With the seeming ascendancy of conservatism across Canada, particularly in my city of Toronto, I can't help but fret that we are becoming a cold-hearted, parochial nation. One that embraces a harsh, Victorian notion of poverty, where we have become servants to this amorphous thing called the "economy," where a strategy is afoot to starve the public sector of all function and form so that the favoured private enterprise and profit can swoop in.

Well played Mayor Ford.

During this morning's speech on the 2011 spending plan, you signaled that TTC fares might increase by 10 cents per ride starting February 1. Then you tried to rally behind the common person and said that you're unhappy about it while trumpeting that no services have been cut -- yet.

Get the masses worked into a lather over a fee increase that may not happen for this budget year and then, in a day or week or two, you'll list your quid pro quos for avoiding that fare hike. You'll tell us that you can't be all things to all people (as if this was ever asked of City Council and the Mayor).

Today, I was going to write about Rob Ford's new Executive Committee. I was going to make note that not one progressive holds an appointment and that Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, the new public works boss who will likely privatize garbage collection, has already set the tone of the Ford cabal. He said: "Sometimes, when you sit around and sing ‘Kum-ba-yah' you don't get anything done."

Now that progressives are no longer in the Toronto Mayor's office (but progressives did win council and mayoralty races around Ontario), there are two things we need to do over the next four years.

First, stop fighting the battles we decisively lost in the Toronto municipal election and understand what happened. Rob Ford didn't become mayor by magic; he was democratically elected. And he was supported by a broad spectrum of Torontonians, rich and poor, young and old, immigrant and Canadian-born, in old Toronto and in the suburbs, united in their anger toward the status quo.