The folks who claim to run Toronto City Hall made a surprising, even for them, turn around yesterday. It was expected that the mayor would engineer a climb-down from the proposed 21% increase in ice-rink rental fees deemed necessary only two weeks ago. The furor of all those hockey moms was just too much for local councillors to bear.
The surprise came in the source of replacement funds – the welfare budget. With the Ontario economy facing severe challenges and predictions of a potential recession as common as ice on Toronto’s streets, the mayor is now claiming the city over-budgeted for welfare and can afford to roll-back the allocation.
Is it possible the minions in the mayor’s and budget offices are right about welfare costs and manufactured a rink-fees “crisis” so the mayor could ride to rescue? That kind of thing has been done often enough, although popular belief in these environs is that it was a strategy of Mike Harris Tories more than the altruistic left.
Frankly, I don’t think city hall staffers are that smart. It’s more likely that they know they have a better chance pleading with Queen’s Park for extra funding because they are over-spent on welfare caused by higher than expected unemployment. Going to Queen’s Park to say they can’t afford operate ice rinks isn’t going to get them a lot of sympathy. At least not in a year where, if the forecasts for stormy economic waters are correct, the provincial government will be equally hard-pressed to avoid a deficit.
Whichever, welfare recipients are notoriously low-participation voters. Angry hockey moms on the other hand....
