The race for the position of mayor for the City of Toronto started at a ridiculously early date and has boiled down to one issue.
That issue is nothing less than the fundamental role of municipal government in the day to day life of the city. More specifically, your vote on Monday, Oct. 25, will be a referendum, where you will be asked to make a very serious decision.What you will be asked is to decide whether to take the Common Sense Revolution ushered in by former Ontario PC premier Mike Harris to its conclusion or to affirm the value of an autonomous system of local government. This is a political battle that has been on-going since the 1950s when the role of municipal government, and education for that matter, changed significantly.Ontario went from being a province where most people lived in rural areas to one where its population was concentrated in urban centres. Likewise municipal government changed from being a caretaker of the conservative status quo to being an active agency of material and social change. A number of people who benefited from the old status quo didn't like the changes; particularly in the amount of political power that city council was beginning to acquire.What was even more troubling for some people was the rise of progressive political movements that wanted to expand and strengthen the role of local government. The power of local government was demonstrated with the cancellation of the Spadina expressway in 1971, which came from organized grass roots political movements.It is now thirty nine years later, and the political landscape of Ontario has been transformed since the introduction of neo-conservative ideas in the 1980's.Copying the same political tactics used by the progressives of the 1960s and '70s, the new conservatives have built their own grass roots movement.Rather than being based upon the community and a strong local government, this new movement focuses on solely upon the individual.The rallying cry is a simple one; taxes are too high, politicians have too much power and the private sector can deliver municipal services cheaper. It does not matter if any of these statements are true (and factually they are not) but they are still repeated so often that they appear to be self evident to many people.So again, what this up-coming municipal election is really about is a choice between two competing definitions of democracy.Do you wish to have Toronto run as a social democracy where local government serves and protects communities of people, be it defined as identifiable groups or neighbourhoods?Or do you wish to see the size and role of local government reduced, with a greater emphasis being placed upon individual satisfaction in the delivery of government services? Think carefully about what each choice means when it comes time to vote.Both positions have their benefits and downfalls, as well as visible and hidden costs.I'll be looking at both sides of these political positions in upcoming columns.