Rossi takes shots at Smitherman during speech

DAVID NICKLE

March 3, 2010

The mayor's race heated up Wednesday, March 3 as candidate Rocco Rossi accused opponent George Smitherman of being an absentee candidate, and flip-flopping on the issue of selling off city assets.

"The last sighting of George Smitherman was in December here in this game of Where's Waldo," Rossi told a packed luncheon at the Toronto Board of Trade Wednesday afternoon.

Rossi's speech was billed as the unveiling of his fiscal plan; but he took shots at Smitherman, who in the polls is the current front-runner, not only for his low profile but also for what he characterized as a change in position on the possibility of selling off city assets.

Rossi has been on the record as wanting to sell off Toronto Hydro in order to pay down Toronto's debt. In an interview in the Toronto Star, Smitherman said he too might consider selling off assets, after extensive consultation and study.

"Today he got religion," Rossi said to raucous applause.

Smitherman wasn't at the event at the Sheraton Centre hotel across from City Hall. But Toronto Community News caught up with him at Nathan Phillips Square on his way to a meeting inside City Hall. He said his position has remained consistent and said Rossi was "a bad listener."

"He sat at a table during my speech in December when I said that I was going to draw on my experience provincially," Smitherman said. "I think in that speech I talked about the necessity to look at outsourcing as a possibility and to look at asset sales as opportunity. The distinction I had is if you do not establish a first service principle, very often the citizen is going to end up getting less."

As to his absence: Smitherman said he's been preoccupied with his newly-adopted child.

"My absence is reflective of two things: one that he and I aren't in the same room very often and two that he doesn't seem to know I just brought a 14-month baby home."

Rossi's comments came as he delivered a five-point fiscal plan to the Toronto Board of Trade.

The plan appeared gathered from previously-announced planks to his platform.

Rossie said he would move the city's budget to multi-year operational planning, so Toronto could take better control of its finances. He said he would order an immediate hiring freeze for everyone but essential services personnel - in police, fire and emergency medical services.

He would allow the private sector and not-for-profit services to bid against unionized workers to perform city work. He said he would reduce city debt by selling assets like Toronto Hydro.

And he said he would open negotiations with the provincial government over the governance of the TTC, in which "everything is on the table."

Future expansion such as Transit City would be put on hold until those negotiations were complete, he said.

"Perhaps these talks will involve a different governance model for the TTC, one that brings it into some sort of new partnership with Metrolinx. Perhaps they will involve committing the city to using alternative service delivery and financing models in future stages of a balanced transit expansion - one that includes subways, LRTs and bus rapid transit. I believe somewhere in between the extremes of just give us money and go away, and take this whole mess off our hands, is a solution that will both serve the province's interests and solve our problems."

Rossi said he would also confront city unions and renegotiate contracts that prevent the city from looking outside the civil service for providing city services. He said doing so would be a long game.

"Over time contracting out will become a much bigger piece - in the early years it doesn't," he said. "The language around the contracts is very tight but through attrition and through subsequent rounds of collective bargaining, there'll be some - even through a first term - if I can win it."

Rossi said his plan would make Toronto's budget crisis of 2010 the city's last budget crisis.