I’m guessing relatively few Agenda readers avidly follow municipal politics in Canada, but a funny thing has just happened. In Calgary, the prosperous western metropolis that is the intellectual and demographic heart of Canada’s modern political right, a moderately left-of-center candidate made savvy use of social media to run a successful post-partisan campaign. And the candidate in question, Naheed Nenshi, is a Muslim from an immigrant family — a member of a “visible minority,” as they say in Canada.

In Toronto, in marked contrast, elected Rob Ford, a rock-ribbed conservative who has pledged to wage war on the city’s public sector unions, by a wide margin. In what was effectively a three-way race, Ford won almost half of the vote — 47.11 percent — against 35.52 percent for his closest competitor. Ford has a history of making incendiary and insensitive statements, and many in Ontario’s Progressive Conservative party and Canada’s federal Conservative Party fear that Ford is a hothead. One of the most common lines of criticism against Ford was that he was an American-style Tea Partier hellbent on dismantling Toronto’s much-admired system of public transportation. My left-of-center friend Yonah Freemark painted a particularly grim portrait of how mass transit might fare under a Ford administration.

Using rhetoric to inflame already disenchanted suburban residents, concerned that their priorities aren’t being considered by a center-city focused city hall, Ford has declared that he will fight to “end the war on cars” (words that are uncomfortably similar to those of British Conservatives). How will he do so? By eliminating bike lanes from major streets and, even worse, by dismantling the city’s 47-mile downtown streetcar system, which serves 285,000 daily customers. Ford claims that these are disruptive to the free-flow of automobiles in North America’s most-congested city, but removing the transit infrastructure now would likely mean never getting it back.
Ford’s comments are couched in familiar conservative terms of “fiscal responsibility,” but it is clear from his message that he is simply more interested in promoting car travel than transit. By removing streetcars, Ford would have to cancel an already finalized C$1.2 billion contract with Bombardier for 204 new trains at a potential penalty of C$100 million and buy 550 new buses as well as construct two new $100 million bus garages. Because Toronto’s streetcar vehicles carry three times as many passengers as buses, operations costs would expand dramatically and the number of buses on the streets would multiply significantly; meanwhile, passenger comfort would decline. How more buses carrying fewer people would result in less traffic congestion as Ford seems to imply is unclear.
In exchange for the large network of light rail lines Mayor Miller has proposed to implement (construction is underway on one corridor already), Ford would build new subways that sound good in theory but which would ultimately mean far less transit expansion because of their higher costs. But subways are more convenient for Ford because they’re buried underground, safe from interrupting the travel of his precious automobiles.

As you guys know, I’m a firm believer in targeting wasteful public spending. But this approach sounds a bit daft.

Because Toronto has been straining under a heavy public sector wage burden, I’m sympathetic to Ford’s broader goals. I am concerned, however, that his penchant for loose talk and his policy priorities will generate blowback for conservative reformers elsewhere in the country. This will sound squishy to some of you, but remember that I’m always keeping an eye on long-term outcomes. Ford is great at giving the public sector unions a tongue-lashing. And it was very encouraging to see members of ethnic minorities, particularly in the cities outlying districts, flock to a staunchly conservative candidate. But I haven’t seen any evidence — yet — that Ford can successfully govern a large, complex city like Toronto. Rudy Giuliani was a confrontational mayor, yet he also understand how the levers of power work in New York’s municipal government. The same goes for Chris Christie in New Jersey. Both men offered as much substance as style. Governance is a skill, and I hope, for Toronto’s sake and for the sake of my right-of-center friends in Canada, that Ford doesn’t blow it.

I asked an old friend — a native of Toronto and a close student of Canadian politics — for his thoughts on Ford, and he very kindly agreed to let me share them with you:

Ford was an imperfect candidate. However his message — stop the gravy train, respect for taxpayers — was a populist, but also genuinely popular, one after years of a left wing mayor, petty tax increases on car owners and suburbanites, and a strike by garbagemen.
My view is that Ford will do what he was elected to do: pick fights with incumbent interests at city hall, provoke the unions by outsourcing city services, widen roads, stop all light rail projects in their tracks, etc etc. His honeymoon will be a short one. Soon enough there will be gridlock, mass labour unrest, and an end to any “polite, soft-left” consensus in municipal politics. Rob Silver, a Liberal, wrote a very good piece on why Ford’s campaign had so much appeal.
Ford’s victory will turn out to be bad news for Progressive Conservatives provincially, and Conservatives nationally (much worse for the former than the latter). In a year, the Liberals in Ontario will probably appeal to voter unease with all the hostility Ford will have brought to Toronto, and encourage them to vote for them to protest against the strikes, etc etc. They will call Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak a “Rob Ford in sheep’s clothing” or something. These elections are timed to occur at exactly the moment when Ford’s honeymoon will probably have ended.
Ultimately, Ford’s victory will be like a hangover for conservatives. Great at first as we get to use government to wage war against left wing client groups, but the reaction against Ford’s divisive administration of politics (which will be essential if Ford is to fulfil his campaign promises) will be harsh among the public. Federally, the blowback won’t be as severe because municipal government is so remote from national politics in Toronto.
The only real impact for Conservatives federally is that we saw that the inner suburbs are prepared to vote for a really right wing candidate. Also, last week’s EKOS poll had Ford with a much higher margin of support among foreign-born Torontonians than Canadian-born Torontonians (though I assume that would disappear if you controlled for “car-use” and other indicias of suburban living).
Though I always support the most right wing candidate in every race, I have mixed feelings about his policies. As what might be called an urbanist, his pro-sprawl city policies don’t appeal to me; but the urbanist left’s tax policies were so rebarbative I had to support the right winger.

We’ll see what happens. Ford might surprise us.