Mayoral candidate meets with TCN editorial board to discuss his ideas for the city

Whatever you saw him do during 10 years of city council meetings, Rob Ford wants you to know it’s not personal.

“I’m not one of these mean, vindictive types of people. I say ‘good morning’ to everyone I see,” says the Etobicoke North councillor, suggesting when he steps out of “the ring” a council chamber often becomes, he can be “buddy-buddy” with councillors he was arguing with moments before.

“Some people aren’t buddy-buddy, they take it personal,” Ford said this week while meeting with editors of Toronto Community News.

“I don’t. I understand that they have a role to play and I have a role to play.”

But can a man who admits having “cheesed off a lot of councillors” – visiting homes in other wards, he said, when local councillors fail to return their constituents’ calls – and who regularly challenges his colleagues on issues large and small, rally a majority to his side if he becomes mayor?

Though he found himself on the losing side when trying to change city budgets, Ford noted he’s gotten closer to reaching the 23-vote tally guaranteed to win.

“I was getting eight or nine votes before, now all of a sudden I’m getting 17 votes,” he said, adding after this fall’s election, “I feel very confident that I’ll have 25 votes to carry my agenda on any given day.”

Ford claims credit for rallying council behind him on one large issue – Woodbine Live, a billion-dollar “urban lifestyle centre” and new residential neighbourhood set for Etobicoke’s Woodbine Racetrack.

The developers approached him and later, Ford said, he made certain the massive project did not go to Mississauga or Vaughan. “With my business experience, I was the one who landed the deal,” he added.

“I don’t remember any other councillors doing the legwork that I did to get this deal.”

Ford said he’s seeing people, including “hard-working blue-collared workers” who don’t usually vote for conservative candidates, come into his camp, a swing Ford, whose father Doug was a Tory MPP in the Mike Harris government, compared to Harris’s trouncing of New Democrat Bob Rae in 1995.

“I’m visualizing what happened in ’90 to ’95. I think this is the Bob Rae days all over again,” he said.

But Ford said he shouldn’t be labelled a right-winger even if he is a fiscal conservative, maintaining he wasn’t on Mel Lastman’s “team” when the right-leaning Lastman was mayor – “I’ve never been on anyone’s team,” except the taxpayer’s, he said – and as mayor can work with anyone.

“There’s a role you play in opposition, there’s a role you play in leadership,” he added.

Ford, who still works for the label and tag business his father founded in Rexdale, won’t change what he calls his simple, customer-service approach to politics. He works hard – though insisting his father worked even harder – to answer every e-mail and phone call personally, even those from residents outside his ward.

“Obviously, being in the mayor’s chair, (I) won’t be able to do that. But I can guarantee that the civil servants and the councilors will be doing that,” Ford pledged.

“Mrs. Jones out in Scarborough, all she wants is her sidewalk fixed or her pothole fixed. I will take the call, I will go out and see Mrs. Jones in Scarborough and I will get it done. And I’ve been doing it for 10 years.”

When everyday services such as pothole-filling aren’t performed, Ford said he can’t see a reason why, particularly when the city has been adding more employees – too many, he says – to its payroll.

“We don’t need five guys driving around in a truck to cut one branch. I see it all the time,” said Ford, who would hire on workers only at half the rate of attrition and added he’d look at scrapping the city’s Fair Wage policy, which he said costs taxpayers millions.

“Just because you do work for the city (as a contractor), you have to pay (your employees) city rates? I don’t believe you should.”

Ford said he won’t promise voters a zero-per-cent property tax increase, “but I’ll guarantee we’re not going to go higher than the rate of inflation, which is 1.8 or 1.9 when I last checked. People can live with that,” he said, pledging he’ll “look under every single rock” for possible savings.

The candidate also promised to record how every council votes on every issue, simplify the language of motions “for the average person out there to understand,” and to post the results, as well as every dime of city spending, online.

His administration, “will be as transparent as that bottle of water there,” Ford said. “And I will make every councilor and every bureaucrat accountable for what they spend.”

~ Mike Adler

Tags: Etobicoke North
Posted in Mayoral race, News