A few days ago, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford announced the latest target in his attack on next year’s $800 million budget shortfall: janitors. The mayor has served notice that he intends to contract out the work of 110 city employees who clean Toronto’s police stations. It’s a small thing, but it is a perfect symbol of the hidden, nasty side of the Ford administration.
Typically, the numbers don’t add up. The mayor’s deputy claims costs will fall from $30.32 per hour to $17.60 per hour — a saving of 40 per cent. Even if you accept the hourly costs cited, the savings couldn’t possibly be 40 per cent because the numbers make no allowance for the contractor’s supervisory costs and profits or for the city’s costs in overseeing the contract.
Equally typically, the announcement glosses over the fact that the savings will come out of the pockets of some of the city’s lowest-paid employees.
It reflects an all-too-common theme. In Rob Ford’s Toronto, the path of least resistance is over, under, around and through the weakest and most vulnerable. Stung by criticism of the city’s agreement with police officers, the mayor lashes out at janitors.
Ford calls it respect for taxpayers. But it sure looks like old-fashioned bullying.
It was the same story for curbside garbage collection. Questionable savings, more than all of which come right out of the pockets of the men and women who pick up our garbage. An easy political target for the mayor, given public unhappiness over the 2009 strike, but a bully’s response nonetheless.
But the targets aren’t limited to people who work for the city. According to a recent study, there are 67,000 households on the waiting list for social housing. In Rob Ford’s Toronto, they’ll never get off the waiting list. Instead, the mayor wants to shift support for some of the 70,000 households currently living in city-owned, rent-geared-to-income housing into subsidies for private landlords.
To read the full article please follow the link:
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1014230
