CaptainChatham

RNG ... I can't find your WSJ graph so I can't reasonably comment on it. All I can say is that the 30-43% accumulated federal debt as a percentage of Canada's annual gross domestic product you have googled is in the correct range as being consistent with the generally accepted formula that is used to compare the relative indebtedness of countries around the globe with each other. There are all kinds of other formulas that can be used such as ones including provincial/state and municipal debt and debt from unfunded public sector pension liabilities and household and corporate debt, etc., etc. But the formula that Flaherty and the CBC and Keepitsimple and I have cited and the results under said formula are the commonly accepted ones and indicate that Harper and Flaherty and Canada have done very well in getting through the challenges of the global recession and a fractious minority parliament most of the time and slower trade with our major trading partner, etc. $600 billion in federal debt seems like a lot and it is a lot compared with under $10 billion which it was before Trudeau took power. But the economy has grown a great deal so that $600 billion out of an economy of almost $1.8 trillion and with interest rates in the 2% area is a lot easier to handle than $600 billion out of an economy of $800 billion and with interest rates of well over 10% which is what we faced in the early 90s. There are several reasons that Canada has outperformed the rest of the G7 through the recession in terms of relative indebtedness and net job creation and a strong currency and one of them is that we have a prime minister who is a very bright person, an economist and a fiscal conservative and we have a finance minister who is a focused and experience financial leader. Not for nothing are Harper and Germany`s Merkel the most respected of the G7 leaders and not for nothing was Flaherty voted fairly recently by the European financial press as the best finance minister among the G7 members, It is, as they say, all relative even though I, too, wish it were possible to be more aggressive in debt reduction and more fiscally conservative. Don`t comapre Harper with The Allmighty, compare him with The Alternative. You`ll definitely feel better that way!

I guess you must know more than not just little me but also former finance minister of Ontario Dwight Duncan who in announcing the Ontario turn to some measure of austerity after the 2011 election noted that "the pay and benefits of our public sector employees now account for 55% of the operating budget of Ontario and is the biggest driver of our increased spending". Perhaps you are unaware of the fact that budgets for health care, for example, include the personnel costs involved such as pay, benefits, pensions and various perks. Yes, health care in Ontario and other provinces does consume 46-49% of the total operating budget but roughly 80% of that 46-49% is the associated personnel costs such as doctors and nurses pay, etc. Perhaps you are also unaware of the fact that over 90% 9of the police budget of Toronto, just for example, is for the pay, perks and pensions of the personnel, leaving less than 10% of the budget for such bagatelles as bullets, cars, radar traps, holding rooms, etc., etc. Now if I were a nasty guy, i would respond to your statement that I was WRONG on this and therefore on EVERYTHING ELSE by stating that you must be an uninformed moron without the slightest clue about the objects and challenges of government financing. But I'm too nice to say that.

- KIS ... Thanks for being fair, not something I am used to on this board. Yes, the 2012-13 debt to GDP ratio was 34% and the 42% I cited is the projection for the FYn 2014-15 after which the government is projecting surpluses and the ratio would therefore decline again. - I am not sure whether Shortlived was simply comparing apples and oranges because he misread or misunderstood my post or whether he was being accusative for political partisanship or for other purposes. - In any case, he appears to be virulently anti-Harper which (second only to being anti-Ford here) will probably preclude him from any censure such as the banning to which I was subjected for the past couple of weeks because I satirically referred to The NDP as The Notoriously Dumb Party and because I did call BS on one of the Toronto municipal unionists who lurk here for his ridiculous assertion that most Torontonians were happy with the unions' delivery of municipal services and - QUELLE HORREUR! - i even quoted the most recent poll which revealed that only 20% of Torontonians were satisfied with service delivery, ranking Toronto 22nd on the list of 30 major Canadian cities in this regard. - In case I am banned again after this post, thanks for not being a duplicitous dickhead and for not taking a run at Harper regardless of the facts.

- It would be helpful here if we weren't talking about and comparing apples and oranges. I made very clear in my initial post on this matter that I was referring to the FEDERAL debt to GDP ratio not the fedral PLUS provincial debt to GDP ratio to which I assume you have decided to refer nor the total public and private debt to GDP ratio which is much higher still. - What I posted about the FEDERAL debt to GDP ratio is accurate and stands both in absolute terms and relative to other federal debt to GDP ratios of other nations. - Now, if you want to point out that the spendthrift provinces are basically broke, and that 50-60% of their profligate spending is a cynical political payoff to the monopoly public unions and goes right back into the wallets of public employees in terms of pay,perks, pensions and most of all needless numbers of them, hey I'm on board with that because it is true. - But the topic to which I responded was Harper and his credentials as a fiscal conservative and obviously I was referring to the FEDERAL debt and suggesting that in relative terms his credentials are not all that bad. - FYI ... While the provinces blow 50-60% of their operating budgets on needless numbers of public employees with inflated compensation that is, at least on pensions, unsustainable, and major municipalities blow even more, typically 70% plus of their budgets on their union buddies, the federal government has managed to keep pay, perks and pension spending under 20% of its operating budget. - Perhaps you can see a pattern here. - I know I can.

- shortlived ... I get my figures from the federal Department of Finance and from the bugetary projections tabled this past week. Where do you get your figures from? I'd suggest that it is far more likely that you are fabricating the figures but then I would probably be suspended again since it is open season here to insult me but verboten for me to respond in kind.

- In fairness to PM Harper, he has made some efforts consistent with his espoused political and economic philosophy and would have done much more in this regard except for the challenges of holding on to power in a minority parliament and of the global economic meltdown of 2008. - The budget projection shows that the federal debt in FY 2015 will amount to 42% of our GDP, the best debt to GDP ratio in the G7. In contrast, the US federal debt will be at about 100% of their GDP, a proportional difference of about 250%. - Yes, the debt has grown since 2008 as it has in every country in the developed world but a/ it would have grown even more had the opposition parties had their way on wanting larger and more open ended stimulus projects and b/ it has grown much less proportionately than in the other G7 countries and this has happened without federal tax increases unlike in most of the developed countries post 2008. - So Harper has been a fiscal conservative relative to other world leaders during the post 2008 period and relative to the wishes of the opposition parties and it seems to have worked. During his seven years in power, Canada has proportionately created more jobs than any other G7 nation. - As to senate reform, this has been an active and intractable issue for more than forty years beginning, in the modern era, with the 1972 federal-provincial conference that failed and followed by various other failed senate reform attempts of which Meech Lake (Mulroney offered to scrap the senate) was the boldest. Harper, perhaps consistent with being a conservative who prefers incremental change, has introduced some useful piece meal changes, some proposed and some now passed, which encourage the provincial election of senators and which limit their terms in office. He is probably going to propose additional senate reforms to make the choice of senators more democratic and to better reflect regional growth trends when the time and circumstances are propitious but now he is probably right to focus on economic and trade and fiscal priorities which are more pressing than senate reform. - If Harper really had gone against all he stood for as a fiscal conservative then he would not have earned such extreme enmity and obsessive hatred among the left-lib class that for decades governed Canada from the Ottawa-Montreal-Toronto corridor while the rest of the country was basically reduced to the role of helpless spectators. - As for PET's son, nobody really knows what, if anything, he stands for other than winning power back from those dasterdly Tories and nobody can safely predict how effective a leader he will be because he has never run anything other than his mouth.

- Your posts are wildly off the mark. The one about Harper leaving this summer indicating an early election in the spring of 2014 is dead wrong because Harper has reformed the federal election process so that majority governments can only call elections every four years on fixed dates rather than to cynically call them as Chretien did in the 90s 18 months or more early due to a blip up in the opinion polls. The next election will be in October of 2015 whether Harper stays or goes. - Your post praising Tom The Bomb Mulcair as a loyal NDP supporter who knows that the Notoriously Dumb Party (NDP) is even more generous and supine toward the monopoly public sector unions than the Liberals are is wildly off the mark because the most recent polls indicate that the Liberals under Trudeau Junior The Space Cadet are now in a slight lead over the Conservatives (enough th form a minority government) and the NDP is falling faster than a hooker's panties at a Shriners Convention and has sunk to the low 20s to give it distant third party status. - I do not expect these polls to hold in the election campaign two and a half years from now anymore than the Liberals lead in the polls under Dion and then County Iggy held after Canadians had a full opportunity to measure these Liberal leaders against Harper and his leadership skills, economic expertise and record of results that have made him the most respected of the G7 leaders among his peers. Indeed, I expect that Harper will beat up on Trudeau Junior enough to win him another majority in 2015 with Junior and the Liberals a weak second place party. But the dream that Jack Layton gave to the NDP of being the government in waiting has died along with Layton and Mulcair and the kids from Quebec are neither fooling nor impressing anyone outside of Quebec. Indeed, I suggest you take to your NDP masters a suggestion that they change their name. Being over fifty years old now, the party is not the New Democratic Party but the Middle Aged Democratic Party. And being controlled by the 80% of the MPs coming from Quebec, many of whom are barely out of diapers and also are sovereigntists, I suggest a party name change to National Union of Teenaged Separatists or NUTS for short. You/re welcome, always glad to help out the NDP.

- Wayward Son ... Have it your way, son. - There is no relationship between the relevance and quality of an individual's prior experience and his performance in a senior executive position - none at all. Any moron off the street will do so the most cost effective select process is to just stop the first 2 people you encounter on the street and flip a coin to decide who gets the top job. - And given number one, there is obviously no relevant and meaningful experiential difference in Wilson's sterling performance as a reformist governor of New Jersey for a couple of years including some of his time on the presidential campaign trail and Obama's non-performance as a senator for a couple of years including most of his time on the presidential campaign trail. - And it is also a slam dunk decision to vote for Obama in 2012 because he had been president for four years even though he screwed up everything he tounched and failed to come close to achieving any of the goals he set in the 2008 campaign and even though Romney was hugely successful in academe and industry and the NFP sector and government and achieved virtually all of his goals in these endeavours over many years. Given a choice, one should always vote for the screw up because the quality of experience doesn't matter and the screw up needs the gig. - Happy now, son?

Fortunately for Obama, the criteria for being one of the law students chosen to head The Harvard Law Review were altered in the 1980s before he was chosen so that academic results/grades were no longer the determining factor. This was done so that Harvard could choose more vizmins to head up the Law Review and, if memory serves, Obama was the first Afro-American to attain that position under the new criteria. All we know for sure is that he did reasonably well academically at Harvard but not as well as Mitt Romney, for example, whose marks are not sealed and who was one of the 10% or fewer who took the combined law and business degrees program which forces students to complete both degrees a full year ahead of taking them separately and in which Romney finished in the top 15% on the law side and the top 5% on the business side. All this stuff reminds me of the last Democratic `genius`who ran for president, John Kerry in 2004. Albeit not quite as fullsomely and shamelessly as with Obama, the MSM played up the supposedly brilliant intellect of Kerry in contrast to the supposedly deficient dummy IQ of George Bush. Conveniently, it was only several months after the election that the IQ tests taken by both of these guys when they entered the military in the early 70s were leaked to the media and even then were not widely reported by the MSM. The tests showed that both candidates were in the superior range (125+) and that Bush actually had a slightly higher IQ than Kerry. With Obama, of course, we will never know but can certainly speculate.

- Son - I couldn't believe that an intelligent guy like you would make such ridiculous statements as that relevant experience is not correlated with performance and that FDR and Wilson had limited experience until I actually read the study you have swallowed whole - the electoral-vote.com propoganda to con the rubes overseas to vote for Obama - and then I understood your curious comments. - The study is a bogus piece of utterly misleading garbage. It simply adds up quantitative experience in any area of government and any job and uses this as a measure of relevant qualifications. So, for example, six years running your mouth in the state legislature is given more weight than four years running the state as governor in terms of relevant presidential qualifications. And it doesn't give any weight at all to senior executive experience in the private sector so that, for example, four years running your mouth in the state legislature is given more weight than three years running a major Ivy League university like Princeton. - Like Obama, FDR had a few years in his state legislature. But unlike Obama, he had senior executive experience as the assistant secretary of the navy and chief executive experience as the governor of the then largest state in the nation, New York. Similarly, Wilson had three or more years as president of Princeton and a term as governor of New York. To equate the relevant experience of these two leaders with Obama's experience as a community organizer in Chicago is an insult to FDR and to Wilson. - Lets cut to the chase. For many years, I made a very good living analyzing senior and chief executive positions in terms of their experience, achievement, ability and leadership style profiles and than analyzing and selecting the appropriate executives for these positions. - Particularly since the advent of huge and complex government in the 30s and 40s with the Great Depression, The New Deal and WWII, the most important experience set for presidents has become executive experience and the most effective presidents (e.g. FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan and Clinton) have had serious executive experience before becoming president. We've already discussed FDR while Truman had private sector small business experience, federal leglislative experience and understudied an ill FDR as his VP, Ike commanded the largest armed force in the history of the world and was a university president after the war, Reagan ran the actors' union for several years and had two successful terms as governor of the larbgest state in the union, California, and Clinton was a three term governor in Arkansas. All fo them had far more relevant experience than BO brought to the presidency and performed accordingly. - So if you wish to buy into a bogus study put together for propoganda purposes and if you also wish to really believe that relevant experience for the job of POTUS which is being chief executive of the most complex and costly and powerful organization in the world doesn't actully matter and if, incredibly, you also truly believe that Obama was not the least qualified presidential candidate of the big government era, you are entitled to your opinion.

- Waldo ... I would really like to, err, channel Trump's daughter Ivanka but I am not now nor am I ever likely to channel The Donald with whom I disagree on an array of issues and policies and whose relentless and off putting self-promotion is exceeded only by that of your hero Barack Obama. - What I am channeling is reason and common sense, things that are regularly suspended by the MSM and many posters here where Obama is concerned. - Lets try to be reasonable and sensible: 1/ Obama is a narcissist and a relentless self promoter who has written two books, both about his favourite subject - himself, and who misses no opportunity to tout his achievements or at least things that can be spun as achievements for the true believers and other gullibles. 2/ If Obama's scores on his IQ, SAT and LSAT tests and his grades in high school and university were sufficiently outstanding (regrettably for him, these are quantitative matters and so cannot be spun for his moronic followers) then he would long ago have released them to a curious public. 3/ Instead, Obama has mandated that his test scores and his grades be sealed from the public more securely than Fort Knox or the secret formula for getting the caramel into the Cadbury chocolate bar. 4/ Ergo, Obama's test scores and his grades are not very impressive after all. - Do you see how this reason and common sense thing works now?

- I don't actually have a wrighting style but you have cleverely caught me out here! Yes, I am Shady and Pliny and August1991 and every other articulate poster of a conservative persusasion on this board. Except for me and all of my sock puppets, everyone else here is a left wing, public sector union and big government loving type just like yourself who sincerely believes that the union delivered municipal services in Toronto are fantastic values and that Barack Obama's extensive executive experience, accomplishments and skills superbly qualify him to head the most complex and costly organization in the world and also to lecture the private sector on wealth and job creation. Happy now?

- CONGRATULATIONS! You have just won the Joe `The Public Be Damned` Davidson Union Medal for the most misleading statement of the year in pushing the monopoly public sector union line. - Perhaps you are so insulated and isolated from the public by your union that you neither know nor care what the public really thinks of you lot these days or perhaps you are so brainwashed by the union propoganda that you really believe what you just said or perhaps you are lying through your teeth to promote the union line the same way that the union leaders lie through their teeth about Rob Ford`s performance as mayor. - In any case, the most recent comprehensive survey of citizens`satisfaction with municipal services in Canada`s 30 largest cities puts Toronto at 22nd out of 30 with only 20% of Torontonians satisfied with their municipal services (presumably most of the 20% are employed by or related to those employed by the city unions). - Here is the report on this survey by the pro-city unions and anti-Ford Toronto Red Tsar for your edification. And while I realize that math and finance are not strong points among public sector unionists, surely you would concecde that 20% is not `most Torontonians`. http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2012/06/08/mississauga_oakville_score_high_in_municipal_services_poll.html

- MG ... Since the cost of Obama's two week Christmas vacation in Hawaii was $26 million and change, it is certainly a good thing for the beleagured taxpayers that he doesn't lie on the beach in Hawaii every weekend. - He does, however, take more holidays and play more golf and basketball and hang out with more Hollyweird big stars and big donors and do more TV and radio appearances and hold more costly White House entertainment events and generally do more fun celebrity type appearances and at far more cost than any POTUS ever. - What he does not seem to do according to pretty much everyone is to buckle down in the White House and do the hard work behind the scenes that real and effective executives do which includes building relationships and alliances with political heavyweights on both sides of the aisle, preparing and negotiating and compromising and coming up with budgets and legislation that has some bipartisan support and can get through congress, and building and molding and effectively directing a cabinet team of the best qualified executives to lead the complex and giant departments of the US government. - And prior to becoming president, there is little evidence to suggest that Obama ever worked hard for any sustained period either in academia or politics or community organizing. There is a mountain of evidence on this score, albeit most of it is not readily available through the worshipful MSM. A good place to start is with BO's academic records, all of which are sealed in greater secrecy than the nuclear codes or how you get the caramel into the cadbury bars. Doesn't the sealing of all of BO's academic records smell fishy considering that he is an inveterate and consumate self promoter? - He is well known to be a night owl and not a morning person which is great for being a party animal but is a limiting factor for one who aspires to lead in a town where the movers and shakers usually start between 6 and 7 am.

- Any objective observer would admit that Barack Obama was the least qualified in terms of relevant experience of any major party presidential candidate in modern US history in 2008. - Many observers would also argue that his performance in his first term suggests not only inexperience but incomptence since he has come nowhere near accomplishing any of the first term goals he set on the campaign trail and has made the difficult economic, fiscal and foeign policy hand he inherited even worse with inept and arrogant and self indulgent play. - Now, not only his experience and competence are being questioned but also his industry and work ethic. - Is BO lazy? - Well, he himself certainly thinks so as he observed in an interview with Barbara Walters. The president attributed his self indulgence and laziness to being brought up in the laid back state of Hawaii. (He didn't mention to Walters that a contributing factor in his case might have been that he, according to his own autobiography, spent much of his high school days in a drug induced daze.) - Hilariously, Obama apologist Soledad O'Brien was caught this week on tape taking issue with the head of FOX News when he rightly noted that Obama was a lazy president and then quickly changing the topic and "moving on" when it was pointed out to her that it was Obama who first described himself as lazy. http://www.aim.org/don-irvine-blog/cnn-panelists-call-out-soledad-obrien-for-taking-roger-ailes-lazy-quote-on-obama-out-of-context/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DonIrvine+%28Don+Irvine+-+Blog%29

Pliny ... Yes, while I am a fan of Hayek I also believe that government has a modest but meaningful economic role to play in the macroeconomic sense in particular in helping to create an optimal climate for investment, trade, innovation and productivity. But certainly like you and others who champion Austrian Economics I am more concerned than ever with the current US administration's money supply/quantitative easing and low interest rate policies and how they may be creating a perfect storm for hyperinflation followed by a new depression.

Right On, Comrade! We must all do our utmost to topple Mayor Ford by hook or by crook and to re-establish a left wing, pro-public sector union, pro-big government and pro-high taxes and high debt mayor like NDP lifer David Miller in office! Miller Time was a golden time for those of us in the monopoly public sector unions and the left wing political interest groups aka PIGS with our snouts buried deep in the public trough. Mayor David spent 1/3 of his time taking instruction from and writing cheques to the monopoly public sector unions and left wing special interest groups, 1/3 of his time fiscally raping the ordinary Toronto taxpayer for unconscionable and punitive tax hikes, and 1/3 of his time begging the two senior levels of government for more money to further finance his pay offs to his union buddies that were more than double the rate of inflation. This Ford guy has bizarre ideas like being mayor for the 90 some percent of Torontonians who don't belong to the municipal unions and curbing the worst of the public sector union excesses and opening up services delivery to competition and finally putting Toronto on a sustainable course in terms of spending, taxes and debt. I'm sure that if it was explained to Torontonians just how unnecessarily costly and overstaffed and underworked and over priveleged their city workers had become when they had the always compliant Miller as mayor and how much unnecessary dough this cost them as taxpayers that they would readily choose the option of a Millerite mayor returning to power with his hand deep in their wallets over the option of Ford as mayor with his hand patting their ass. Solidarity Forever, Comrade! Don't give an inch or a penny or a second back - ever - no matter how hard things may be for those dumb shmucks in the competitive private sector and those retired on lousy private sector pensions worth less than half our pensions for the same employee contribution. We are not public servants, we are now the publics masters and donèt you ever forget it! P.S. 1. Those who remember the CTV video of Prime Minister John Turner patting the shapely ass of Liberal party president Iona Campagnola (sic) during the 1984 election campaign may well surmise that it the Ford-Thompson encounter is accurate he perhaps has prime ministerial qualities. P.S. 2. It is a he said-she said situation which can neither be proven nor disproven and unfortunately for the left-lib and public sector union sets in TO is neither a hanging nor a resignation offence. There is some circumstantial evidence to suggest that it was a deliberate set up by Ms. Thompson as part of her ongoing political campaign to curry favour with the left of center voters so as to position her for a Liberal run in the next provincial election or another run for the mayorès chair. But in any case it can neither be proven or disproven and will blow over (no, that is not a reference to left wing darling Zipper Billy Clinton and his conduct in office supported by the left) within a week.

- kimmy ... What an enjoyable and interesting post! 1/ Since reading is pointless unless it is either profitable or amusing, I am glad that you at least got giggles out of my post 2/ Being a Red Tory from the Stanfield-Clark-Mulroney era meaning that I am conservative on economic and fiscal issues and moderate on social issues, I happen to agree with every one of your opinions in this paragraph. 3/ I could care less what your avatar is and I also agree with the opinions you have stated in this paragraph. 4/ My experience in reading more than posting on the various Canadian political forums is that there are usually more left of center than right of center posters and that BC posters are generally even more likely to be left of center than those from other provinces. There are several reasons for this including that monopoly public sector union employees and early retirees tend to have a lot more time to indulge themselves in these kinds of time intensive activities. So not having the time nor the inclination to read your past posts here, I was generalizing from your one post and from your location (they call it The Left Coast for a reason) and I unequivocally withdraw the lefty label as applied to you. 5/ I guess I haven't fully and clearly explained the huge potential savings in the proper position management and compensation of the ever more ravenous public sector nor the expanded government revenues to be had from targetted tax cuts that stimulate economic growth. But yes, governmetn can't and should not try to do everything even if they did have the resources to do so. 6/ In general I agree with you on this as well.

- Pliny ... Thanks much. I minored in economics in university and majored in economics by surviving nicely in one of the most competitive industries in existence. So I tend to analyze economic issues through the prism of economic principles and to believe that community organzers and others who are obsessed with redistributing wealth and unschooled and uninterested in creating it are ultimately playing a losing hand. - Thanks, too, for the heads up on Anthony and civility.

- From the left-lib leaning Toronto Life and a left-lib leaning writer in Philip Preville comes a suprisingly sober, accurate and lauditory assessment of Rob Ford's real and significant and long term accomplishments as mayor. - Perhaps Preville can come up with a similar list of accomplishments by David Miller if you give him a year or two to find and spin them but I doubt it. - Miller's only accomplishment was selling out to and turning over control of the city to his long time pals in the monopoly public sector unions who proceeded to fiscally rape and pillage the good people of Toronto while the reliability and quality of actual services to citizens continued to decline. - While I will argue that Ford deserves a second term to consolidate the real fiscal and productivity gains he has made on behalf of Torontonians whereas Preville makes a sop to his literary constituency by favouring a new mayor in 2014 who will continue on Ford's tranformational financial path, we both agree that while Rob has made entertaining and sometimes embarrassing theatre as mayor he has done the really important job exceptionally well. Unlike Ford the company where quality is job one, Ford the mayor gets it that ensuring reasonable and affordable value for money to the taxpayers and a solvent and efficient city government is job one as mayor of a megacity. Philip Preville: A sober assessment of Rob Ford’s shining achievements Ignore, for a moment, all the sideshow antics that have hijacked his mayoralty. Rob Ford has made some big changes at city hall that we’ll all feel, in a good way, long after he’s gone By Philip Preville | Illustration by Steve Murray You could be forgiven for believing that Rob Ford’s first two years as mayor amounted to nothing more than a riveting insignificance. He’s provided quite a spectacle. Talking on his cell while driving. Reading while driving. The Cut the Waist Challenge (and its dismal failure). The altercation with a Star reporter near his property. Allegedly flipping the bird to a kid and her mom. Calling 911 (three times!) to save himself from a Marg Delahunty bit. Yet none of these incidents tells us anything about his record as the city’s chief magistrate. Even Ford’s conflict-of-interest charge, which was dismissed on appeal, was relevant to his mayoralty only in the same way that Bill Clinton’s imaginative use of cigars was relevant to his presidency: an error in judgment that exposed some sloppy habits and almost cost him his job, but that has little bearing upon his ability to do that job. As a body of evidence, Ford’s ceaselessly galling behaviour is proof of breathtakingly poor judgment in life—but not necessarily in politics. While the entire city has been distracted by the giant blowhard on the screen, the man behind the curtain has accomplished some impressive wizardry. On the labour file, Ford pulled off a previously inconceivable trifecta: he got the city’s largest union locals to sign collective agreements on his terms and outsourced waste collection west of Yonge—all while avoiding any work stoppages. Compare that record with that of David Miller, under whose watch the union’s ranks and paycheques swelled and they still saw fit to wage a strike action that left the city reeking in its own filth. Labour costs were the main reason that, during Miller’s seven years at the helm, the city’s annual operating budget grew by roughly six per cent per year. Only two years into Ford’s tenure, expenditures have essentially flatlined, from $9.405 billion last year to $9.432 billion this year. Ford’s detractors like to say he promised to stop the gravy, then found none. It turned out that the gravy didn’t flow in rushing brown-water rapids, but in trickles through every crack in the organization. Ford has spackled many of them shut. For example, he eliminated a “running lunch” program—code for a 30-minute paid lunch—in the vehicle maintenance department, which will save the city $391,000. He merged the shop that makes road signs with Transportation Services (why were they ever apart?), saving $110,000. At Fairview Library, an automated book sorter will save $160,000. It all adds up. The entire budget process has been opened up for the better. Torontonians learned back on November 29 that their annual tax bill would rise by 1.95 per cent (later revised to two per cent), but the real story that day wasn’t the size of the increase. It was the timing of the announcement. During Miller’s tenure, the annual tax increase, along with every other detail of the municipal budget, was kept under wraps until February. It’s a crucial difference in management style. Miller waited so he would know exactly how much money he had left over from the previous year. Ford doesn’t want to know, because he believes not knowing will force the city to spend more cautiously. So far, he’s been right. The city no longer needs to use its own prior-year surplus to balance next year’s budget. The 2012 surplus chimed in at $232 million, and instead of desperately shovelling it down the hole of the 2013 shortfall, council used it to increase funding for arts organizations and other programs. Council also earmarked more than $100 million of the surplus to kickstart repairs to the Gardiner Expressway. Were it not for the Ford administration’s sound budget practices, we’d be paying for the Gardiner by delaying repairs to other things. Back in November, Olivia Chow, the MP for Trinity-Spadina, called upon Ottawa to pick up part of the expressway’s repair bill. Does anyone really want a return to the days when the city cried poor and begged others for money? We tried that for more than a decade, and all we have to show for it is decrepit infrastructure. In fiscal matters at least, Rob Ford has given Toronto its self-respect back. Still, Ford’s lapses as mayor have been as substantial as his successes. He has failed to tame the police budget, which eats up the lion’s share of city revenues. This is a fight only a right-of-centre, tough-on-crime mayor can pick. Instead, Ford intervened in the police association’s bargaining to give them plump raises even as he negotiated hard with the city’s other unions. Most crucially, the mayor’s rallying cry of “subways subways subways” cost the city two precious years on an ill-fated attempt to build a Sheppard subway extension. With no credible plan to fund it, council turned its back on Ford and resurrected Miller’s Transit City plan—not because it was better, but because it had money behind it. The transit issue exposed Ford’s fatal weakness: he’s a lone wolf in a job that now requires a consensus builder. The long-overdue changes Ford has made will serve the next mayor of Toronto well—whether that mayor is Ford or someone else. It should be someone else. For the post-Miller era, voters wanted to toss a bomb into city hall and blow it up. Ford made a great bomb. Now his charge is nearly spent. But what Toronto doesn’t need is Ford’s diametric opposite. Torontonians have the emotional bad habit of loving their mayors until they can no longer stand them, at which point they replace them with their worst enemies. Mel Lastman was an adorably colourful character until he became an unbearable clown. As a councillor, David Miller was a constant thorn in Lastman’s side, then enjoyed an extended honeymoon as mayor until his handling of the 2009 garbage strike led public opinion to brand him a bum. Councillor Ford, who could get under Miller’s skin and make him itch like no other opponent…well, you get the picture. Auditions for the role of Ford’s Worst Enemy—Adam Vaughan? Shelley Carroll?—continue in earnest. Whoever earns the mantle will likely be elected mayor in 2014. When the new mayor takes office, that person should bear in mind that Ford was nowhere near as bad as he was made out to be, and take care not to squander the clean budget books he left behind

Squid ... As a big aficianado of lightly breaded and fried calamari, I decided to respond to your trollish post. 1/ Yes, whenever either of these things is relevant to the topic at hand. In this case, a topic in the thread was Michelle Obama's appearance at the Oscars so it was somewhat difficult not to mention the Obamas and the false choice between having only higher taxes and enhanced services or lower taxes and declining services happens to be a specious left wing talking point whether or not you and the poster who argued it know this or not. 2/ Well that is a terrible disappointment which puts me in a dark and disconsulate mood since I live to impress you. Strange, though, that you deigned to read and respond to my post given that you are tired of my inconvenient truths. 3/ Well, I'd respect him more if he did respond to my post but obviously I can't compell him to do so and if he chooses not to out of arrogance or embarassment so be it.

- Hardner ... Perhaps someone whom you would consider to be right of centre would be considered liberal or left of centre by actual right of centre people like myself. In any case, her response that one can only choose between reducing taxes and services or raising taxes and services is the kind of false choice championed by lefty and management-trainee-in-chief Barack Obama and is decidedly not a right of centre response. Nonethless, if she is offended by being called a lefty, I apologize unreservedly.

- AW ... Thank you for that very important piece of information! Perhaps then this Anthony character may not have singled me out for censure but nonetheless it will be interesting to read his reply to my questions.

- CA ... It appears that you have given me "one warning point whatever that is and whatever that means. `Perhaps you would kindly explain for the benefit of newcomers to this forum like myself what òne warning point`means for posters who receive such sanctions here. While you are at it, perhaps you could also explain why Kimmy and August 1991 who went at each other fairly vigorously on this thread didn`t get such a warning point and why I did for the single crime of calling Kimmy a lefty. After all, it doesn`t take Einstein on steroids or even Joe Biden after a lobotomy to figure out that she probably is a lefty and, furthermore, that she is unashamed to be identified as such. On the other hand, if Kimmy is insulted by being described as a lefty then I unreservedly apologize for hurting her feelings with such a horrible label.

- Those of you who for some bizarre reason don't understand why Alberta is now looking at joining all the other provinces in imposing a sales tax will come to understand the situation if you can only answer the following quiz from a private blog I write on "trickle down government": . During the decade from 2001 to 2010, what percentage of the increase in Alberta government revenues was spent not on the public but on public sector employees’ pay, perks and pensions? a/ 25% since Alberta is supposed to be a fiscally responsible conservative province and the already well paid provincial public sector employees make up less than 15% of the work force. b/ 40% since the bigger government gets the harder it is to control personnel numbers and costs and strong monopoly public sector union leaders tend to have their way with weak political leaders. c/ 95%, changing “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you” to “I’m from the government and I’m here to help myself” and explaining why Alberta is now considering the first sales tax in its history.