Archive for January, 2010
A Good Race For Mayor Important For Toronto
Having solid candidates vying for Mayor, presenting differing visions for the City is an important step for Toronto to take every two or three terms. This is absolutely an open an election that sees many candidates no one would have guessed would run two years ago, and few if any candidates that could have been assumed to run.
Being Mayor of Toronto is a difficult job, and one that with years of sidestepping serious structural challenges by Council becomes that much harder with each passing day. I was hoping we’d have a race between David Miller, John Tory and George Smitherman. I felt a race like that would give the City the opportunity for a proper ‘battle of titans’ and clear choices on what kind of person and leader the City wanted.
With Smitherman, Giambrone, Rossi and Pantalone in the race, this does seem to have a lot of the characteristics of the 2003 election that saw the emergence of David Miller – the question now is simply, who is the candidate that has the staying power and ability to rise above the pack and convince enough Torontonians that they are the one to lead.
I know in my community there is one candidate who is out for many voters, but even of the other remaining options, it still isn’t clear who would be the champion of people, someone who gets it and is prepared to govern responsibly and with respect for voters. Those are the qualities I will seek in a candidate for Mayor.
No Comments »Will Paul Ainslie Run for City Council in Ward 44?
Today was the first day for municipal candidates to make it official and file their intention to seek public office as a Mayoral, Council or School Trustee candidate. So far no candidates have filed to run in my home ward, Ward 43.
Councillor Ainslie currently ‘represents’ (a term I am using lightly here based on his record) Ward 43 – a community he does not live in. He was elected with an underwhelming 39% of the vote in November 2006, meaning 61% of voters had the right idea last time around.
This isn’t the first ward Paul Ainslie has represented and not lived in. You see in January 2006 Paul Ainslie was appointed to Toronto City Council in a 5-4 vote of Scarborough Community Council (that resulted in an investigation by the integrity commissioner into his former boss and one of his five votes – David Soknacki) to represent Ward 41 – another community Paul Ainslie doesn’t live in.
When his nomination went to City Hall for approval, Paul Ainslie gave a speech. After promising to be ‘fair and honest’ he went on to say:
“In the last month I’ve made a number of different commitments if appointed to this position, I will not run in Ward 41 or any other ward in the city.”
If by different he meant ‘bald faced lie’ as Eye Weekly described it he was correct.
In true Paul Ainslie tradition he went on to lie about the lie when I called him on it through the media. He claimed he promised not to run against incumbents, or that he wouldn’t run in Ward 41 – this was after saying he didn’t say anything to this effect at all.
Here is a video showing what he says. After watching him lie repeatedly for six weeks, I went to City Hall, bought the video of that day at Council and a very talented member of the campaign team put the following together for distribution to the media. His response to the video was he was nervous and didn’t mean to say it – but he’s reading.
If you’re going to run for public office, know yourself better than your opponents – and generally speaking lying never works and is wrong, so don’t do it. In fact when Councillor Ainslie wrote provable lies to me in a private email six weeks ago, I offered him this very advice. I told him that making statements that are provably untrue hurts his credibility and therefore the ability of him to represent my community as people can’t trust him if he can’t stick to the truth.
His term as Ward 41’s representative saw him fight to have the pictures of the former Scarborough Mayors placed in the former City Council chamber, trying to get a bi-law regarding aged or tattered Canadian flags. His most bizarre vote was against a pay increase that passed 23-20, then only to change his vote in favour, making the vote 24-19, which was promptly followed by his former boss David Soknacki changing his vote in favour to against, making it 23-20 again.
Currently Paul Ainslie holds the office of Ward 43 – as I previously stated a community he does not and has not lived in at all during the 2006 election or the term. He does not represent the views of residents, or their best interest and continues to lie about his involvement or lack there of – to paper over his failings.
Paul Ainslie lives in Ward 44 – where he has for years and is raising his family. Considering he is about as attached to Ward 43 as he was to Ward 41 – it only seems reasonable that the failed ‘representative’ would once again find a new community to play City Councillor in – as nominations open.
I will tell you this much – his chances are far better where he lives, than in Ward 43 or Ward 41 as I imagine with these residents and Paul Ainslie the old saying ‘fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me’ is in full play and many residents are lined up and ready to fight to ensure this so-called Councillor, elected on a lie, and publishing lies in hopes of being re-elected doesn’t get that chance again. Maybe that’s why he flipped from Ward 41 in the first place.
He already has lawn signs that say ‘return’ a phrase he chose instead of ‘elect’ like everyone else who ran and had never been elected before and he wisely did not put a ward number on them – making them fully re-useable this time around in his home Ward.
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