By: Waleed Aslam

Why did Hamiltonians elect a mayor they once kicked out?

On Oct. 27, Hamiltonians cast their ballot and chose their old mayor as their new mayor. Eisenberger previously served as mayor from 2006-2010. Although it did not come as a surprise to many of us, Fred’s victory is interesting because it came at the cost of a former defeat.

Why is it that Fred Eisenberger was voted in again with a 43.1 percent of the vote? I cannot analyze this question from every Hamiltonian’s perspective, but as a young adult, I can speculate as to why Fred was an eligible candidate.

The stress that Fred places on transforming Hamilton into a thriving community is critical to young Hamiltonians looking for professional work in their city. With two world-renowned educational facilities in our backyard, Hamilton is producing accomplished graduates. A majority of the students attending McMaster University and Mohawk College are from different parts of Canada and the world, but we also have a very large number of local students.

Many of these local students are forced to travel to Toronto and even relocate there for work. Although mayoral candidates did not outline a concrete plan to address this issue in their platforms, Fred demonstrated an understanding of the dire need for new jobs and lines of work in Hamilton that allow us young adults the choice to stay and work in our city.

Local students are aware that poverty is a very real concern here. I visit downtown Hamilton every day in my commute to McMaster and see underprivileged and homeless people roaming the streets. As students struggling in our own right, our future is also uncertain. This is why most of us opposed the gentrification process offered by Bob Bratina because we did not believe in blaming the poor for their poverty. Hence, we connected with Fred’s vision on the need for community driven initiatives to reduce poverty, along with government strategies.

Fred also promised to introduce e-democracy and online voting. This spoke to many students who find it hard to make time for voting amidst midterms and assignments. Nevertheless, the real struggle will still be to engage young students in politics, especially municipal politics.

With the lowest municipal voter turnout Hamilton has ever seen, online, mail-in and telephone voting seem all the more pressing, especially since neighboring towns already have such systems in place. We can only hope that Hamiltonians, young and old alike, rediscover the drive necessary to involve themselves in civic responsibilities and the pride to carry Hamilton in their hearts once again.
Fred Eisenberger’s greatest achievement will not come from solving all the on-going material issues that every city constantly struggles with. His greatest victory will be found in lifting the morale of Hamiltonians and nurturing their hope for this beautiful city.

Q & A with Hamilton’s new mayor, Fred Eisenberger

The Silhouette sat down with Hamilton’s new mayor-elect, Fred Eisenberger, to discuss his time away from politics, the low voter turnout in Hamilton, and his short and long term goals to improve Hamilton. Eisenberger won the mayoral race on Oct. 27 with 49,020 votes, claiming 39.9 percent of the total vote.

After serving as mayor from 2006 to 2010, what have you learned that will influence your role as mayor this time around?

I had the unique and distinct opportunity to be the President and CEO of the Canadian Urban Institute, a research organization that works in countries and municipalities around the world. We had offices in the Ukraine, the Philippines, Jamaica and Ethiopia. I certainly got a strong sense of the challenges that other cities were going through and how they were dealing with them, and some practical applications in terms of what most cities need to do to improve their mobility and communities, and also how they use data.

Going forward with the huge volume of data that we are currently collecting, the Urban Institute was actually leading the way in how to mine that, analyze it, evaluate it, clean it, scrub it, and then make it useful for future decision making. That experience has certainly given me a lot of additional insight into what cities could, should, and need to do in the future.

Do you have any plans to address the low voter turnout (34 percent) in Hamilton?

Yes, during the course of the campaign I said I would like to have the online network voting instituted by the next election. This has been used, online, phone-in, dial-in or mail-in, or all of the above, so that accessibility to voting is vastly increased. It also requires a discussion with the school board in terms of educating kids from grade 1 right through grade 12 on every election, on the candidates and get them to vote through every election between grades one and grade 12. I think voting is a learned behaviour, and either you learn it at school or you learn to take that responsibility from your parents, and maybe people do, but obviously 60 percent or more of the population does not. So it’s something that we have to teach…and I think it has to happen in the schools and I want to have a discussion with the school board in terms of making that a required part of the curriculum.

What are your main priorities for the next few months?

Obviously staffing up for the mayor’s office, sitting down with Council and looking at our strategic direction and getting a clear buy-in in terms of either affirming or adjusting the strategic direction depending on what Council wants to do, including staff. Having a process developed for public transportation, through the course of the campaign I talked about a citizen’s jury process to look at all the evidence around public transit, BRT, LRT, just adding more busses, and make a recommendation through Council what they believe is the best course of action is for the city.

I did talk about starting or restarting the Vision 2020 exercise that was done about 25 years ago. It really talks about a community strategic and buy-in and I want to get that started sooner than later. If you look up Vision 2020, which is kind of the model we’ve been working from for the last 25 years, it’s clearly time to re-do that process. It brings in all people from all sectors and it breaks down the entire community in terms of different sectors and different priorities. I think the community at large needs to provide direction to the city for the next 20 or 30 years in terms of what they would like Hamilton to be.

What do you hope to accomplish by the end of your four-year term?

A lot. I mean, clearly public transportation is a big issue. I’m confident that we are going to have this sorted out and with any luck, a clear direction and maybe some shovels in the ground as a result of whatever transit proposal we pick.

Economic development continues to be the biggest issue for the city, the loss of commercial industrial tax space over the last 30 to 50 years has really put the pressure on the residential tax space and we need to turn that around. We need more job opportunities in our city. I would like to think that at the end of the four-year term we have made a significant dent in growing our commercial industrial tax space, filling up our industrial parks, and hopefully starting to work on the airport growth district as an opportunity for additional growth, as well as the brown fields.

Lastly I would say that I would like a pretty clear direction in a waterfront development corporation put in place for the CN lands and the steward street lands along the west harbourfront.

I’m looking forward to getting started December 1st, and I think it’s an exciting time. We’re going to have the PanAm games happening next year and Hamilton is certainly on the up swing and we just need to keep the momentum going.

On Feb. 3, Hamilton Health Sciences, a billion-dollar consortium of hospitals and health care providers, got a new boss.

Rob MacIsaac left Mohawk College, after five years as the school’s President, to take the helm of Ontario’s second-largest healthcare system.

MacIsaac came into the role with considerable experience as a leader in public service and a history of successful management but no healthcare experience.

“It’s a big learning curve for me but I’m enjoying it. There is lots of great support here,” he said. “In the early going, the best strategy is to listen and learn, so that’s what I’ve been doing.”

He continued “The board obviously didn’t hire me because of medical expertise. They hired me to lead the organization and those [leadership] are skills I’ve been working on for a long long time.”

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MacIsaac also notes that his experience in public service will be valuable.

“I’ve been working in public service for about 20 years. I have a lot of skills that I bring from those other public service jobs into this job,” he said. “I enjoy policy and I enjoy trying to make my community a better place—that’s what brought me here.”

Before becoming the President of Mohawk, he also served as the Chair of GO Transit and Presto operator Metrolinx. Before that, he was a City Councillor and then Mayor of Burlington.

Depending on performance, MacIsaac will earn between $540,000 and $650,000 annually. This is not, at all, far off from the salary of outgoing CEO Murray Martin who took home $647,465 in 2012.

The job will not be without its challenges. MacIsaac identifies two major issues that he, and the rest of the healthcare industry, will have to deal with in the coming years.

“We have the emergence of two mega-trends…we have a rapidly aging population and at the same time the provincial government is running a deficit,” he said.

Meeting the needs of an older population on a potentially smaller budget will be the biggest test for the industry, according to MacIsaac.

Despite the challenges, and still learning the ebbs and flows of healthcare world, MacIsaac is optimistic about his tenure as CEO.

“I’m really excited about the job. I think it’s going to be a challenge. It’s a wonderful opportunity,” MacIsaac told the Spectator.

 

Randall Andrejciw
The Silhouette

 

By now, you’ve heard more than enough about Toronto mayor Rob Ford’s various struggles. If not, chances are you live on campus, without easy access to decent Wi-fi.

The media would have you believe that Rob Ford is the worst thing to happen to Toronto since Maple Leaf Gardens was desecrated by partially becoming a Loblaws store.

According to many, the apocalypse is upon Toronto and, by extension, all of Canada because one mayor of one city has a drinking problem for which he is seeking help, which once (as far as we know) led to smoking crack. But when I look past the drinking, drug use, and generally boorish behaviour of Rob Ford, I see that he is not a bad politician. He has done most of the things he promised, whether you like those things or not.

He built his name on personally responding to his constituents, going so far as to give out his personal cell phone number. So why, then, are the media demanding Rob Ford’s head on a platter?

Is it because Ford has lied about certain incidents in his personal life? Maybe, but since when has honesty been a required trait of a politician? Many a politician has been caught in a lie about certain dark episodes outside of their political life. Bill Clinton comes to mind – he enjoys high popularity ratings even after he was caught in a lie about cheating on his wife with an intern. So clearly, the media doesn’t always make an issue of a politician’s honesty or lack thereof. Yet they do this to Ford.

Is it because of his substance use issues? Hardly. After all, the media gave a free pass to Justin Trudeau when he admitted to using illegal drugs while in office. Trudeau’s response that marijuana should be legalized ensured that the mainstream media glossed over the fact that an elected official used illegal drugs while in office.

George Smitherman, Ford’s main rival in the 2010 election, hardly caused a stir when he admitted a past drug addiction, and won the endorsement of the Toronto Star. So clearly, breaking Canada’s drug laws while in office hasn’t been sufficient grounds for the media to persecute a politician – unless it’s Rob Ford.

Could the media possibly dislike Rob Ford because of his tax–cutting, infrastructure–building platform? Maybe they do not like that his power base is largely in the middle–class suburbs? This seems like a better possibility. Simply put, the mainstream media simply cannot tolerate the fact that Rob Ford is a regular guy, not a downtown liberal elite.

To be fair, Ford is a very polarizing individual; not many Torontonians feel neutral about him.

However, their absolute dislike of the man and their blatant disregard for his privacy, fed by the left–wing faction of Toronto City Council, inflames the masses with the same anti–Fordism. Never mind that Ford was democratically elected and that his approval rating is higher than Barack Obama’s; to read a Toronto newspaper these days is to hear that all of Toronto wants the mayor out of office. This fact is not true, and with good reason.

Rob Ford is not a bad mayor.

Perhaps if the media were to get off his back, the man’s message would reach the public, unfiltered and honest. Maybe Ford would have an easier time restructuring his life if media were not hounding him constantly.

But allowing Rob Ford some normalcy will not make very good news, will it?

Andrew Terefenko

Opinions Editor

 

Thirty-three years. Twelve consecutive terms. That is the extent of the ongoing reign of Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion, and an uncontested mayoral blitzkrieg like that must beg the question: just how did she do it, and can it be done again?

It’s easy to wrap the argument up and blame her ancient incumbency on poor opposition, apathetic voters and good old-fashioned citizen loyalty, but I think it comes down to her core ideologies as a politician. She feels that a city should be run like a business, with careful management of finances. Additionally, much like a business, she says a city should be marketed, its value shown off to the country at large in an effort to gain lasting appeal.

This is the dividing line between a successful mayor and a political activist, which most other mayoral candidates seem to be. Take Hamilton’s very own mayor, Bob Bratina, for example. He ran a small campaign centered on his trustworthiness and family values, yearning to service the most decrepit neighbourhoods of the Steel City. I think these are admirable, respectable qualities in a leader, but they are the same qualities you see in every candidate, in every election, every few years.

Hazel stands out from the crowd because she barely campaigns, she maintains a no-nonsense aura in her political demeanor and from the few times I have personally met her, comes off as a legitimately likeable human being who would check on me if I was keeling over in a busy intersection. It is that very likeability that makes it hard to admit this: it is time for her mayoralty to end.

There is no doubt in my mind that she could go for a thirteenth, fourteenth or even twentieth consecutive term if she made a play for it, and it would hurt the GTA in the long run. The entire thought process behind having fixed terms and frequent elections is to have a frequent influx of new ideas and reevaluation of incumbent leaders. Mississauga residents have gotten to a point of no return, so content with a stable, unaggressive leader that they are certain to maintain a level of sameness, at the expense of lasting progress and young ideas.

They are voting for Hazel for the sake of legacy, for maintaining the title of one of the longest serving elected political leaders in history. There’s no clearer indication to me that this is a problem than the mere fact that in the face of a very clear conflict of interest, where Hazel allegedly threw around her mayoral clout to put millions of dollars into her contractor son’s pocket, she still maintains the same unchallenged level of popularity that she’d had for three decades.

She is standing in the way of less popular but completely legitimate candidates who can take the steps needed to actually worry about their popularity and make the changes that citizens want. She is setting an ugly standard for future mayors across the entirety of Southern Ontario, one of widespread blind support.

Look no further than Toronto to see an example of the opposite end of this spectrum. Rob Ford is about as unpopular as mayors get, so he gets challenged early and often on many of his initiatives. His TTC plan was shut down in what seemed like mere minutes, but isn’t that a good thing? A plan that Toronto probably couldn’t shoulder in the long run was turned down because Ford was not revered as a god walking among us, unlike Hazel. An unpopular mayor needs to fight for his or her ideas, while a popular one will let protests be drowned in the cheers of the masses.

This is not a condemnation of McCallion, but a call for citizens to carefully criticize their voting thought processes, and not vote with their hearts. Don’t get me wrong, I have loved weathering the storm that was Hurricane Hazel, but all natural disasters have to end eventually, before they do rampant, irreparable damage.