario taxpayers. He's essentially asking the same people to pay for this nonsense, just through a different level of government. I might also add that he's asking us to pay it through a level of government with a truly awesome debt load already.

Then there's more politics for McGuinty to consider. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Hudak Progressive Conservatives plan to build their platform around Ford's experimentation in Toronto. If I'm right, why would the McGuinty Liberals want to see that succeed? Wouldn't it be better for them, particularly in the 905 belt, to say "Toronto's been given $8 billion already, and that's it"? McGuinty could then campaign on fiscal responsibility - albeit horribly late - in the Tories' own background and turn it into a battlefield. If Ford succeeds, McGuinty loses 416 seats. If Ford fails, Hudak could be in trouble everywhere else.

On the very first day of his reign of error, Rob Ford is showing us just how little he knows about everything. It's going to be an awfully interesting four years.