Tory wins, Mammoliti out, little changes -- Toronto's election brings neo-liberal continuity

After the drama of Doug Ford's undemocratic downsizing of Toronto City Council mid-election, the new, smaller results represent neo-liberal continuity. Very little of any fundamental significance has changed.

John Tory won a landslide victory over his main opponent, Jennifer Keesmaat, which is unsurprising given that there was almost nothing that separated them. Disappointingly, neo-fascist candidate Faith Goldy garnered more votes than leftist candidate Saron Gebresellassi, though neither broke 3.5% of the vote.

Meanwhile, council races were a mixed bag.

Michael Ford's result in Ward 1 has to have been uncomfortably close for his uncle given all the political resources he invested in it. A loss would have been politically catastrophic for him though it did not happen. Ford beat another reactionary Vincent Crisanti by almost eight percent of the vote.

In a silver lining Giorgio Mammoliti, who ran a disgraceful, dog-whistle campaign and who has been a disruptive far right presence on council for all too long, went down to a richly deserved defeat. He lost to Anthony Perruzza by nearly 12 points. This was, at least, a minor setback for Ford style bombastic stupidity at City Hall.

Many of council's "progressive" establishment "heavyweights" have been returned for what that is worth.  Family heritage crew Mike Layton and Joe Cressy are still there, as are centrists like Kristyn Wong-Tam. Gord Perks won easily in Ward 4 which is a positive given that he is likely the sole Councillor that can honestly be described as a leftist. Labour Council endorsed (surprise, surprise) Paula Fletcher defeated fellow progressive Mary Fragedakis whose personal connections were perhaps not quite as close.

In a fascinating example of the paucity of politics now, Josh Matlow -- a liberal notable largely for his fierce and correct resistance to Tory's inane Scarborough subway plans -- handily defeated the supposed New Democrat Joe Mihevc in Ward 12 by over 10 points. Mihevc might be remembered by The Left Chapter readers for his relentless nonsense about alleged TTC fare evasion and his musings on making sure kids get on the Presto train. He also, in what was a truly cynical and telling move, asked for John Tory's endorsement and received it. It likely, and deservedly, did more harm than good.

Deeply ironically Labour Council endorsed Jennifer Keesmaat ganged up with John Tory to back Brad Bradford over Labour Council endorsed former NDP MP Matthew Kellway in Ward 19. Bradford won. Sadly, I doubt this will cause the Labour Council to reflect on its pattern of often terrible, short-sighted decisions.

Overall, despite the hyperbole and the Ford machinations, the results indicate continuity. They do not appear to show any shift significantly to the right or ideologically otherwise at all. In fact, only 12 of 25 candidates endorsed by Doug Ford's de facto official organ the Toronto Sun won. The composition and balance of power between what passes as a left, the centrists and the right remains largely the same.

The lack of an organized socialist civic movement, though, is as glaring as its consequences are telling.

The council also continues to lack anything remotely like the diversity of the city it supposedly represents.

With this council we can anticipate little serious or significant resistance to the Ford provincial agenda municipally. When understood within the broader politics of disillusion in Ontario, it is clear that any fightback will have to be organized outside of and in spite of existing mainstream electoral channels.

See also: Ontario’s 2018 Election: Pessimism Today, Strategic Organizing Tomorrow

Peter D'Gama for Ward 1, Toronto -- A socialist campaign to get behind

From the D'Gama election website

Recently I took a look at the Toronto municipal campaigns of Saron Gebresellassi for Mayor and Walied Khogali Ali for Ward 13. These are two exciting campaigns that leftists should be getting behind both with their time and their donations.

They buck the deadening trend of the "say little do even less" approach of most of the milquetoast "progressives" endorsed by the Labour Council or backed by the NDP or Liberal establishments.

In Ward 1 -- one of the incumbents for which is Michael Ford, the nephew of Conservative Premier Doug Ford -- Peter D' Gama is running on an overtly and avowedly leftist platform that takes many of the positions that others should be across the city.

A member of Socialist Action and a community activist D'Gama rather stirringly asks us to "Imagine what we could accomplish by taxing the rich and giant corporations to fund programs such as free and accessible public transit, building and home retrofits, and a green economy creating jobs with a living wage."

His municipal platform includes calls for a mansion tax, making property taxes more progressive, fighting for a rent freeze and the creation of affordable housing, inclusionary zoning, decreasing the bloated police budget, $10 a day child care, working towards free transit, and much more.

You can read it in full on his website: Peter D'Gama for Ward 1

There are very few candidates that have campaigned on as comprehensive a socialist agenda for the city in the last few elections. The addition of a voice like D'Gama's to City Council would do a great deal to shift the debate in Toronto and to help to start the hard work of changing the city's direction politically as has happened in places like Seattle with the election of Kshama Sawant.

See also: Saron Gebresellassi and Walied Khogali Ali: Two Toronto Candidates to Get Excited About

Free Transit, Social Housing, Democratizing City Hall & more -- The NDP's 1969 Toronto Municipal Program

This remarkable document was published in 1969 by the authority of a Joint Co-ordinating Council of the Toronto Area Council NDP and the Labour Council of Metro Toronto sets forth a rather radical vision for the city that also serves to remind just how sad and stunted many of the municipal 'platforms' of 'progressive' politicians in Toronto are today. 

Part of one of what were several attempts to launch a municipal NDP that would have run democratically chosen candidates on a joint and coherent platform (in contrast to the situation now where there are allegedly no parties and where many candidates simply pretend that their broader political allegiances do not exist), this program addresses a broad range of issues. 

It favours the remaking of municipal politics to not just integrate the broader Greater Toronto Area politically, but also to democratize virtually every aspect of it, including how social housing and schools are run. It even includes a call for a "democratic  government" for all schools that would involve councils run in part by the students themselves!

The platform talks about social housing, pollution, the need for greater police oversight and accountability, tenant's rights and an array of other issues, with a section dedicated specifically to Scarborough. 

One notable plank is a call for free transit, an issue that I ran on municipally in 2014, and that transit groups are fighting for, but that is mocked and derided as unrealistic by all of the milquetoast variety of municipal liberal types who pass for Toronto City Council's "left-wing" these days.

As with many documents from the NDP's past it helps put into focus the shift to the right and towards the do-nothing politics of centrist 'compromise' and capitulation that the party has embraced.

(Click on image to enlarge)

See also: A Program for Vancouver by Alderman Harry Rankin - 1960s

See also: Free transit: Three reasons it is an idea whose time has come

Just what is going on with Canada's labour movement leadership?

The last few weeks have seen a series of what are seemingly truly perplexing moves and actions by some of the country's most important labour leaders.

Among these are:

• The Toronto & York Region District Labour Council inviting the Liberal federal Labour Minister to march in a place of pride and prominence at Toronto's Labour Day Parade.
• The CLC inviting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to speak at their Young Workers Summit just days after his Finance Minister said that young workers need to get used to the 'reality' of precarious work. CLC leader Hassan Yussuff and the CLC both then made statements belittling young workers who protested this talk and Q&A at the summit. 
• It was revealed that UNIFOR leader Jerry Dias gave a $300 donation to Kellie Leitch's campaign for the leadership of the Conservative Party for "personal reasons" despite not just her terrible views regarding labour and union rights but also the fact that her campaign is centred around racist dog-whistle style policies relating to immigration and being 'Canadian'
• It was revealed that OPSEU hired a 'union avoidance' lawyer whose slogan was “At Vella Labour Law we fight unions hard. We fight to win.” to combat the union representing its own internal workers! 

Each and every one of these actions are awful and reprehensible in their own right, though the final one -- coming especially as it does from the union led by the pseudo-sanctimonious Warren 'Smokey' Thomas whose highlights include an outrageous attack on left-wing "white wine swilling elitists" during the 2014 provincial election and a de facto endorsement of Tim Hudak over Kathleen Wynne for Premier -- takes hypocrisy to a new level. 

Hopefully Smokey was cracking a good old-fashioned crappy Bud as his union called a management lawyer to try to attack its own workers who are now taking legal action over allegations of:

“bullying,” “intimidation,” “retaliation,” “threats,” “surveillance,” unjustified suspensions, firings, disciplinary actions and investigations intended to harass members, after 12 staff were suspended and four terminated in the wake of contract negotiations last summer.

I think Smokey's days of lecturing anyone about anything related to worker's rights or 'elitism' can be officially said to be at an end.

What connects all of these incidents and leaders, however, is an obvious detachment from the principles they allege to support -- such as living wages or a serious restructuring of the economy --and their actual actions.

There is nothing new about this. It becomes apparent in almost all elections on every level.

That same Toronto & York District Labour Council who invited the Liberal minister, for example, released a meaningless municipal political platform in Toronto in 2014 that was not worth the paper it was printed on as they went on to endorse a series of candidates who were often liberals and none of whom actually seriously committed to the platform in anyway.

In fact, everyone of the candidates they endorsed who subsequently got elected voted for right-wing Mayor John Tory's first budget! 

One of their endorsements for council, Shelley Carroll, is now getting ready to run for the profoundly corrupt and anti-labour Liberal government in Ontario. John Cartwright, the council's leader, is very comfortable with a liberal political agenda and has proven this time and again, regardless of what other campaigns and policies he and the council purport to support.

The juxtaposition of alleged principle with craven practice really does seem to both flow from a desire to preserve personal positions of power while putting the very narrow interests of specific and already existing union members ahead of the broader agenda for workers and those living in poverty that Canadian labour claims to advocate for.

It is a contradiction that -- along with the often vicious infighting among all of these leaders -- is coming into sharp focus and that deeply undermines the overall struggle for a real worker's rights agenda and politics.

See also: The CLC and the Liberals - Pandering to power

See also: 42-2: John Tory, Toronto City Council and the austerity consensus

The CLC and the Liberals - Pandering to power

In what is one of several "let them eat cake" moments made by members of the governing Liberal caucus lately, this past Saturday Finance Minister Bill Morneau threw young Canadian workers under the proverbial bus when he said that they should get used to the 'reality' of precarious employment. 

At a meeting with Ontario Liberals he said the "job churn" was here to stay, that the next generation of Canadians should expect shittier pension benefits and that recognizing all of this will "soften that blow".

This is a rather astounding acknowledgement by Morneau that his government is part of a seeming generational willingness by those who had more secure jobs and better pensions to, due to their political decisions, shut the door to these things for young people, basically screwing their own kids out of the kind of future that they themselves took for granted.

Setting aside for the moment that this 'reality' exists only due the unwillingness of our governments (this one included) to take on the corporations and to enact legislation and take real steps to fight precarious employment and to preserve pensions -- reality, you know, is created by us, Bill, it does not just 'happen' -- it is clear that Morneau is no friend to young workers.

And yet, in the wake of these comments, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) actually continued with plans to invite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to address their Young Workers Summit in Ottawa a few days later.

Seriously.

Predictably, and entirely justly, Trudeau got something of a rough ride from many of the summit delegates. According to the CBC:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faced off with a room of angry protesters today who were venting their frustrations over everything from pipelines to the failed federal payroll system.
Some of the participants turned their backs on Trudeau in protest during the "armchair discussion" event at the Canadian Labour Congress National Young Workers Summit in Ottawa.
"Honour your promises!" hollered some in the crowd, as event moderators tried to keep the peace.
"We don't have dialogue with liars!"
"Shame! Shame!"

In a moment of surreal elitism and condescension,  Trudeau proceeded to say that the protest "reflects poorly" on the delegates!

This is pretty rich given his Finance Minister's comments on the weekend. They reflected rather poorly on his government.

While his response was predictable, what is far harder to understand is the response to the protest made by the CLC itself in a statement they released later that day.

The statement acknowledges the protests but goes on to say of the delegates that "the majority applauded his willingness to take questions from the room." This is a rather snide jab at those who wanted to confront Trudeau's completely lackluster performance as PM when it comes to both youth and workers, and it implies that they did, indeed, reflect poorly on the others who 'applauded' Trudeau.

In fact, at the summit itself CLC president  Hassan Yussuff told the protesters that the labour movement is a "respectful movement" and called for "constructive dialogue".

It seems speaking truth to power when the direct opportunity arises is not as welcome as it once was in the CLC and this wing of the labour movement!

The CLC statement goes on to say:

Delegates pressed the prime minister about a statement by Finance Minister Bill Morneau asserting that young workers have to get used to the “job churn” – meaning a future without lifelong, stable careers.
“Moving from job to job to job creates a lot of instability and insecurity,” said Amy Huziak, the CLC’s national representative for young workers.
“What can we do together to ensure that young workers have decent jobs instead?” she asked the prime minister.

In the statement Yussuff answers on Trudeau's behalf by saying:

“Prime Minister Trudeau promised legislative support for workers stuck in precarious jobs and we intend to hold him to that commitment,” said CLC president Hassan Yussuff. “He’s already worked with labour to strengthen the Canada Pension Plan, and we look forward to doing the same for labour laws across the country.”

An interesting quote generally given that Morneau on Saturday had specifically said the changes to the CPP were "a recognition that people aren't going to have the same pension benefits" they did before.

All of this comes in the wake of the decision by Toronto's Labour Council to allow Trudeau's Labour Minister to march in Toronto's Labour Day parade.

So what are these labour leaders up to?

The reality seems to be that Yussuff and others think that they can wrest enough concessions for their existing membership to make collaboration with this government worthwhile despite the fact that doing so sidelines the workplace and economic issues confronting youth, workers not in unions, those fighting for higher minimum wages (Trudeau opposes the $15 Now movement), those living in poverty and many others for whom the Liberal government has really just been more of the same.

With a ludicrous rewriting of the history of the struggle to secure the basic rights of workers by the labour movement -- often in the face of vicious state violence -- to claim the movement is now "respectful" of representatives of what is and always has been an avowedly capitalist Bay St. party what Yussuff seems to be really seeking is to make the CLC and labour respectable to this Liberal government.

Protests and anger at a labour union summit by young workers towards a PM who has delivered them essentially nothing just won't do!

Sadly, it would appear that the Liberal government is not alone in its willingness to shut the door on the generation of workers coming next.

42-2: John Tory, Toronto City Council and the austerity consensus

Remember how, during last year's municipal election in Toronto, supporters of Olivia Chow and progressive activists and organizations warned that John Tory, were he to be elected as Mayor of Toronto, would simply be a more effective version of Rob Ford?

How we were told his agenda would represent the Ford agenda without the antics, drugs and buffoonery?

This position was expressed in many forums, from articles, to blogs, to countless online comments. A good example of it can be found in a newsletter article put out by the Toronto and York District Labour Council entitled  WHAT’S AT STAKE IN OCTOBER 2014. In it they stated:

The challenge this fall is to make sure people identify this election as a referendum on the austerity agenda. The fact is there are two Conservative candidates [Tory and Ford] whose politics line up with Stephen Harper and Tim Hudak. On the other side is the progressive choice of Olivia Chow

After pointing out that much of what prevented Ford from getting his agenda implemented was his inability to work with other members of council, they went on to say:

John Tory, on the other hand, would be able to cobble together the votes to pursue an agenda favoured by Bay Street – including privatization and outsourcing. His endorsers include antilabour heavyweights such as Case Ootes, Ford’s former campaign manager Nick Kouvalis, and a smattering of Liberals among a solid core of Conservatives. If Tory were elected, it would boost the political fortunes of both the provincial and federal Conservatives, and be a real step backward for the people of Toronto.

I think there is a lot of truth to this position (although many of Chow's online partisans frequently would predictably overstate their case) and said as much when interviewed by the Toronto Star during the election in an article in which I said people should reject strategic voting (though not necessarily support Chow).

There is, without any doubt an austerity agenda at work at Toronto City Hall, and Tory's politics embody that agenda.

And yet, when Tory's first budget recently was presented to council, it was passed by a vote of 42-2.

The two dissenting votes on the budget on council were from Rob Ford and Giorgio Mammoliti, who are firmly on the council's far right. The other 42 votes were "cobbled" together, in the end rather easily, from across the alleged political "spectrum", encompassing those seen as on the right like Denzil Minnan-Wong, and those perceived as on the left like Mike Layton.

Every single Councillor endorsed by the very same Labour Council whose newsletter was quoted above, voted for Tory's budget.

Every single Councillor associated with the Liberals or NDP (technically there are no parties in Toronto politics) voted for Tory's budget.

All the electoral rhetoric aside about how catastrophic Tory's agenda would be for the city, its labour movement, workers, those living in poverty and so many others, Tory's budget faced no serious opposition from the left or from "progressive" Councillors.

While the budget (this time) is not as terrible as some might have anticipated, it remains a budget firmly rooted in austerity and right-wing premises. For example, it contains an annual property tax increase on the average Toronto home of only $83,  a figure that is lower than the recent $93 annual TTC Metropass fare increase for transit users, which is a truly telling and shocking fact.

While some Councillors did call for higher tax hikes in the lead up to the budget, opposition to the fundamental premises of Tory's budget would be most kindly described as muted at best and perhaps more accurately described as basically non-existent.

There were no calls to scrap the fundamentals of the austerity, anti-tax, pro-car framework that this budget exists in. No calls for anything like, for example, ending user fees for city programs, for placing surtaxes on the homes of the wealthy or for the implementation of a truly progressive municipal income tax or for any number of other more transformative ideas that leftists once advocated for.

In other words, there was no significant and vocal opposition from what the public would see as a left perspective.

Ralph Miliband, the great British Marxist thinker, once wrote, in a quote I frequently cite, that "one of the most important aspects of the political life of advanced capitalism is precisely that the disagreements between those political leaders who have generally been able to gain high office have very seldom been of the fundamental kind these leaders and other people so often suggest".

This is more true now than when he wrote it in 1973.

This fetishistic desire in Toronto politics (as well as, in different ways, more broadly in Canadian politics) for "consensus" and the idealization of the false god ideal that politicians should somehow "work together" to get "things done"  both ensures that the administration of bourgeois, day-to-day austerity politics will continue as a given and is ultimately self-defeating for the left and progressives especially.

A lack of vocal and consistent opposition to Tory from the start of his term has already begun to cede the ground, again, to Ford positioning himself as the lone voice against the political establishment and as, therefore, the populist representative of the "common people". He was seen as such by many whose class and economic interests he actually actively worked against.

By embracing both the framework and, as I have argued in the past, the language and logic of the austerity consensus, "mainstream" left politicians help to enable this. They are widely perceived, and not without justification, as a part of a political establishment that many people feel is very distant from and unconcerned with their day-to-day struggles and realities. This situation explains why, again as Miliband put it, "large numbers of people among the public at large, despite the political rhetoric to which they are subjected, recognize...‘politicians are all the same’".

This reality of often active collaboration between the mainstream left and the right in the administration of austerity, neo-liberal and bourgeois government, as well as the acceptance of all of the essential elements of capitalism and capitalist "parliamentarianism" as a given and fundamentally unalterable reality, highlights, more than ever, the need to build new and truly anti-capitalist left political forces and parties.

These could include, for example, a Left Front municipally in Toronto, and would, as other movements and parties are doing in Europe and elsewhere, reject the austerity consensus and neo-liberal politics entirely and work actively and vocally in opposition to them both during elections and if elected.