For a place of good charm, the Toronto City Council showed that it could not cope with linear thinking. They mostly stuck to the political guns to ratify a union contract. Whatever was said, few balanced the issues.
Mayor David Miller stated in a news report that he wasn't responsible for the course of the strike. Nothing like leadership accountability Dave.
Remember, the Star is a Liberal paper. Consider the source when you read it. This article is included in this diatribe for the education and edification of the students of the Digital Watchers.
David Miller is lifelessly draped across the corner of the mayoral couch, an image that presents a fair impersonation of Jean-Paul Marat after Charlotte Corday got her deathly hands on him.
Defeated – if not exactly dead – is what his opponents are hoping for.
"Frustrated" is the statesmanlike word chosen by the mayor after he rights himself and attempts a post-mortem on what went horribly wrong in managing what he insistently calls this "completely unnecessary" strike.
Amend that: "Frustrated and pissed off," is the mayor's state of mind.
He's furious at the cadre of councillors who tried to strike down the deal negotiated with city workers. He's maddened by what he calls the "recasting of history" that in his view has marked the whole sorry affair. And he is off the charts with the level of enmity he reserves for Councillor Case Ootes who, during a July 8 meeting of the city's employee labour relations committee, of which Ootes is not a member, stepped out to give a television interview on how negotiations appeared to be hopelessly stalled.
"Landslide Ootes walks out and does a media interview and speaks about what we had just been speaking about," says the really pissed-off mayor. "We call him `Landslide' sometimes because he only ... ."
It's probably best if we let Miller trail off at this point.
What Miller does not admit are the miscalculations made in positioning the negotiations in the minds of the public, selling them on a deal he now says he knew he could not deliver and exposing his own flank to a collective of councillors calling themselves the Responsible Government Group. Perhaps due to a mayor's office that appears to be structurally sheltered, not nimble, non-strategic, Miller's momentary failure, if it is only momentary, is not so much the deal itself but the politics of the deal.
Through the window behind him, the public square is not exactly abuzz. On the contrary, the city seems motionless, in a state of stasis, absent the verve the mayor promised to bring to the city and the office when he first swept to victory with that broom in the early winter of 2003. He is wearing a shirt with French cuffs, which is only worth mentioning because it accommodates the shiny cufflinks given to him by Infrastructure Minister John Baird, whose "f--- off" response to the city's failed request for stimulus funding will surely be included in the Miller biography, should it ever be written.
All the positive selling points Miller has accomplished for the city – getting Toronto's handling of the environment onto the world stage (he recently had framed a laudatory letter from former U.S. president Bill Clinton applauding Miller's efforts on this score); targeting at-risk neighbourhoods; Transit City – have faded, at least today, in memory. As he sifts the entrails of the 39-day strike he finds little fault of his own. "We always knew we'd have to give somewhere," he says of the negotiations that culminated most surprisingly with the option of the continued accrual of 18 sick days annually for city workers. "We achieved our goal. I really can't accept that anyone can see it in any other light whatsoever."
If there is a disconnect between the mayor and the people, that may well be it.
Let us pause.
On Wednesday, Miller gave a news conference. This is what he said: "The proposed agreement also eliminates the provision of bankable sick days to our employees by eliminating the provision to new employees and providing existing employees an option to take a payout or participate in a new short-term disability plan. This is how the elimination of sick banks has been done before in other jurisdictions ... and is the fair way to do it in the city of Toronto."
It was yet another miscalculation, for he failed to voluntarily lay out negotiated option Number 3 – the grandfathered sick bank accrual – insisting that the provision had been "eliminated." "Okay, so what's a better word?" he asked in our interview. "Removed? Discontinued? Stopped? Ended?"
Worse, the mayor had no upside to offer. "That press conference was supposed to be about telling Torontonians how their services were coming back," he says sourly. Instead, that news was put on hold pending agreement on back-to-work protocols for Local 416.
By Thursday, Miller was fronting yet another news conference, staring down the murder of oppositional councillors arrayed at the back of the member's lounge where the mayor briefs the press. Case Ootes. Karen Stintz. Denzil Minnan-Wong. "To suggest that our negotiations went outside the mandate is not only untrue, it's irresponsible, it's beneath contempt and it's beneath the very offices that these people hold," Miller thundered in oratory to rival Moses parting the Red Sea. By the way, the mayor added, no previous council had even attempted to do the hard work of getting the sick bank out of the contract.
Standing with his arms crossed, Case Ootes laughed lightly. "How does he know?" he said moments later. "In 2002 he was walking the picket line." (There's the trademark attack on Miller's politics.) "There were a lot of issues on the table and if my memory's right, that was one of them ... But we didn't get the opportunity because the province ordered the workers back to work."
Did Ootes think that, given the chance, council then would have been able to undo the provision for existing workers? "I don't know. I don't know. I have no idea. That's not the point. This mayor ... made a commitment to the people to get this off the books."
In fact, Miller has gotten it off the books. Not today, but in a process of phase-out not unlike myriad other jurisdictions, including Etobicoke pre-amalgamation. The former city of York had similar provisions. Miller says he was well aware of the pattern in bargaining that had been set, a pattern emphasized in a presentation to council and the public yesterday by Bruce Anderson, the city's chief negotiator. Money will be saved, eventually, thus addressing the current urgency expressed across both the private and public sectors to contain benefits costs.
Miller checks his BlackBerry to recall how and when the turning point occurred. He fingers Wednesday, the 15th, as the day he was briefed that Local 416, led by Mark Ferguson, was prepared to talk about the sick bank. "One of their principles was choice," says Miller, who refuses to see grandfathering as an undoing of the way the city had framed its position. "Not at all," he says. "Anybody on council who pretends to have that position just isn't being honest."
A week earlier, on July 8, the city's employee labour relations committee had approved the city's negotiating mandate, the third such motion since September. "Bruce Anderson said very clearly that grandparenting would be one of those options they would have to consider if they were going to get a settlement," recalls councillor Janet Davis, who sits on the committee. "I find it very difficult to understand how anyone in the labour relations committee could somehow suggest that they weren't aware. It was very clear."
Committee member Francis Nunziata, grabbing a smoke outside city hall, says no such thing was clear to her. "When I was briefed by the mayor this week I asked if sick days are off the table. He said absolutely." And they are – for new hires. If Nunziata was confused, it didn't stop her from moving the motion to approve the July 8 mandate.
On that date, all members were cautioned by outside counsel not to speak about the progress, or lack there of, in negotiations. At some point, Case Ootes left the room. Miller's wife, Jill Arthur, happened to catch the councillor on CP24 and emailed Miller to give him a head's up. Miller was furious. "I didn't talk about the strategy," Ootes says. "I talked in generalities that from what I saw in the meeting that the two sides were so far apart that this strike was going to continue for quite some time." Was that appropriate? "Absolutely ... As a representative of the public, it was my responsibility to tell them what they were in for."
Mark Ferguson, coolly watching council's antics yesterday – and they are plentiful and often embarrassingly schoolyardish – credits the effectiveness of provincial mediators as being "instrumental" in ultimately aiding negotiations. "The framework for the settlement was most definitely a framework presented by the provincial leaders," he says. Mediator Reg Pearson, he adds, was key in bringing the two sides closer together. (Ferguson additionally insists that contrary to Case Ootes's memory, eliminating the sick bank was not proposed in bargaining in 2002.) Ferguson, it must be said, looks like a very contented man with the deal now done, including a 6 per cent wage increase over three years.
Throughout it all, the mayor was regularly briefed. He says he slept pretty well. He kept up his daily runs down to the lake from his home in High Park, past two of the temporary garbage dumps set up during the strike. Is he happy with the way he framed the issues? "Well," he says. "I told the facts ... What would have been easy would be to give the unions 3 per cent and not try to make any changes in the collective agreement. Then I would have been severely criticized by the same critics for selling out."
He believes – well, he would wouldn't he – that the mess of the strike will end up being merely a political moment, and not an election issue. Time will tell that tale.
Is he running again? "Yes." Is he committed to that? "Yes." Will he change his mind in six months? "No."
"I'm not saying this is my career. I'm saying I'm intending to run for one more term. I've always said that you need three terms to do what's needed to be done in the city."
The wallpaper on Miller's BlackBerry is a photo of himself, taken at the Humber River Bridge staring out toward the CN Tower. A good moment. An artful contrast to the bad moment through which he has led the city.
