… because you might get something that you didn’t ever really want.

Case in point for the Ward 29 (Toronto Danforth) councillor, right-of-centre opposition notable and former deputy mayor: Staff Report EX20.1 on the May 5, 2008 Executive Committee Agenda, “Enhancing Streets to Homes Service to Address the Needs of People who are Street Involved, Including Those Who Panhandle.”

This report is a direct answer to Ootes’ request, made at Executive Committee last year, that the city please do something about panhandlers asking for coin in the city’s downtown core. Ootes argued that panhandlers ought be kept from those areas, and he was joined by various downtown business owners who said the same thing.

Enter Phil Brown, Toronto’s top shelter bureaucrat, with a solution that’s a little more… in keeping with the culture at City Hall. The bottom line: spend about $5 million more a year to help a population of 400 or so people who panhandle - most of whom, as it turns out, are desperately poor men, on average 38 years old, and who have been on the streets for as long as 20 years taking in about $25 a day.  There will be no area bans on panhandling that doesn’t break any other laws, no public relations pushes to urge people not to give coins to panhandlers. Just some help, through an expanded Streets to Home program.

Ootes, as you might imagine, was less than ecstatic. Reached at home Friday after the press briefing to which he did not seem to have been invited, the councillor admitted that, absent a working fax machine, he hadn’t been able to peruse the report. But on hearing the gist of it, he said:

“Throw more money at it that’s going to solve our problems? I don’t think so. I’m all for the Streets to Home program. I think it’s been effective in many instances, but this report focusses on the so-called legal panhandlers which are the passive ones. It doesn’t address the illegal ones because they leave that for the police to deal with it. I don’t know what this is going to do to solve the problem other than spending more money. I think what is needed is for people to stop giving to panhandlers and the mayor needs to say that: stop giving to panhandlers.”

My partner just called, and told me she caught some kids on our lawn, picking up old coffee cups left behind by the snow.  When one of the more law-abiding of the little neat-freaks pointed out that they were on private property, my partner opened the window and hollered ‘Thank You!’

Of course, it was the 20 Minute Cleanup at work.

So if you’ll all excuse me, I’m going to go out and get me some litter…

Ward 2 (Etobicoke North) Councillor Rob Ford has taken a lot of heat this week for that thing about the “orientals” and the “dogs” and the “sleeping by their machines” and the “they’re taking over” comment. So much so that you’d think that everything the good councillor had otherwise been maintaining a respectful silence through the March meeting of Toronto Council.

Not so, not so.

For instance, just before Councillor Ford started talking about the hard-working folk of the Pacific Rim, he took on the thorny question of what value religious holidays:

“Some people are bringing up religion. We’re all of the same religion ladies and gentlemen, when it comes to money. I’ll guarantee that. I know that for a fact. Okay? We have so many different cultures so many races, so many religions, how can we start saying one day’s more important than the other? How about the Jewish holidays, Muslim holidays? Christian holidays? I may be a Christian but you gotta respect everybody’s holidays now.”

Or a day earlier, when Toronto Council was debating whether to allow condominiums to be built next to the St. Basil’s church off Bay Street, against the wishes of parishoners:

“It’s frustrating. When people say there’s nothing that can be done I disagree. I guess people can ignore the residents that oppose it now but at election time I hope they understand and remember what happened today. That’s the only thing that politicians understand is votes.”

And after the parishoners gave Ford a hearty round of applause, and Speaker Sandra Bussin was on her way to shutting them down and then councillor Ford:

“And we need a new mayor! And we need a new council!”

Usually, Ward 2 (Etobicoke North) Councillor Rob Ford can be counted on to serve as Toronto Council’s right-wing conscience - if that conscience is an angry one prone to inappropriate outbursts.

Not so today, when council turned its eye to the idea of letting stores stay open on holidays. Ford, a dyed-in-the-wool free marketeer, was a font of sunshine and joy. However, being Rob Ford, he still managed to be an inappropriate one.

While explaining in expansive detail why he thought stores should be able to stay open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, the councillor from the west end of the city turned his eyes east. East to the “Orient,” as he described it.

“Those Oriental people work like dogs,” said Ford, to a stunned-silent city hall. “They work their hearts out. They are workers non-stop. They sleep beside their machines. That’s why they’re successful in life… I tell you. Oriental people. They’re slowly taking over.”

It was Ward 33 (Don Valley East) Councillor Shelley Carroll who corrected the delighted Councillor Ford.

“If I could remind Councillor Ford - in the words of Margaret Cho, ‘carpets are oriental. People are Asian.’ Just for the record.”

And if I might make the point: dogs are nothing like Asian people, or indeed any other people. Even in flights of doubtless kindly-intended rhetoric.

Or gullibility?

One might come to either conclusion, in the wake of the release of the report from the Mayor’s Panel on Fiscal Sustainaiblity last week.  In my February 23 City Views column, I came down in favour of the former. But given Mayor David Miller’s rather schizoid reception of the private sector outside critique of city government, it’s a lot less clear.

Miller’s first assessment of the report was to tout it as a vindication of government in Toronto. But he followed that by unambiguously accepting the entirety of the report, which also included some sharp criticism of the way the city runs: a dysfunctional political culture,  inefficient labour relations, and hundreds of millions of dollars in untapped assets were just a few of the areas the panel focussed on.

Charitably, one might think that the mayor’s initial reaction was an exercise in glass-half-full politics, to wash down the bitter pill that he would have to swallow in having to deal with those recommendations that might not jibe with his own agenda.

Less charitably, one might suspect that a year from now, the mayor will only recall this report for the good things it says and conveniently forget all the bad, and privately thank the panelists for helping him get the land transfer tax and vehicle registration tax approved last year at council.

Obviously, we’re going to have to watch the mayor closely over the next month or two to see which interpretation is the right one. If the report disappears - well, charity loses.

To make this into more than an exercise in political spin, the report will need a champion - and it will need the support of council. The best way to do this is to embed the recommendations in a strategic plan - something the city currently lacks - for the remainder of the term.  Miller shouldn’t waste time in seeing this take place. Establishing a special committee of council to go through the report and draft that plan, for approval by council within the calendar year, would go a long way to showing some sincerity.