A rose by any other name

Call it: the law of unintended consequences.  A few weeks ago, when Toronto's city council was trying to quarantine scandal-plagued Mayor Rob Ford, it took away most of his powers, including the power to direct the city's response in the event of an emergency.  But it neglected to remove his power actually to declare an emergency.  Big mistake!

Last week, the city and its surrounding area, known as the GTA (Greater Toronto Area), took the brunt of a huge ice storm.  About one third of the homes in the city itself lost power, transit and roads were thrown into chaos, and so on.  Seven days later, a few poor souls are still freezing in the dark, but the response of the emergency services to the crisis has been commendable, with hundreds of linemen giving up their Christmases, power workers coming in from as far way as Manitoba, and so on.

But Mayor Ford has refused all entreaties to declare the situation to be an emergency.  And why?  Because as soon as he did so, he'd have been sidelined, since all the emergency powers now belong to his funereally-visaged deputy, Norm Kelly.  Instead, Ford has been hogging all the TV time, very obviously trying to emulate Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, who became a national cult figure earlier in the year when his city was flooded.

Then again, does it really matter if an emergency is formally declared?    It doesn't make any difference what you call it, as long as you do something about it, and everything possible has been done over the past week to get the lights back on.  There's certainly no reason to think that Ford himself has any discernible skills as an electrician -- something for which, given his weight, the city's utility poles must be profoundly grateful.

Interestingly, Ford is not the only local politician to be blasted by the media as the crisis has dragged on. The afore-mentioned Norm Kelly scandalized the press by disappearing off to Florida at the height of the blackout.  His critics were barely mollified when it emerged that he was only away for 24 hours, and had travelled only for the purpose of visiting his seriously ill sister.

And just down the lake in Oshawa,  Mayor John Henry had the temerity to fly off on vacation to Jamaica, just hours before the ice storm hit and took out the power in parts of his city.  He has rejected any suggestion that he should come home early.  Like Messrs Ford and Kelly, Mayor Henry could have made no practical contribution to solving the crisis, but there's every possibility that the self-righteous electors of Oshawa will punish him when the municipal elections roll around next October.  Still, at least that means he'll be able to take his vacation next winter in peace.