Rob Ford: Toronto should be a refugee-free zone

I am not a fan of Rob Ford, but he didnt say that the city should be a refugee free zone. Thats what George smitherman accused Ford of saying.

"Right now we can't even deal with the 2.5 million people in this city," Rob Ford said. "I think it is more important to take care of people now before we start bringing in more people."

Because this is what alot of people feel.

Maysie wrote:

takeitslowly wrote:

"Right now we can't even deal with the 2.5 million people in this city," Rob Ford said. "I think it is more important to take care of people now before we start bringing in more people."

 

Because this is what alot of people feel.

Who? How many? And if the statement by Ford is in fact true, and that's a big if, how did this come to pass? Are immigrants and refugees to blame for this situation? Really? People with the fewest resources and very little political power?

So if, and that's another big IF,  "a lot of people" feel this, does this need to be legitimated? What about the feelings of people who are desperately poor and marginalized?

Do you think people with the fewest resources and very little power want to have more people to compete poor quality jobs with them?

takeitslowly wrote:

 Do you think people with the fewest resources and very little power want to have more people to compete poor quality jobs with them?

There are, literally, more crap jobs with shitty hours, bad working conditions, long hours and horrible pay than there are workers to fill them. This is Toronto. The rich have great need for services. Dishwashers in restaurants, house cleaners, unskilled and illegal construction work, name it, the jobs are there.

Rob Ford does NOT speak for marginalized folks. Anyone imagining that he does is sorely misinformed.

Well, none of the mayoral candidates do, but that's beside the point.

Ford only taps into ignorant Canadians.  Meh, it is what it is.  :(

Lots of work to do.

How the fuck does Ford envision closing down Toronto for immigrants? Prison camps? One way bus tickets to Calgary?

And what the hell happens when we offically say that Toronto is no longer interested in growing? Do we change our name back to "Hogtown" and croll up the sidewalks at 10pm?

Managing growth is one thing, but blaming immigrants is just a pile of BS.

Any "immigration" problems there might be in Toronto are the same problems we have with all areas where the province and the Feds leave the cities underfunded.

If Ford had presented this as an issue of funding to support Toronto's natural growth, and demanded that the province and feds step up with some better support for the programs needed in Toronto, then I might have been onside with that, but when the blame turns directly to the immigrants, and the "solution" is to shut down the city, then Ford has proved to me all I need to know about the asshole.

Sineed wrote:

How does a racist, homophobic bully with a double-digit IQ become a populist hero?  He makes Mel Lastman look like a great statesman.

Easy. It's the whole "he says what I'm thinking" thing.

Maybe it's time for a lot of Canadians to start wearing "I too, am an immigrant" and/or "Moi aussi, je suis immigrant" buttons. No disrespect towards First Nations or any others intended.

I do believe Rob Ford has a populist appeal, the fact that he was charged with DUI actually made him more human or imperfect. Archie Bunker had a populist appeal, while he said a lot of disasteful things people might not say or disagree with, many people liked him, even some non white people and women. There are alot of people who will vote for someone who ``tell it like it is.`` Think Howard Stern.

Alot of immigrants and non white people support Rob Ford, i think it is a dead end and only serves to increase his popularity by pulling the immigrant card. George Smitherman is an idiot for putting words in Ford`s mouth, he didnt actually say anything racist, even though his implications might be racist.

Calling him names and suggesting that he is just a racist idiot is not going to defeat him, candidates need to focus on presenting policies that will work for Toronto, not trying to talk about how ignorant and stupid Rob Ford is, because you are essentially calling all the people who like him (and there are a lot) are ignorant and stupid as well. 

One really has to be careful when considering poll numbers where there is such a huge number of undecideds. There is clearly a highly motivated right wing core that Rob Ford has touched a cord with, but these numbers do not necessarily reflect the real perspective of Torontonians. What needs to happen here is that the left needs to get motivated behind Joe Pantalone, and bring his poll numbers up above 20% so that it is a three way race. Once this is achieved, Pantalone will be able to gain momentum.

The right is obviously active and motivated, the left needs to be the same, and above all it has to be remembered that small and medium sized demographics in low turn out civic elections can seriously swing the results.

Rather than getting all in a tizzy about Ford, the left has to get active behind Pantalone and build momentum. Even if Joe loses, in this case, a strong showing will tell city council that the right wing does not have a strong mandate, and this will sway council decisions.

The worst possible outcome situation is allowing this to be a contest between the right and the right, because that will result in the impression that the right has a super mandate to attack our city.

rob ford has at least started people talking about municipal politics in toronto.  what is really disgusting is that in 2006 of the roughly 1.5 million eligible voters in the city only 584,000 people cast ballots for mayor or 41 %

so we now have a bombastic candidate and others are ganging up on him, some say rightfully others back ford. either way will we increase the 41% because that is the real tragedy. the majority did not even vote

Rob Ford in action.  John Barber is questioning why he - Rob Ford - said that fellow counsellor Case Ootes voted to terminate the chief of police when he  - Case Ootes - actually supported Fantino.  Ford called Barber a "socialist reporter," and Barber MAY have muttered, "Fat fuck."  Then the fun begins:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8EpSdyB0zY&feature=player_embedded#!

Ford in Fresh Trouble

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/torontomayoralrace/article/850648--ford-...

"The report was released as part of the city council agenda, one day after Ford admitted to being convicted of a drunk driving offence after a traffic stop in Miami, Fla., in 1998 in which a marijuana joint was found in his back pocket..."

Hopefully this goose is cooked and done

I disagree with Cue's reasoning. We have seen the pox on both houses strategy before, only to end up with an even stronger lurch to the right What Ford is doing is mobilizing and giving coherence to a section of people that you would rather not have mobilized and angry. The liberal-left is too weak and complacent in Canada to withstand a strong and resurgent conservative movement which has given us Harper, and Canada's hard right turn.

Just recently I talked to some pretty fairminded usually liberal people and their anti-Tamil refugee sentiment was strident and angry to the point that they wouldn't have shed a tear if the ship had sunk into the sea. This is the prevailing mood of the country, and it is growing worse.

No Yards wrote:

How the fuck does Ford envision closing down Toronto for immigrants? Prison camps? One way bus tickets to Calgary? [...]

Well, as a native Calgarian, I would suggest more of a swap. We send you back the Harpers and petroleum patch opportunists, and you send us the "immigrants". It doesn't even have to be on a one for one basis!

You do? Then be my guest pony up to the Smitherman ride. Now revealed as the Liberal mole, as we see in the Toronto Star. I suppose you are concerned about Ford's blustering racism. Do not forget this then, with Smitherman in office over the next little while you are looking at a direct policy pipeline straight from the PMO right through to city hall, with a clear "privatizing" union busting agenda. What Smitherman will be trying to do to the TTC (privitization) and the garbage workers (privitization anti-strike contracts), McGuinty will be doing to the provincial workers such as the teachers and various government support workers, when the contract comes up in a couple of years.

If you are really concerned about the fate of immigrants and minorities, perhaps you should consider first where exactly immigrants and minorities can expect to get a fair deal, as opposed to being house maids and taxi drivers for the middle class? Smitherman's world includes refugee menial labour at slave labour wages.

Unions, are not perfect, nor are they prejudice free (far from it), but if there is one place where new Canadians, including many non-white people have any chance of having a decent life in this country is in the unionized work force, which Smitherman has already declared war on.

Tommy_Paine wrote:

While I'm certainly not sticking up for Ford, I have to wonder what the ramifications are for people like us.   I mean, campaigns are expensive enough.  If we were to find a candidate to put forward representing our interests we'd have to spend even more to counter our opponents ability to hire ( officially or clandestinly) P.R. firms who are there to dig up things and spin them into as big a pile of dirt and mud to sling as possible.

 

I think those on the left that organize or participate in things like news conferences etc., should be finding out what reporters are shilling for P.R. firms, and start publically outing them by asking them to leave said conferences, because we don't acknolege their press credentials.

Good idea. However, our money is wasted on PR firms. PR firms are entirely a creature of the corporate media, and as such any money spent on them is money down the toilet. Complaints about media bias are common, but the fact is that we have never had control of the media, nor will we.

The only time that the left has ever been able to get political traction has been through grass roots organizing. That is the way it has always been, and the way it is now.

In that light, if anyone wants to talk to me about how to build local support for the Panatalone campaign, feel free to PM me.

Doug wrote:

Sineed wrote:

How does a racist, homophobic bully with a double-digit IQ become a populist hero?  He makes Mel Lastman look like a great statesman.

 

Easy. It's the whole "he says what I'm thinking" thing.

and there is the regular-guy, Tim Hortons, anti-politically correct, screw-em-all vote, too, always a huge force when really mobilized, as Blatchford hints:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/christie-blatchford/rob-ford-the-gadfly-that-toronto-needs/article1680642/

In our supposedly caste-less country, most of my pals are aghast at Mr. Ford at least in part because he seems so low-rent.

In appearance, he tends to the pink and porky. He's short and plump (as his recently published Miami mug shot revealed). He's bombastic. He's loud. He often sounds kind of coarse and dopey, to be perfectly blunt.

But he's a businessman (he runs his own printing company) and he's cheap (over his decade as a councillor, Mr. Ford has never spent any of his $53,000 office budget, which his colleagues frequently use as a self-promotion tool, and he was once rebuked for having failed to bill the taxpayer for expenses he personally paid for - oh the shame) and he's consistent.

I think, too, he has stumbled upon some hard truths that my smart friends won't like but which increasingly resonate - that Canadians are tired of being played as a fool, whether by those who queue-jump or fiddle with our immigration and refugee claim systems or by politicians who treat public funds like a personal inheritance.

The current mayor, David Miller, is much more presentable: He has fabulous hair and Kennedy-esque looks, solid New Democrat leanings (which he played down when he first ran), is Harvard-educated. He never embarrassed anyone by dropping a G, or with a malapropism. By my reckoning, he was also a complete pain in the arse.

Yes. You are missing something. 20 years of Canadian politics. Cutbacks in transfer payments and other subsidies are reflected in the provincial budgets, and the reflected in city budgets. You have a choice, voting for a mayor who will fight against the austerity campaign, or one who is going to bring it into being.

Why did McGuinty renege on his promise of supporting Millers TTC expansion and improvement projects? So, that he could fuck Miller, make him look bad and create a fiscal crisis at the level of City Hall in the hope of being able to hand the hatchet over to Smitherman.

I have to say that if this turns into a Ford vs. Smitherman race - I feel utterly indifferent to the outcome. Ford is an ass - and if he was in danger of being elected President of the US or PM in a majority government - I might feel differently - but my sense is that he is such a buffoon and his reign as mayor would be such a farce that we would end up with 4 years of total paralysis - compared to Smitherman's four years of insidious rightwing policies and endless schemes to promote the Liberal Party at the expense of the NDP - choose your poison.

Last place. That's got to sting

Sachin Aggarwal, former deputy chief of staff to Michael Ignatieff, is out as campaign manager. Bernie Morton, who had been poised to run John Tory's campaign, is in.  

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/inside-city-hall/la...

I just do not get how anyone with an IQ above room temperature could even think of supporting Ford...

I hear what shocked the conservatives and convinced Tory to stay out of the race was the internal polling that showed he ( Tory)couldn't break Ford's grip in Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough.  A vote for Ford is becoming a thumb your nose at the poltical establishment of all three parties. The thought of Ford creeps me out but I am having trouble embracing any of the others.  Such an important election and such poor choices all around.  I thinks the days of talking about boiling people in a pot and shaking hands with the Hell's Angles are going to become common place here in Toronto this term!