A week is a lifetime in politics; eight months, an eternity.
The last time he swaggered into Dalton McGuinty’s office, Rob Ford was at the top of his game — lording it over the premier, wearing his fresh electoral mandate like a wrestler’s prize belt. After a mere 25 minutes, the mayor emerged triumphant last December to declare he’d remake Toronto’s subway system in his own image.
Now, Ford has returned to Queen’s Park showing his tummy to a Liberal premier who appears, eight months later, to have nine lives in the opinion polls. His swagger gone, the mayor is asking for a modest “advance” to dig him out of a financial hole so he can start tunnelling the Sheppard subway extension.
Bereft of his once-shimmering prize belt, Ford looks increasingly like a mayor with no clothes — but for the cap in his hand.
Behind closed doors, the tone was civil but briskly businesslike. No headlocks or cheap shots. The premier isn’t going to the mat on the eve of a campaign, and Ford isn’t spoiling for a fight when he’s in such a tight corner.
Speaking in public later, both men were muted and measured. No one wants to be seen playing politics at the expense of Toronto’s transit paralysis.
But their body language spoke volumes.
Ford hunkered down as he pressed past a crush of reporters. Standing awkwardly before a microphone, he indulged in a strange soliloquy by asking himself questions and then not answering them.
“I know the questions you’re going to ask me about what we talked about, so I’ll answer your questions before you ask about what we talked about,” Ford declared pre-emptively, blinking nervously.
He didn’t, really. Nor did he put to rest the talk of bad blood between them, having once threatened, on talk radio, to unleash “Ford Nation” upon the premier.
A contrite Ford mumbled awkwardly that he’d known McGuinty “a long time,” but then babbled, unprompted: “I don’t have a great friendship because I’ve never known him that well.”
When the premier emerged a few minutes later in shirt sleeves, he took pains to avoid gloating. But the contrast between the two leaders couldn’t have been sharper: While Ford fled the scene after two minutes, McGuinty ignored entreaties from his own press secretary to wrap things up, lingering until reporters had run out of questions.
Now, Ford’s Sheppard tunnel is stuck between a rock and a hard place that he negotiated himself into. The mayor ripped up the previous Transit City plan that put the province on the hook for a Sheppard LRT. The new deal gave Ford sole responsibility for a Sheppard subway extension built mostly with private money, in exchange for Queen’s Park tunnelling the Eglinton LRT.
City hall is worried it will lose promised federal funding of $330 million unless it gets seed money from Queen’s Park, and matching funds down the road. Ford asked McGuinty for $2.5 million to develop a business plan — not a large enough sum to fight over, though it’s worth asking why the mayor can’t find the money himself.
The bigger ask is a so-called “advance” on $650 million that Ford is counting on from Queen’s Park as a top-up on the Sheppard line. But under the new transit deal Ford made with McGuinty last March, the Sheppard top-up only flows if there is any leftover money from the Eglinton line that Queen’s Park is bankrolling. And until Eglinton is built, it’s hard to know if there will be money to spare.
So why doesn’t Ford simply ask Ottawa for a workaround under its Building Canada Fund? After all, the 2014 deadline that Ford claims must be met applies to an outdated deal for a Sheppard LRT that is itself dead.
Ford keeps trumpeting his alliances with the federal Tories. Why so reluctant to pressure them, publicly, into helping him out of a bind — rather than demanding that Queen’s Park twist itself into a pretzel to accommodate his own political contortions?
Origin
Source: Toronto Star
The last time he swaggered into Dalton McGuinty’s office, Rob Ford was at the top of his game — lording it over the premier, wearing his fresh electoral mandate like a wrestler’s prize belt. After a mere 25 minutes, the mayor emerged triumphant last December to declare he’d remake Toronto’s subway system in his own image.
Now, Ford has returned to Queen’s Park showing his tummy to a Liberal premier who appears, eight months later, to have nine lives in the opinion polls. His swagger gone, the mayor is asking for a modest “advance” to dig him out of a financial hole so he can start tunnelling the Sheppard subway extension.
Bereft of his once-shimmering prize belt, Ford looks increasingly like a mayor with no clothes — but for the cap in his hand.
Behind closed doors, the tone was civil but briskly businesslike. No headlocks or cheap shots. The premier isn’t going to the mat on the eve of a campaign, and Ford isn’t spoiling for a fight when he’s in such a tight corner.
Speaking in public later, both men were muted and measured. No one wants to be seen playing politics at the expense of Toronto’s transit paralysis.
But their body language spoke volumes.
Ford hunkered down as he pressed past a crush of reporters. Standing awkwardly before a microphone, he indulged in a strange soliloquy by asking himself questions and then not answering them.
“I know the questions you’re going to ask me about what we talked about, so I’ll answer your questions before you ask about what we talked about,” Ford declared pre-emptively, blinking nervously.
He didn’t, really. Nor did he put to rest the talk of bad blood between them, having once threatened, on talk radio, to unleash “Ford Nation” upon the premier.
A contrite Ford mumbled awkwardly that he’d known McGuinty “a long time,” but then babbled, unprompted: “I don’t have a great friendship because I’ve never known him that well.”
When the premier emerged a few minutes later in shirt sleeves, he took pains to avoid gloating. But the contrast between the two leaders couldn’t have been sharper: While Ford fled the scene after two minutes, McGuinty ignored entreaties from his own press secretary to wrap things up, lingering until reporters had run out of questions.
Now, Ford’s Sheppard tunnel is stuck between a rock and a hard place that he negotiated himself into. The mayor ripped up the previous Transit City plan that put the province on the hook for a Sheppard LRT. The new deal gave Ford sole responsibility for a Sheppard subway extension built mostly with private money, in exchange for Queen’s Park tunnelling the Eglinton LRT.
City hall is worried it will lose promised federal funding of $330 million unless it gets seed money from Queen’s Park, and matching funds down the road. Ford asked McGuinty for $2.5 million to develop a business plan — not a large enough sum to fight over, though it’s worth asking why the mayor can’t find the money himself.
The bigger ask is a so-called “advance” on $650 million that Ford is counting on from Queen’s Park as a top-up on the Sheppard line. But under the new transit deal Ford made with McGuinty last March, the Sheppard top-up only flows if there is any leftover money from the Eglinton line that Queen’s Park is bankrolling. And until Eglinton is built, it’s hard to know if there will be money to spare.
So why doesn’t Ford simply ask Ottawa for a workaround under its Building Canada Fund? After all, the 2014 deadline that Ford claims must be met applies to an outdated deal for a Sheppard LRT that is itself dead.
Ford keeps trumpeting his alliances with the federal Tories. Why so reluctant to pressure them, publicly, into helping him out of a bind — rather than demanding that Queen’s Park twist itself into a pretzel to accommodate his own political contortions?
Origin
Source: Toronto Star
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