We are at a peculiar moment in history, and we should all take a moment to savour it. For the first time this century, and in this province, the Red Tories are in power.
It’s been a long time — properly, the until-now extinct breed of Progressive Conservative government last saw power in 1985, when former Premier Bill Davis left Queen’s Park and eventually Mike Harris’ hard-right Tories changed the conversation on the right, seemingly for good.
Well, that’s all changed.
On Tuesday afternoon at city hall, John Tory made it clear that the Red Tories are back, and will be running things in Toronto for the next four years. Just to make it clear, he brought along his old friend and one-time boss Bill Davis – still demonstrably capable of delivering the kind of blistering charm offensive that kept Ontario in the hands of the Tories for four decades last century.
Davis and his predecessors maintained power by carefully balancing the needs of a post-war Ontario with its limitations, running as perfectly as they might up the middle of the political road: socially progressive and fiscally conservative. Also, as Davis put it afterwards to reporters, it doesn’t hurt to be a bit "bland."
Tory went to some lengths to make it clear that he’s taking more than a page from Davis’ playbook. In a lengthy inaugural address, Tory made brief mention of the need to find efficiencies in the budget and spent a lot of time speaking passionately about the need to mitigate the poisonous effects of income inequality, racial divisions and other ills that have divided the city.
"None of us can be satisfied with the snapshot that has emerged in recent years, of a city unfairly and unjustly divided by income, class and geography. None of us can rest easy knowing that 150,000 Toronto kids are growing up in poverty — or that 15 neighbourhoods have poverty rates of 40 per cent or more," Tory said.
Listening to Tory speak, after hearing from anti-violence advocate Louise Russo talk from her wheelchair, about the importance of bringing council together, it was impossible not to contrast the event with former mayor Ford’s inaugural, where he snickered while Don Cherry told "pinkos" on council how they’d better watch out because there was a new guy in town.
The new guy this time went out of his way to avoid such provocations, even as he laid out some challenges, to work together to deal with Toronto’s problems in a clear-headed and non-ideological way.
It remains to be seen whether this old-fashioned approach to politics will yield anything other than more of the same. But it’s an optimistic note on which to begin things. After all we’ve been through, a little Red Tory blandness is more than a little tempting.