By Royson James, Toronto Star Columnist, September 21, 2018
Free Toronto!
It’s time for a tenacious, unwavering movement that demands the province of Ontario take its jackboots off Toronto’s neck.
Wrap it in concepts like “city charter” or “independence,” if you wish. Or draft a manifesto for the province of Toronto. Embrace the frightening word “secede.” Don’t be afraid of the label “separatist.”
And don’t be deterred by Pharaoh and his armies; neither the Uncle Toms within, nor the naysayers grown accustomed to and benefiting from the servitude.
The cause is just and right. How is possible that one man – the premier – can get up one morning and decide he doesn’t like the people who you’ve elected to run your city, disrupt an election that has already started, and do it without any limitations from anyone or any institution? How is it defensible that this one man could, if he chooses, wipe out your entire city council, abolish the mayor’s office and take control of your city?
How is it possible that he can do so – proudly mendacious, defending his slapdash recklessness with demonstrable false claims that his sycophants repeat without public scorn and shame – and all you can do is protest, without judicial or legal recourse? Such is Toronto’s reality, as evidenced by the scurrilous, disrespectful, anti-democratic and, apparently, legal interruptions of one Premier Doug Ford.
Toronto can’t make a move without Queen’s Park’s permission. It’s gone on for more than a century now. At some point, enough is enough. Now is as good a time as any to fight back.
Over three decades covering municipal politics – always to the rhythm of provincial hegemony – the record shows cities are creatures of the province. It’s like being born into servitude. Minus the physical and psychological torture, it echoes the practice of chattel slavery, on a plantation owned by a benevolent Massa, who, whenever he chooses, can inflict horrors.
Rhetoric aside, the municipal servitude is real. And the psychological reflex towards acceptance of the condition is as binding and debilitating as being in perennial shackles, to the point that the oppressed and subjugated fail to even recognize the fetters clamped around their necks.
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds,” the great Marcus Mosiah Garvey once said, and Bob Marley sang.
It is possible that this is Toronto’s destiny and calling – to free cities from the constitutional shackles that bind them to the dictates of the provinces.
This is not a cause for the weak or the impatient or the easily discouraged. Emancipation just might take several lifetimes. But start.
Don’t expect solace from the mayor, or anyone seeking to replace the mayor, in next month’s despoiled election. Co-opted and corrupted by the singularly undemocratic governance model that creates the current debacle, these timorous leaders can be counted on to maintain the status quo.
Sometimes, like now, when the enemy is so clearly exposed in its legally buttressed malevolence, the pushback requires a jangling discordant wail from the aggrieved.
Other times – in polite company or infused in bedtime stories – the message might have to be more subversive, though resolutely unyielding.
Before the courts of the land, the drum-beat must rise to a crescendo until “activist” judges on this file are not the exception but the rule.
In the council chambers and committee rooms, the case can be relentlessly argued until the narrative is repeated as easily as a nursery rhyme.
Drake and other rappers and musicians might splice the “Free 6IX” message in lyrics and verse; sitcoms and drama episodes know how to explore the theme.
Like “Diversity Our Strength,” it should inform and reflect and become part of our expectation and desire and aspiration, until it is a cultural and civic mantra.
A good start would be one or two bold enough to run a mayoral campaign on a “Free Toronto” platform. The Green party was a gleam in someone’s eyes until the movement gained enough stature to elect its leader to the Ontario legislature.
But don’t expect to be embraced and applauded by the masses. This is not a popularity contest. Neighbours who are normally reasonable and wise lose all sense of decency when the matter is politics. Don’t you remember your progressive friend who was quick to find excuse for the bad behaviour of Bill Clinton when he was caught with his pants down? Why, then, be surprised that Republicans would adopt a “see no evil” stance with Donald Trump?
Don’t you recall how otherwise smart friends were willing to find excuses for Rob Ford and argue that city council should not suspend his powers – even as Rob Ford himself told council: Y’know what, if I were in our position I would censure me as well. After all, I was in a drunken stupor more days than I can remember.
How many times can you count when the newspaper you love is seen cheerleading bad behaviour of government – including the use of the notwithstanding clause by the current Doug Ford government, in an unholy race to downsize the city government?
The road to a Free Toronto will be long and hard and complicated and controversial. But many decades hence, even its opponents will seek to take credit for its final outcomes. Other cities – less adventuresome and more psychologically damaged and frozen by years of servitude – will rise up and call you blessed.
Finally, don’t be sidetracked by panaceas like the City of Toronto Act, approved by the Ontario government in 2007. That tiny first step gave very little, but managed to stop real, lasting reform.
Imagine this. Twenty years ago, the Ontario government amalgamated six municipalities in Toronto, cutting the number of councillors in half and dumping many of its costs on the new megacity. Now, it is cutting the number of councillors in half again. And we await the real reason for the action, not the false reasons proffered so far.
Our mayor timidly accepts his fate, as a supplicant being careful not to further anger the Massa.
Someone more vexed by the province’s actions would be diligently seeking ways to resist. Civil disobedience. Motions that declare the Tory caucus personae non gratae at Toronto city hall. How about shutting off the power to Queen’s Park on the 5th of each month – for 31 minutes – in memoriam of Bill 5 and Bill 31. Reason? Unsched-uled, unspecified maintenance.
Notwithstanding what the city lawyers advise, think of the mischief one could conjure. In protest.
Free Toronto.
Royson James is a former Star reporter and freelance columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter @roysonjames
Our Comment
This is an excellent, provocative call to action! More importantly, by calling attention to an immediate, particular problem and recommending a specific solution, it compels us to face the urgent need to deal with the more general, basic problem of unbridled power.
“Servitude and the exploitation that it allows is going on at every level of government, in keeping with the global exercise of neoliberal power.
We are a nation state with various levels of government. That is as it needs to be. However, powers at each level must be clearly defined, and where they obstruct real democracy they must be altered or become history.
The underlying operating principle of democratic governance, since it must ultimately work in the best interest of all members of society, should be cooperation.
The extraordinary example of Doug Ford’s autocratic, exultant, flaunting of power is a wakeup call!
Given that we are living through so critical a moment, I’m not confident that we have “several lifetimes” to achieve “emancipation.” Is “taking our dolls and dishes and going home” really an option? Even if it were, would splintering the nation guarantee a more democratic polity?
Canada, as a nation state has several levels of government – all under the heel of the same global power – all looking to unload onto the layer below, the limitations imposed from above. Shredding the nation state would, in fact, play into the hands of the corporate power out to weaken and undermine the nation state, in pursuit of total, global hegemony.
Today’s solutions must take into account the complexity of modern social organization and provide a comprehensive approach. We can’t afford to go on just scratching where it itches – we’ve got to get to the root cause and deal with it. Otherwise, we are easy prey to the tactic of divide and conquer.
Today, as never before, democracy can’t come piecemeal. It has to be systemic – not hit-and-miss!
There is an imperative and immediate need to design a truly democratic system that will reflect fundamental, democratic principles in an all of its characteristics, at every level of government. There is an encouraging outpouring of ideas around that project. It is going on!
We mustn’t blame the victims! Attributing the lack of support from the masses to the “loss of a sense of decency” or ruptured intelligence underestimates the problem. This brings into focus what should be our greatest concern – the fact that a candidate like Doug Ford could garner such support! Ford is not the problem. He is a symptom.
The root cause of bad government and stunted democracies is society’s failure to prepare the electorate to function effectively in a democracy.
How can we better equip the electorate to endorse and maintain a truly democratic society?
We can take some cues from those in power. Those in power depend on apathy and ignorance, to stay in power. They pro-mote these characteristics in multifarious ways – control of the education system (chiefly through underfunding), ownership of the media….
I was once driven to think, by my Grade 9 English teacher, Miss Isobel Thomas, when she commented, that, while one certainly had the right to one’s own opinion, that opinion wasn’t worth much unless it was an informed opinion.
“Thus, in 1973, the Trilateral Commission was founded by David Rockefeller,
