NOW Toronto: Deconstructing the seminal vote...that shelved Mayor Rob Ford’s Sheppard subway plans

from NOW Toronto:



Subway scoundrel
The mayor’s myths about council’s transit vote

By Enzo Di Matteo


Deconstructing Wednesday’s seminal vote of City Council that shelved Mayor Rob Ford’s Sheppard subway plans – and stuck another dagger in his flagging mayoralty.

The claim Rob Ford had a mandate from the people to build subways.

Reality check Yada, yada. Fordists have been desperately pushing the argument that the mayor ran on a platform to build subways. And it’s subways the people want. Any political claim Ford had to his subway scheming went out the window when the guy he hired to find the private bucks to fund his Sheppard plans, that would be Gordon Chong, came clean recently to say there just isn’t the private bread to back it.

It’s debatable whether the mayor has any intention of building Sheppard. Arguably, it was a false promise to win votes. And push his not-so-secret privatization agenda for transit. Lest we forget that, so confident was the mayor of the ins and outs of his privately-funded subway scheme that he took to Youtube, practically in the middle of the night, to announce his so-called transportation plan during the election, just so he wouldn’t have to answer questions about how precisely he intended to fund it.

Raising the billions required from the private sector was always a non-starter. Mel Lastman tried it and we all know what happened there. Taxpayers were left holding the bag and a white elephant nobody uses on Sheppard. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nowtoronto.com/daily/news/story.cfm?content=185170