City too scared to celebrate its independence

Four newbies have secured their shot for a council seat in the City Idol contest – but Toronto’s first mayor with a MySpace looks to be heading into the summer with his job relatively unchallenged. Mayoral candidate Jane Pitfield’s pronouncement that “perhaps it’s time to phase out” the unions capable of grinding the TTC to a halt was followed by a sheepish backpedal, which did nothing to overcome the Toronto Sun’s conclusion that It’s plain, Jane has work to do, even while arguing that City Council has been a fiasco for the past three years. A more compelling municipal election subplot involves John Sewell challenging Joe Mihevc on the council ballot in St. Paul’s West, a scheme meant to keep David Miller honest on development issues, with Sewell already being endorsed by the anti-streetcar right-of-way brigade from Save Our St. Clair. Miller was confident enough to not bother seeking out a scrum after the provincial passage of the Stronger City of Toronto for a Stronger Ontario Act, which “landed with the excitement of an Alzheimer’s convention” according to Toronto Star columnist Royson James, even though The Globe and Mail’s John Barber noticed the conspicuous lack of amendments preventing lobbyists from continuing to “suborn local politicians with handfuls of cheques and hockey tickets”. The Liberal Party of Ontario celebrated the Act’s passage with a press release highlighting John Tory’s flip-flop on the topic of Toronto’s independence, sketching his trail of contradictory statements in the time between he was running for mayor and being installed as leader of the provincial Conservatives. Getting wider weblog action is Mark Steyn’s latest “book review” in Maclean’s, covering the alleged terrorist antics in Toronto, specifically a National Public Radio interview where David Miller engaged in “boilerplate Islamoschmoozing” in agreement with NPR’s stateside liberal media incredulousness that young male hostility could germinate in Canuckistan. Compare that to the aftermath of the gang battle that culminated in a twilight shooting spree on Boxing Day, belatedly returning to the headlines after a round of arrests – but given how there were no I Am Not Afraid days planned at the hockey game after 15-year-old Jane Creba was killed at Yonge and Gould, delusions of a global menace must be easier for civic leaders to rally against than those circumstances surrounding local gang warfare.