Gord Perks Is Very, Very Wrong

On Wednesday I wrote an open letter to a few different constituencies regarding the Rob Ford mess.  One of those groups to whom part of it was addressed was that of city councillors on the right side of the spectrum who, while finally acknowledging that Ford has myriad problems, were taking a wait-and-see approach to embarking on any sort of political action against him.  I called them cowards trying to play both ends against the middle so as to maintain deniability that they had turned on their ally mayor should he manage to pull through this crisis and remain in office (or, god forbid, win another election).  I stand by that characterization - I think it's bordering on criminal that these people aren't screaming at the top of their lungs, pounding on tables, rending garments, anything it takes to get the point across that Ford has to go.

One direction from which I did not foresee opposition to taking strong legislative action if possible to remove Ford is the far left.  And then Gord Perks penned a letter to one of his constituents, explaining his decision to sit on his hands and wait for the next election to sort out the mayoral crisis.  The election taking place almost a full calendar year from now.  Perks gave an impassioned defence of the democratic process and its role as the paramount authority on whom should or should not be removed from office.  He made some excellent points about us knowing with whom we were getting into bed before the last election, and about not succumbing to easy, reactive anger when we're dissatisfied with what our elected officials do with the mandate we provide them.

He's also about as wrong as it is possible to be.  Really, truly wrong.  Even dangerously wrong, because he sounds so reasonable in his wrongness.

Let's take his letter piece by piece:

Many people are asking me to work to remove Mayor Ford from office. To the core of my being I believe it should not be up to elected officials to remove each other from office.

This is a valid sentiment to hold, and even admirable in that it's coming from one of said elected officials.  But it is just that - sentiment.  To invoke an absolute like this is to exist in a dream world where all elected officials are motivated by the call of idealism and the desire to further the public good.  One in which we can disagree with their policies but respect that those policies are what put them in office in the first place.  One in which elected officials should never strive to remove their ideological opponents through non-democratic means simply because they disagree with their point of view.   What a wonderful world it would be.

Unfortunately we live in the actual world.  One in which our top elected official is a lying crackhead slowly (although with increasing acceleration) turning our highest municipal chair into a fool's throne.  One in which we are powerless to do anything for the next 11 months to remove this blight from city hall.

There are two components to any elected office.  There is the political component: the furthering of the political agenda set forth by the candidate while running for the position.  But there is also the occupational component: the competent completion of the daily, weekly, monthly, and term-expected tasks set forth in the job description.  It is a city councillor's job to show up for work every day, to attend the meetings of the committees on which he or she sits, to address the concerns of his or her constituents, etc.  It is the mayor's job to be the chief spokesperson for the city.  To further the interests of that city.  To be a trusted example of respectability--a personified representation of the city.  This isn't pie-in-the-sky idealism.  This is the job description.  Otherwise, especially in Toronto where the mayor doesn't have much functional power beyond what a city councillor has, there would be no need for a mayor at all.  If a person isn't doing his job, is in fact acting and doing things contrary to what would make his job possible to do, then he should be fired, period.  This applies to teachers, janitors, doctors and labourers.  Why the hell shouldn't it apply to the mayor?  The guy has been shown to bail on work in the middle of the day to go drink in a park.  The guy can't further economic development by doing the part of his job that entails luring corporate investment to the city because he's an admitted crack smoker and blackout drunk who no one wants to touch with a ten foot pole.  The guy can't do his job anymore.  We're not talking about removing him because we don't like his politics, we're talking about firing an ineffective drunk with a penchant for lying to us, his ostensible employers. That there's no mechanism in place to do so may be an odd quirk of municipal administration in Ontario, but it's also insane.  Who else should we turn to but our elected representatives, the people we chose to speak and act on our behalf, to remedy this situation?

It is axiomatic that in a democracy the community elects its government. It must also be up to the community to remove its government and replace it with another – through elections. Anything that displaces the electorate's power to choose its government is anti-democratic. Further, our system wisely allows for a range of different points of view in government. If we allow elected officials to force each other out of office, we risk having elected officials who oppose the majority view being pushed out of office. History is replete with examples of how bad that is for a society.

History is also replete with examples of elected officials who used their democratically-gifted positions and influence to act in ways contrary to the welfare of the society in which they function.  We already know Ford's broken laws, from conflict-of-interest and campaign finance statutes to the smoking of crack.  Ford supporters love to point out that he hasn't been convicted of a crime (yet).  But in fact, he was found to be in violation of the first two examples I just gave, and we know for a fact he did commit the crime explicit in the third example because he's come right out and said it.  Whether they want to admit it or not, we have a criminal in office, one who has committed some of these infractions to get there in the first place, and some of them by direct result of being there.  We should just turn a blind eye to this wrongdoing--and I stress wrongdoing, as opposed to enacting politically unpopular-with-some policies--because it's "anti-democratic" not to?  Where, then, is your line, Mr. Perks?  If it turns out he gets charged in the Anthony Smith murder, should we just wait around to see if he's convicted before we do something about him speaking for us?  Should the ballot box really be the be-all, end-all authority if we have an accused murderer wearing the chain of office?  If the institution is so laughably diminished by his presence, should we just say "fuck it, we'll deal with it next year?"

Both before and during the previous election, it was clear that Rob Ford was racist, homophobic, and had problems with substance abuse and honesty. Nevertheless he won the election. We, all of us who care about justice and democracy, need to ask ourselves why this happened.

I have what I believe is part of the answer. It is increasingly common for people and institutions to succumb to anger, resentment, and an urge to punish government for real and perceived failings. Ironically, it was this very anger that helped elect Rob Ford Mayor. Recall the relentless attacks he made as a Councillor and mayoralty candidate on factually small but symbolically large uses of Councillor's office budgets, and his mantra about ending the so called "Gravy Train".

This style of politics draws on the slogans of people like Ronald Regan who said "Government is the problem" and Margaret Thatcher who said "There is no alternative". Nonsense! Government is the tool we build together to solve problems. Its precise function is to find alternatives that bring us to a better future. Theirs is a politics of resentment and anger. Reject it.

When we succumb to that anger, important questions about how to build the City we want are lost and forgotten. For the record, I am not immune to this anger. Over three years of resisting the ugliest parts of the Mayor's assault on good governance I have on occasion lost my temper and have twice decided I had to apologise to Council. Frequently, I have to remind myself to step back and count to ten and remember that I am here to build the City. I am not here to get into pointless conflict. It's hard to do, but essential that I do it.

This is the part of Perks' letter that I have the biggest problem with.  He makes what sounds on the surface like an idealistic appeal to take the high road and come together to build a better future.  What it actually says is "you assholes voted for him, now you have to live with him."  Strip away all the rhetoric about rejecting anger and building the City together, and you're left with a councillor essentially blaming us for electing a man we already knew to be an angry, homophobic bigot.  And he's not wrong.  And if that's all this was about--living with the choice we made and the character we knowingly elevated, then he'd be right about that too.  But as I've already mentioned at length, this is about more than that.  We have a mayor who physically can not perform the task with which he's been charged.  He's deceived and manipulated us.  He's seemingly on the verge of a total breakdown.  "We knew what we were getting as far as Ford's political temperament" is a convenient straw man to invoke (and an interesting one for a left-wing city councillor seeing as it's a variation on the defence Ford's own supporters use when claiming he should be allowed to stay) but it's not actually applicable to the situation at hand.  While it's impossible for a lot of us to divorce the man from the politics from the scandals from the ineptitude, we really are only talking about the latter two when we call for his ouster. If David Miller or Jack Layton or Tommy Douglas or any of the politicians over the years that the left has supported and revered had acted so irresponsibly as to make the performance of their core job functions nigh on impossible, the opposition to their continued employment would be just as vociferous.  The dude is a fucking train wreck.  That's not anger or resentment, that's a bald fact that needs to be addressed, not subsumed by some crap about holding our noses, holding hands, and powering through.  The conflict in this case isn't pointless, Mr. Perks.  It's existential.

I want to ask you to count to ten. When you are angry at your government, remember that quick, anger-fuelled solutions usually make problems worse. When a neighbour expresses anger over a real or perceived failure of the government or public servants, speak up and remind them that so much of what holds our society together depends on those same public servants. They work to make sure that we have the comforts and community we all enjoy. When government does not solve the social problems that bring suffering to neighbourhoods, resolve not to grumble but instead to learn, participate, and organize for a better government.

Most of all spend some portion of every month – even just one hour – doing political work to ensure that we don't elect angry anti-democratic leadership to govern this wonderful City that is our home.

Not to harp too much on the same thing over and over, but this completely misses the point--while there are a lot of people who are taking a lot of glee in the fact that a politician they so vehemently disagree with ideologically is taking such a spectacular public fall, that's just background noise to the real issue which is that we have a non-functional, detrimental human being elected to our highest office.  It's interesting that Perks himself calls our leadership "anti-democratic" in a letter in which he's holding democratic principles up as the ultimate ideal.  If our leader is anti-democratic, then by Perks' own argument shouldn't we do something about it?  Our councillors closing their eyes and finding workarounds to keep the mechanism of government functional is not preservation of the democratic process on which we base our electoral decisions, its subversion of it.  Voting is essentially a contract.  We agree to participate in the process, and in exchange we trust that the process--maybe not the people, but the process itself--remains viable.  Right now that viability is hanging by a thread.  We're in uncharted territory, these people don't even know how to address the problem, let alone solve it.  Waiting around for the next election is not a solution it's the absence of one.  When everything else is cut away it's an abdication of Perks' and every other councillor who refuses to do something's responsibility to make sure that the system we all bought into is functioning properly.  Leaving a malignancy like Ford in the middle of that system renders it impossible to achieve that functionality.

So enough with the soul-searching bromides, Mr. Perks.  Do your damn job and fix the problem, now, with whatever resources you can muster.

Seriously, do your job.