Name: Connie Harrison
Age: 55
Occupation: Student and volunteer, currently on the Ontario Disability Support Program
Neighbourhood: St. Jamestown
My ride: Walking, riding the TTC
My last mayoral vote: David Miller in 2006 and 2003.
My political identity: "Left-of-centre."
My top issue: Improvements to Toronto Community Housing and city shelters
Connie Harrison says with a laugh that she knows she's not a typical Rob Ford supporter.
A mother of three grown children, including a severely autistic son, Ms. Harrison is a part-Aboriginal cancer survivor who lives in a social-housing tower in the blighted St. Jamestown projects north of Cabbagetown.
In other words, she benefits from precisely the kind of public programs that could fall under the axe in a Ford administration. But she's sure that if Mr. Ford were wielding the blade he'd have the guts to tell her straight that cuts were coming. That endears him to her.
"His language is plain and blunt and to the point," she said. "He doesn't use words like 'partnership,' 'engage,' 'liaison,' all the fluff words we're using over the last decade that were probably invented by consultants so they could charge more money."
The Etobicoke councillor's style is infinitely preferably to David Miller's, she says, citing one of the outgoing mayor's legacy programs to retrofit concrete high-rises across the city.
"Oh god, if I could show you some city documents from the recent tower renewal, it's all just fluff language to make people get baffled," she said. "It's a softener for the gentrification that's coming in. I just wish people would say, 'Guess what, guys? You're being gentrified. Your buildings are probably all going to be torn down in a few years, so start planning now.' I wish someone had the balls to tell me that. I think Ford would."
Having seen up close some of the programs the city runs for the needy, Ms. Harrison is incensed at the waste and inefficiency, something she believes only Mr. Ford could change. His "frugality" is one of her favourite things about him. She likes that he supports portable rent subsidies to cut down Toronto Community Housing's legendarily long waiting list.
All that, plus his promises to cut council and taxes, is enough to make her overlook Mr. Ford's personal failings and foibles. The fact that he lied to a newspaper about a marijuana bust before admitting to a news conference that he "forgot" he had a joint in his pocket because he was actually pulled over for drunk driving in Florida 11 years ago doesn't bother her.
"He is every one of us. When we set people up to impossible standards, who are you going to get? You're going to get somebody completely phony and fake." Ms. Harrison isn't willing to forgive Mr. Ford everything, though. She can't abide his crusade to save money by getting rid of wine and cigarettes for the homeless men enrolled in a harm-reduction program at Seaton House, the city's largest shelter.
"On the wine thing I was furious with him," she said. "There's these poor old gentlemen who are severe alcoholics and they live in the shelter and he wanted to take it away."
