Catching up on the all-night debate hosted at Queen’s Park earlier this week, one point jumped out at me.“All city council wants to do is build bicycle lanes,” Progressive Conservative MPP Roman Baber said, as justification for slashing the size of Toronto city council against its own will, and doing so in the middle of an election campaign, thereby throwing that election into chaos. And, as he was arguing at the time, for using a constitutional override to do so. It isn’t remarkable because he hates bike lanes — that’s a Fordinista litmus test. It wasn’t remarkable because it was patently false — as my colleague Samantha Beattie wrote this week, council passed more than 3,500 items this term, on topics ranging from street parking to heritage conservation to rebuilding the Gardiner Expressway. And it wasn’t even remarkable because that very day, two different cyclists were struck and injured by vehicles in Toronto, indicating that perhaps city council should have spent more time building bicycle lanes. The reason it jumped out at me is that it was an argument that the reason for restructuring Toronto’s elected government, and for doing so in such a way as to effectively ruin the ongoing election, is simply about rigging the game so people who disagree with Premier Doug Ford and Baber lose. The people fairly elected by Torontonians do things we think are bad policy — things like building bike lanes — he seems to be saying, so we need to change the rules to get the people we agree with elected.He dispenses with even the pretence that democracy, fairness, or even efficiency have anything to do with how an election or a system of government should operate. He isn’t even willing to conceal how he and his government are operating in bad faith. He’s embracing it. Bragging about it. Read more: Stay granted on previous Bill 5 decision, paving way for 25-ward electionOpinion | On the absur ...
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