So Mayor Rob Ford got a lesson from city council about public transit that he didn’t like: it’s impossible to have anything approaching a twenty-first century system relying exclusively on subway expansion. The Mayor wants roads for cars alone.
Having been taught a lesson, Ford lashed back with a political lynching. Top public transit civil servant Gary Webster was ousted by Ford acolytes in an absolutely unseemly procedure. This after Ford deemed council’s view on transit “irrelevant”.
Toronto is now a city in which bullying and intimidation of loyal, effective civil servants is politically acceptable. That means dark days indeed for democracy .