Toronto Star: “Murray will succeed George Smitherman as the MPP for Toronto Centre.” Huh?

by John Laforet
posted on December 4th, 2009 at 13:31:38 pm

I am going to start by saying I don’t dislike Glen Murray. I heard him speak for the first time in 2003 about infrastructure and municipal governance in Canada and he made a lot of genuinely good points and appeared to ‘get it’. When he ran for the Federal Liberals in Winnipeg in 2004, I was hopeful he would win, because he seemed like the kind of guy you’d want in the House of Commons.

When he was feeling out a bid for Mayor – I was at least interested to see what kind of issues he would take on, and the approach he would offer.

But my piece isn’t really about Glen Murray, just how his candidacy is being developed and covered by the media.

The headline announcing he is running for the Ontario Liberals reads ‘Ex-Winnipeg mayor a cabinet shoo-in?’

In the same article there is a photo of Glen Murray with the following caption ‘Winnipeg Mayor Glen Murray, smiles alongside Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion in this January 2004 file photo. Murray will succeed George Smitherman as the MPP for Toronto Centre.‘

The timeline for this is long and drawn out a bit. George Smitherman isn’t going to resign until February or March 2010 when he will officially announce his candidacy for Mayor. Once Smitherman resigns, the Premier has quite a bit of leeway in determining when exactly a by-election would happen. The earliest would be April or May 2010 – but could be June, July or August.

The ‘Cabinet shoo-in’ bit bothers me because it’s essentially saying to Toronto Centre voters – elect this guy to get closer to the action. The ‘Murray will succeed George Smitherman as the MPP’ bit is beyond presumptuous and again unfairly tries to influence voters in Toronto Centre to just accept the outcome being suggested.

Perhaps the most abhorrent part of this whole thing is the following ‘While he is not officially being handed the nomination on a silver platter, sources said at least one potential candidate was “being strong-armed and getting lots of pressure not to run.” Classy.

If a candidate is being set up as a Cabinet Minister in the making, a guy who has already won, and someone who can’t be challenged for the nomination – at what point are Toronto Centre voters involved in this process at all? So far, I count two Toronto Centre voters opinions being heard – Glen Murray’s and George Smitherman’s.

Rigourous nominations, hard fought elections and MPPs serving their local communities are all good things, and should be the focus of any provincial local election campaign. Nominations bring communities into the process and create an active, local organization of neighbours working to elect a candidate that was democratically chosen to represent their party on the ballot. Hard fought elections drive voter turnout, engage the public and require MPPs to work hard to stay elected. Engaged constituents expect results.

The Ontario Liberals and the Toronto Star should let the process play out in Toronto Centre and stop trying to influence unfairly.