Royson James has an endorsement of Tory that just nails it.
http://www.thestar.com/news/city_ha.../10/21/why_im_voting_for_john_tory_james.html
It will be tough for Chow Nation to accept - they'll call him a sell-out and attack his position on strategic voting - but he's just dead on. For all the dead-eyed Chowites who are all hung up on how "John Tory doesn't believe in white privilege!" James writes:
Rob Ford was caught on tape talking in Jamaican patois, and the Fords sell themselves as men of the people. But in the several ethnic and racialized communities, Tory’s reach is extensive; and creditably so.
He was the first non-black recipient of a Harry Jerome Award, the African-Canadian community’s premier recognition. Add to that the Planet Africa and the African Canadian Achievement awards and you get the point.
I doubt the White Privilege crowd will get the point, but everyone else will.
Obviously that has even greater weight, what with James being African-Canadian himself. Checkmate as far as I'm concerned.
I honestly would have been OK with Olivia as mayor if she'd risen to the occasion but she lowered her gloves when it was time to punch and (ironic, given the die hard old-left support she still has) didn't push enough of a progressive agenda. My main takeaways from watching her campaign for nearly a year?
-She's the only one who cares about children
-She once saw a lady unable to get on a crowded streetcar and never got over it
-She really hates SmartTrack and thinks John Tory wants to bulldoze a neighbourhood
If she stood for much else, I never got it.
I never said candidates should require engineering studies but it helps support one's transit plan. i.e. Ari, Olivia, and Soknacki planned to stick with LRT because it has less uncertainty compared to the scarborough subway which requires more studies as the alignment in the previous studies is not yet concrete. Also, the candidates didn't conduct these LRT studies, they were already done.
One could counter (and I've seen others point it out) that SmartTrack is based on the GO/Metrolinx RER plan that's already underway. I said here or elsewhere that all Tory is doing is piggybacking on that plan and "marketing" a regional plan for Toronto voters. I think the overall moves by candidates to talk as if Metrolinx doesn't exist is a whole other issue but the fact is that, given that it's on GO lines, there is no way Tory could possibly make his plan happen just by selling it to council. It's not on TO property and it goes beyond the municipal borders, which is to say it's a regional project that, at the end of the day, is almost certain to be planned, designed and operated by Metrolinx.
I do think he should have spelled that out but given how voters get suckered in to these mayoral transit schemes, I don't blame him for keeping it simple. The reality of the project, which I'm sure he knows, answers pretty much all the legit questions about its routing and funding plan. Toronto won't confront that on its own but in an election Toronto likes to pretend it's an island in the middle of nowhere. One of the main things I like about Tory is that he knows it really isn't.
