jsburbidge | Rob Ford, Rehabilitation, and Eglinton Connects

So Mr. Ford is back fresh from rehab, and he doesn't like Eglinton Connects (not that there ever was much of a chance that he would).

Except that something happened along the way. It seems that, even though it's a key part of his re-election strategy, he couldn't even keep his head down and shut up for even a quiet couple of months in Muskoka. He's reported to have been kicked out of his rehabilitation small group (and seems to have been privileged not to have been kicked out period, having been disruptive to the other clients: it may have been either the money or the celebrity).

Personally, I can't see why the rehab facility didn't clamp down at once when he began to impact badly on other clients. Once it got out - and it was certain to, knowing the media circus that follows Ford - it can't help but discourage other potential clients. Who wants to go to a facility which won't protect you from other clients?

This has all the signs of another, or a continuing, crash-and-burn. Ford doesn't seem to be aware of this, at least yet, and he's seized on Eglinton Connects as his most recent wedge issue to drive in.

I'm sure that Ford views Eglinton Connects as a vote-getter. In light of May's unanimous vote generally in favour, this is probably not a winning issue for him, at least concretely. But in a weird way, his reaction - and, I might note, John Tory's - highlights one of the really big tensions in the current municipal process.

Like the Jarvis bike lanes, EC has gone through extensive community consultation. The objections come from outsiders who want to use the street merely as a fast way of getting from A to B. Ford's success over the bike lanes was, I would guess, an electoral wash: at least as many of the people he might have appealed to would have been unhappy at the cost of ripping them out as were happy at a slightly faster - maybe - drive in from Leaside.

On a range of scales, from the very local (communities which want traffic calming measures or the removal of a house for the addicted or mentally ill) to the mid-level (arguments over large stores close to market districts or placement of bike lanes) to large scale (the city's Official Plan and network-level transit planning) there's a tension between local priorities and more general priorities.

We normally deal with this by balancing interests off. Notably, EC is the result of a lot of consultation and planning, as was Transit City, and the original changes to Jarvis - not only putting in bike lanes but eliminating the floating middle lane. The city's Official Plan is this in spades. (I went to school with the city planner responsible for EC.)

The sorts of un-balanced objections Ford brings, the style of wedge politics he represents, is not only disruptive to civic politics, but it works as politics only when it can link a lot of small issues into one big coalition. A good horse-trader can form a working government out of a range of local issues binding different counsellors together; on the right tide a populist can make a lot of local issues sound like manifestations of one big issue ("They aren't listening to you!").

But Ford no longer has a tide behind him. I doubt he could pass the Jarvis changes through the Council at present; Eglinton between Avenue Road and Mount Pleasant isn't of great concern to more than a fraction of his audience, and many of them stand to benefit from the plans. And he's certainly not a horse-trader.

Tory is more of a concern; I don't think he's worked out yet that with his background he will never be able to make an effective populist appeal, but he keeps on grabbing this sort of issue to try make his campaign look like a choice for disillusioned Fordites. But for most of the councillors EC is either a positive plank (the candidates for the wards which were consulted and stand to benefit from it) or irrelevant (the candidates representing those who are unlikely to want, very often, to cross town at Eglinton). The timeframe for its implementation is extended (lasting until 2050). Much of the cost has to be incurred in any case, to put the road back together after the Crosstown is built.

I think EC is likely to survive the slings and arrows of outrageous Ford, and the echo of John Tory's mini-me.