Toronto Mayor Rob FordCould the biggest city in Canada survive without public libraries, parks or zoos?
The questions shifted from the stuff of partisan rants to political reality this week as a series of reports commissioned from consulting firm KPMG on core services in Toronto were released, which prompted waves of online hysteria until the critics went numb.
Mayor Rob Ford, who promised an expenditure reckoning would follow after he was elected in October, avoided direct commentary on the suggestions of which areas Toronto could most realistically cut.
Instead, he stayed on message for the three days of the monthly council meeting, which included being the only politician in the room who consistently voted against all community grants.
Municipal labour costs are four times higher than they need to be, suggested Ford on Friday, along with the assertion there isn't enough municipal work to justify current budgets.
Buyout packages are reportedly in the process of being offered to 17,000 city workers in order to balance out a $774 million budget shortfall.
During the week, social media outlets boiled over with a level of rage against the mayor not seen since former premier Mike Harris brought his "Common Sense Revolution" to Ontario in 1995.
Those plans included consolidating Toronto and its five boroughs into one megacity. Many structural issues related to amalgamation were never sorted out.
A call for Ford to be impeached, which can't technically be done in Ontario, has given frustrated residents an outlet to express their distaste for his approach to policy through a petition.
And a more genuine campaign, against the prospect of the Toronto Public Library being privatized, has drawn viral attention from users of the world's biggest and busiest urban library system.
The mayor got the most support for his rejection of two public health nurses supplied by the province at no cost to the city. Most councillors believed it was a short-term political ploy from a Liberal government up for re-election in October.
Still, the rejection of the medical support coincided with the KPMG audits that concluded Toronto could save money if it abdicated maintenance of many nature-related attractions, cut back on grass-cutting and tree-planting, phase out its support of daycare and long-term care homes and merge its fire department and emergency medical services.
Many of these proposals may never be taken seriously. But the mayor hasn't done much to convince residents he doesn't agree with them.
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