Silly Little Country

Making Lastman Look Good

Mel Lastman served as mayor of Toronto through a couple of terms. While flaky and unpredictable (often in good ways), his successor as Mayor has made it seem to me, among others, that Lastman ran a very effective administration as Mayor of Toronto. And there is some evidence in this note in the Wikipedia entry linked here:

In 2007, with the city facing a $575 million shortfall and struggling to make service cuts to immediately save $100 million, there were frequent calls for Lastman to run for mayor but he declined. Lastman sympathized that provincial downloading had burdened Toronto, but also criticized Miller's service cuts as hurting the quality of life while not going far enough to solve the shortfall. Lastman pointed out that spending had increased by $1.5 billion since he left office, and suggested that councillors had to consider measures since as contracting out services and cutting staff.

Now Mark Steyn makes me pleased to see that Lastman replaced Barbara Hall as Mayor. (Disclosures - I voted for Hall in that election, and for our current mayor Miller in his first run - both I now see as gross mistakes). Steyn stays clear in this column of his common fictions, and paints not just an appalling, and apparently correct, picture of Hall, but also of the arrogance of Ontario's Human Rights Commission.

Sure, she may have denied me my constitutional right to the presumption of innocence and a fair trial, but so what? That's a small price to pay in the noble campaign to eradicate "hate" from the Canadian psyche.

...

What if Ontarians just aren't as hateful as the Commissars require them to be? To modify Brecht, we need to elect a new people, if only to file more "human rights" complaints.

Terse, to the point, a little extreme, and worth a read.

And the punch-line takes me back to the title:

God Almighty, if we have to have ex-mayors of Toronto as anti-thought-crime enforcers, couldn't we at least have Mel Lastman?

posted by Alan Adamson @ 7:36 AM