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Mayor In Waiting: an inside look at Olivia Chow’s political ambitions

Olivia Chow’s public mourning after Jack Layton’s death cast her in a new light: dignified, likeable and, well, mayoral. Toronto wants her to run, but does she want Toronto?

Olivia Chow

(Image: Christopher Wahl)

The morning of December 13, Olivia Chow woke up with a strange feeling on the left side of her face. Her ear was also a little sore, but it had been like that for a week. It was only when she went to the mirror that she realized she couldn’t smile. Her skin drooped; she looked older and more tired. But she felt normal, thoughts whirring inside her head at the same pace as always. So she went right on with the phone interview on Newstalk 1010 she had scheduled for 7:30 a.m., before going to her family doctor.

The culprit turned out to be Ramsay Hunt syndrome, a complication from a shingles infection of her facial nerve. It wasn’t a serious illness, just bad luck. There was only a small spot of shingles inside her ear. Her doctor put her on a week of the steroid prednisone and an antiviral. About three quarters of patients who are treated within three days recover from the syndrome; she had arrived within a few hours, so the prognosis was good.

It’s tempting to invest this minor medical incident with heavy meaning. Chow has been a politician for 28 years, first as a school trustee, then a councillor, and, as of 2006, the MP for Trinity-Spadina. For politicians, a face is not just a thing you park in front of a computer in the morning and show to the family at night. A politician meets new people, all day, every day, and people are inquisitive, and not all of them have tact.

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Glen Murray and Kathleen Wynne are running for the Ontario Liberal Party leadership

Glen-Murray-Kathleen-Wynne-Ontario-Liberal-leadershipThe race to be the next leader of the Ontario Liberal Party is now, finally, an actual race. Three weeks quietly passed following Dalton McGuinty’s resignation as Ontario’s premier before any of his political brethren launched a leadership bid. Then, in the space of 24 hours, a pair of contenders revealed their candidacy: Toronto-Centre MPP Glen Murray broke the silence Sunday night and Don Valley West MPP Kathleen Wynne will follow suit early this evening. Wynne already received an endorsement from Liberal caucus member David Zimmer, who tweeted his early approval, while Murray had former RIM CEO Jim Balsillie and former health minister and failed mayoral candidate George Smitherman in the crowd when he announced his bid at Maple Leaf Gardens. At this very early juncture, we’re going to say Wynne’s off to the better start, purely from PR perspective. Having Balsillie and Smitherman’s support would be a certain boon for a politician mounting a leadership bid back in 2007. Today, we’re not so sure.

(Images: Glen Murray, Shaun Merritt; Kathleen Wynne, Ontario Chamber of Commerce)

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The Moment: Dalton McGuinty’s emergency exit

The Moment: McGuinty’s Emergency Exit

(Image: George Pimentel)

During his nine years as premier, Dalton McGuinty displayed a magical ability to maintain the squeaky clean persona of Premier Dad—that smiling paternalist whose ramrod-straight affect evoked a grown-up Michael Cera in a suit—while all hell broke loose around him. The eHealth boondoggle may have cost David Caplan his cabinet post and spiked George Smitherman’s run for mayor, but it never stuck to McGuinty. The same goes for the ORNGE scandal, from which McGuinty walked away with hardly a scratch. Over the past few months, Energy Minister Chris Bentley has become the public face of the cancelled power plants fiasco, and Education Minister Laurel Broten has morphed into the teachers’ favourite super­-villain. Of course, you don’t stay premier for three terms without knowing how to bob and weave, but McGuinty’s decision to lock up the legislature as he stepped down was the first time he’s taken a direct hit for his party rather than the other way around. The unions will eventually settle, the Liberals will elect a new leader, and life will go on. McGuinty’s lasting image as premier, however, will be marred by the ignominious way he went out.

 

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Reaction Roundup: Premier Dalton McGuinty steps down and adjourns the legislature

(Image: Communitech Photos)

We’ve never really thought of Dalton McGuinty as a big-surprises kind of guy, but Premier Dad shocked the province last night by announcing his resignation as party leader—and the prorogation of the legislature. Today, most of Toronto is speculating about why McGuinty stepped down, and where, politically, the province goes from here. We rounded up the main threads of the discussion, including who might replace him, whether McGuinty has federal leadership aspirations and what Rob Ford thinks about it all.

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QUOTED: George Smitherman predicts whether Rob Ford will win a second term

I suspect his chances at re-election are extraordinarily good, because even though he’s not exactly living up to everyone’s dreams of what a mayor ought to look like, and how a mayor ought to act and project himself, it’s working for a good cluster of folks.

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The man who raised millions for George Smitherman’s campaign is helping get Rob Ford re-elected

(Image: Ryerson)

It’s no secret Rob Ford is thinking ahead to the 2014 election—and now he has landed fundraising veteran Ralph Lean to help. Lean, a Bay Street lawyer, gushed over the mayor’s budget and labour victories in the Globe and Mail this weekend and confirmed that he’ll head up Ford’s fundraising team (a job he has done for various mayoral candidates since 1980). Most recently, Lean helped rake in more than $2.17 million for George Smitherman’s failed run against Ford and was partially responsible for that strange “unity dinner” that helped several candidates, including Ford, clear their campaign debts. It’s a coup for Ford, who only raised $1.08 million in 2010. That said, Lean has his detractors, who say he exaggerates his abilities and doesn’t always deliver. [Globe and Mail]

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The weirdest mayoralty ever—the inside story of Rob Ford’s city hall

Loyal councillors have defied him. His approval ratings have plummeted. And his powerful Conservative backers are nervous. How did it all go so wrong? The strange story of Rob Ford’s city hall

The Incredible Shrinking Mayor

On Newstalk 1010, the sly strains of the Hollies hit “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” offered the first clue. Then morning host Jerry Agar burst on the air with a surprise announcement: Rob Ford and his councillor sibling Doug were taking over the station’s Sunday afternoon talk-fest, The City. For the once-staid CFRB, landing the boisterous brother act that Margaret Atwood had puckishly dubbed the “twin Ford mayors” was clearly a coup, but that didn’t answer the more obvious question: why on earth would the Fords want to spend two more hours a week in front of an open microphone when they were hardly suffering from a lack of media exposure?

Rob Ford, after all, ranks as one of the most compelling and exhaustively chronicled figures in Canadian politics, adored and despised with equal gusto. His every pronouncement seems to turn into front-page fodder, his every grimace and belly scratch catalogued by rapt photographers. And who could forget the YouTube footage of comedian Mary Walsh arriving in his driveway, decked out with a velvet breastplate and a plastic sword?

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Rob Ford opts out of attending a “gentle” and “welcoming” gay outreach event

(Image: Ryan)

Rob Ford has remained non-committal about whether or not he’d forgo all Pride events this year (we believe his exact words were “We’ll see”), but he has confirmed he won’t be attending an outreach event leading up to the festivities. Ford’s office told organizers that he simply can’t squeeze in a flag raising at city hall on May 17 to commemorate the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. The event had seemed like the safest bet for a mayoral appearance since it’s usually quite low-key (and Brian Burke would be there, so they could talk about hockey if Ford felt uncomfortable). Kristyn Wong-Tam, who has suggested the mayor is just shy, not homophobic, told the Globe and Mail that the mayor’s presence at the “gentle” and “welcoming” event “might have taken the question away about whether or not he supports the LGBT community.” Instead, skipping out on the flag raising, plus keeping silent while Sun News Network host David Menzies makes bizarre comments about George Smitherman’s sexuality on Ford’s radio show, is keeping those questions very much alive. [Globe and Mail]

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Sun News Network’s David Menzies makes Rob Ford’s radio show that much more offensive

Rob Ford ceded the spotlight to David Menzies on his show this week (Image: Blind Nomad)

The Sun News Network’s David Menzies managed to be more controversial than Rob and Doug Ford on the brothers’ radio show this week (considering Mayor Ford’s comments on the show have already landed him in trouble on two separate occasions, that’s a feat). In the wake of the Daniel Dale brouhaha, the conversation this week repeatedly returned to the “left-wing media” and their treatment of the mayor—about which Menzies had plenty to say.

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Quoted: A melodramatic George Smitherman on what he’ll rue for now and forever

I didn’t see it coming. For the rest of my life I will regret that.

—Former Ontario health minister George Smitherman during hearings held earlier this week at Queen’s Park, admitting he wishes he had foreseen the multi-million-dollar scandal that would overtake Ornge. Perhaps has was blinded by an irrational love for his own progeny—as the health minister from 2003 to 2008, Smitherman helped create the publicly funded air ambulance agency—or perhaps the bureaucrats at the health ministry should’ve been better at their jobs, as he alleges. Regardless, ol’ Furious is disappointed in himself. But to feel contrite for the rest of his life? Come on, Smitherman. If you want to take a regret to your grave, allow us to suggest something else you failed to see coming: that Rob Ford would walk all over you in Toronto’s 2010 mayoral campaign. [Toronto Star]

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The Anti-Ford: Kristyn Wong-Tam believes Toronto is in better shape than you’re being told

In her first year on city council, Kristyn Wong-Tam hogged the spotlight with proposals to ban shark fin soup, save bike lanes and found a municipal bank. She’s a charismatic lesbian immigrant art lover who once lived on the street—the exact opposite of our mayor in every way

Kristyn Wong-Tam | The Anti-Ford

(Image: Naomi Harris)

The first time Kristyn Wong-Tam clashed with Rob Ford, she lay down on the carpet outside his office in protest. It was March 2008, and Ford was a councillor from Etobicoke, an outspoken character on the fringes of city politics with a talent for alienating his colleagues. Earlier that month, Ford had famously delivered a rambling speech in support of the economic advantages of holiday shopping hours that could have been cribbed from a 19th-century pamphlet about the Yellow Peril. “Those Oriental people work like dogs. They work their hearts out. They are workers non-stop. They sleep beside their machines,” Ford said on the floor of council, punching the air with his fist for emphasis. “I’m telling you, the Oriental people, they’re slowly taking over.”

That last phrase rankled Wong-Tam. At the time, the 36-year-old Chinese-Canadian was a successful realtor with no ambitions to become a city councillor, a job she saw as demanding far too much time for too little compensation. She did, however, have a long history of rabble-rousing—for gay rights, for women’s equality, for immigrants’ rights—and she believed that Ford’s comment was a xenophobic stereotype that needed to be corrected. She decided to ask for an apology.

After her emails and phone calls went unanswered, Wong-Tam brought a group of around 20 Asian protesters down to city hall. Showing a talent for media-friendly political theatre, they walked down to the press gallery wearing white dress shirts and ties, what Wong-Tam called the “Asian office uniform,” and announced they were looking for Councillor Ford. “Essentially, we’re a group of people who are working very hard,” Wong-Tam quipped, walking to Ford’s office as members of the press trailed behind her. When they found that Ford wasn’t in the building, the group brought out various contraptions—blenders, sewing machines, toasters—and lay down to sleep beside them. Cameras flashed. The video ran on loop on CP24 all afternoon.

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Rob Ford’s powers as mayor may not be as grand as he thinks they are

Mayor Rob Ford (Image: City of Toronto)

With Rob Ford’s transit plans poised to grind to a rather embarrassing halt after a local law firm, solicited by Councillor Joe Mihevc, argued that the mayor legally lacked the power to unilaterally kill Transit City, the city hall press corps is pontificating about what, exactly, the powers of the mayor’s office are. (Of course, it probably would’ve been better to explore the limit of those powers before Ford went ahead and cancelled the multi-billion-dollar transit plan.) While Ford maintains he acted within his rights, based on a perceived mandate from voters to build subways, most reports are suggesting otherwise.

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Ed Keenan has a plan for Rob Ford—but is the mayor really the reasonable guy Keenan needs him to be? 

In this week’s issue of The Grid, Edward Keenan offers a “five-point plan” to help Rob Ford right his crashing and burning administration while still sticking to his principles. Now, Keenan’s advice, which includes emphasizing customer service and public consultation, is good stuff. But his plan seems to rest on the assumption that Ford is a reasonable guy, amendable to working with his foes (like lefty councillors and public service employees). Our question: um, is he? There’s an ample amount of evidence to suggest that making compromises is not something that comes easily to Ford. Remember when Ford was asked to compliment then-rival George Smitherman and all he could muster was “I like his ties once in a while”? Sheesh. Then again, Ford’s waning support on council could force him to soften up a little. Of course, that doesn’t mean he’s going to enjoy it. Read the entire story [The Grid] »

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Dalton McGuinty warns voters about what a Rob Ford (er, Tim Hudak) win in the provincial election victory could mean for Ontario

Dalton McGuinty on the campaign trail (Image: West Annex News)

With polls showing a dead heat in the provincial election race and no clear winner in Tuesday night’s debate, Dalton McGuinty is leaning on a simple campaign tactic: fear mongering. The Toronto Sun reports that the Premier warned voters that Tim Hudak doesn’t have the stones to stand up to Stephen Harper, and voters should choose “a champion for Ontario who is prepared to get his elbows up.” (We suggest McGuinty avoid any metaphors dealing with hands or elbows for the next few days.)

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David Miller’s name is being floated for the NDP’s top spot, but can anyone from Toronto win (again)?

(Image: Shaun Merritt)

With Jack Layton’s moving funeral now behind us, the new week has NDP candidates quietly leaking their intentions to run to the press. As expected, Brian Topp and Thomas Mulcair are widely being touted as front-runners, but some other names have started to crop up. Peggy Nash, MP for Parkdale–High Park, is being mentioned, as is Olivia Chow (Trinity-Spadina), who would obviously represent a continuation of the Layton legacy. A bit more off the beaten path is the suggestion—raised by Councillor Josh Matlow on his radio show yesterday and by others elsewhere—that ex-mayor David Miller could run for the NDP’s big chair. Off the top of our heads, we can see a few problems with this idea.

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