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).

You’ll lionize your pet projects and demonize the ones that stick in your craw. A crisis will be manufactured and the people will push you, urge you, direct you to cut library services so that TTC fares can be frozen.

Never mind your termination of the $60 vehicle registration tax, a rather tiny sum of $5 per month for people who can afford to own and operate cars and trucks, is the same amount that would be foisted on public transit users annually.

Scrapping the vehicle registration tax was about politics, not about good policy.

But even to raise the specter of higher fares for public transit, shows the level of contempt this administration directs at Ford’s much courted “regular people”. While this fare hike is likely a clever ploy, if it were implemented, it would be yet another instance of lower income Torontonians bearing the burden of handouts and giveaways to wealthier denizens of Hogtown.

Assuming that there’s any legitimacy to Ford’s musings, one cannot decrease congestion, a multi-billion dollar annual problem in terms of lost productivity for Toronto, by making life cheaper for car-owners and more expensive for public transit users.

If we want to address what economists call the “negative externalities” of pollution and congestion, we introduce taxes and/or regulations to make certain activities more expensive and in turn, encourage activities such as taking public transit.

Some in the media are prematurely noting that Ford is coming to realize that running the sixth largest government in Canada is vastly more complex than can be summarized by one-note slogans, but Ford is underestimated. He knows exactly what he’s up against and he’s hoping that some of the difficult decisions will be made by enraged and confused citizens.

Many of the same blinded-by-fury electors that put Ford in office.

Eric Mang

Eric Mang

Eric Mang served as a political aide in the Harris government in Ontario and the Campbell government in British Columbia. His politics have since shifted left. He works full-time in health policy, part-time...