The Speech And Job, Jobs, Jobs,

Windsor is desperately in need of resuscitation. The Mayor's State of the City speech will not do it if the Star story is correct today. There is only one man who can save Windsor from disaster! Will he act? We must force him to do so.

Is Eddie's State of the City speech tonight nothing more than the excuse to start the huge ad blitz for branding Windsor but calling it a campaign for job creation instead? Remember we were supposed to be spending all this money for Greenlink but I have not seen one advertisement so far.

Coming only about a week before the Provincial Budget, is this Eddie's way of pressuring and getting back at the Minister of Finance, Dwight Duncan, who said "THE MAYOR IS WRONG. THE MAYOR IS WRONG." There is no doubt that when Dwight said that 7500 jobs were at stake on constructing the border road, that got people's attention including that of the people at City Hall. After all, do you think anyone on Council would want to be blamed if the Senior Levels pulled its money out of town and walked away from here.

Naturally, if there is some money for Windsor in the Budget, guess who will try to get the credit. Does that now mean that if there was money, it will be cut out to spite our Mayor? In other words, you can't play money games with the Finance Minister who holds all the cards and who controls the pot of gold. Eddie should learn that Dwight will not be intimidated by some Windsor Star Editorial if there is nothing in the budget for Windsor. Eddie has no leverage over him since his re-election campaign is years away after Eddie is no longer Mayor.

Truly, there is only one man who can save Windsor from disaster.

He did not listen to me before when I begged him and/or his colleague to switch parties so he could become a Cabinet Minister in the Federal Government since that was the big thing that people were doing in the past. If he had, the border would have been fixed by now and we would be rolling in jobs with the 15,000 new ones created in infrastructure and spin-off.

Well this man has a chance once again, and this may be his last chance, to go down into history in Windsor and to have a legacy for being this City's saviour.

That man is NOT Eddie Francis, our Mayor, because all he does is talk and give speeches but does not act and tries to place the blame elsewhere. The only man that can save Windsor is NDP MP, Joe Comartin.

The gossip is out there that he may not run again for Parliament. If that is the case then he should resign NOW and allow a by-election to take place in Windsor. If that happens, here is what the Prime Minister might do as reported by CTV news as he is doing in another constituency where there is a by-election:

• "Saskatchewan's Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River riding is the one to watch. Joan Beatty, a former provincial NDP cabinet minister and a native woman, is the Liberal candidate in the largely native riding. The Conservative and NDP candidates are also natives...
  
  CTV reporter Caillin Katnich told CTV's Question Period from Prince Albert, Sask. on Sunday that it's hard to get a sense of how the election will go.
  
  "It's really up in the air," he said...
  
  Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in Prince Albert in mid-January to announce the community, hit hard by a pulp mill's closure, would get about $36 million in federal funding from a program designed to help distressed resource communities. The announcement came after campaigning had started in the byelection."

That is how to get cash for Windsor, real money and right now! Had Joe gone already, there would be no doubt whatsoever that the Ford Plant would have received its $30 million. You see it is all election politics before a Federal election.

I wonder if the Mayor has finally figured that out since there seems to have been a recent conversion to job creation. The speech tonight apparently will not be all about THINK BIG dreams for the future as is the usual but about practical bread-and-butter issues.

Only a short year ago, after a Strategic session. Windsor's top priority was "branding" if you can believe that.

• "Mayor Eddie Francis emerged Monday from the last of several priority-setting meetings with one thing on his mind -- improving Windsor's image to outsiders.
  
  "What Windsor has to offer is not being communicated," he said, referring to weekend national news stories highlighting Windsor's economic woes and loss of manufacturing jobs.
  
  Francis said Windsor's strengths have to be packaged and sold to the province and the country if the city hopes to attract jobs, physicians, students and investment.
  
  "Branding is key and it's something that's long overdue."
  
  Council agreed that one of the top seven or eight priorities in the next few years will be to develop "a brand" that will focus on Windsor's strengths -- the waterfront, affordable housing, short commute times -- in an effort to expand the economy and attract new residents...
  
  "The other top priorities will be compiled in a final report to council in a few weeks. They include improving the border, partnering with senior levels of government and the private sector, developing a safe community strategy, improving communications with residents and businesses, collaborating with regional partners and creating a think-tank that would work on attracting investment."

Did you see job creation as part of our priorities? Were any of these strategic priorities accomplished or even started? We now can suspect why a public opinion poll was really taken here recently: to find out what concerns the citizens. My cheapo poll gave the answer loud and clear. Wasn't there one taken just before the last election as well, the results of which we've never seen as far as I know?

If the City paid for the poll, then Eddie can deliver his State of the City speech earlier than ususal before real problems develop here. He can deal with issues respecting jobs if that is what people are concerned about. Then he can say that he has in motion a PLAN to get us jobs.

I wonder if there is about to be a big negative announcement coming that he may know about and if so, what the disatrous news will be---something perhaps with Chrysler? I have no idea

In one Henderson interview between him and the Mayor back in February, the Mayor said:

• "It's too far away," said Francis. "I'm not even thinking about that. [Running for a third term] You focus on your priorities." He said if border issues aren't resolved before election day, Nov. 8, 2010, "we're all going to be in trouble." It would, he said, be devastating for the Windsor economy and bad news for politicians at all levels."

The border seemed to be his main priority as the Voice of Council. Only later in the interview did the Mayor say:

• "There's plenty of time for them to crank it up," said Francis, but right now council needs to stay focused on job-related issues. "I'm begging you as a council to be leaders for this community," he pleaded. "Park the campaigns to the sidelines right now. We should look at everything we do from the perspective of attracting more jobs to this community."

Intersting the border is HIS job while he can blame the jobs on the Council.

Isn't that typical and isn't that what Eddie's speech tonight is all about. He can take the glory in delivering the vision about his PLAN then pass it over to the Development Commission to take the hit if nothing gets done! That's right the Commission who was NOT to be measured by jobs created:

• "Because of the nature of the region’s strategy, traditional performance measures such as the number of new plants attracted, or the number of jobs retained, albeit significant, should not be the primary indicators of success. These could actually be counterproductive by driving the wrong behaviour."

Really, what have they done in a year after spending so much money. It took them almost all the time to realize that it had no brochures to hand out to possible investors. Thank goodness that a credit union put in some cash thereby allowing the Commission to get additional money. I sure hope that Eddie shows a copy of the brochure at the speech tonight.

If the PLAN does not happen then it is not Eddie's fault. It is that of the County. Interestingly the City/County meeting is to take place on Wednesday and I'm sure that Eddie's PLAN will be a big highlight. If by chance the County comes on board, it will be the fault of the Province or the Feds if money is not made available. You remember the Senior Levels don't you... they are our "enemies" who want to impose a $1.6 billion "cheap" solution on us. And yet Eddie wants them to be our Sugar Daddy.

I wonder who the source was who leaked part of the fund story that is in the speech to the Star so that it would get a big headline today. It cannot be the Mayor because he was quoted later on in the story in the Star and also CKLW had an item about this as well. I think that an investigation ought to be undertaken right away to see who is leaking the Mayor's material. I'll be surprised if Councillor Lewenza does not immediately ask for the Integrity Commissioner to be put in place to stop this kind of action.

This whole thing is a joke. Look at the Mayor's comment:

• "the city is prepared to move right away. Somebody's got to make the first move."

What was his big move...flying over to Germany at taxpayer expense to talk to a startup company that might create some jobs in Windsor. Of course what he talked about at first was not what the German company was interested in when they came here. And how many jobs would be created... maybe 50 in three years after they actually get their first airplane so that we could export onions. Now that is job creation. Except the Germans are

• "scouting for business prospects, not just in Windsor, but across Southwestern Ontario and southeast Michigan."

Oh and don't forget about the biodiesel project that the Commission touted recently that would create hundreds of jobs except that Sharp Biofuels stated, if they are the company involved, in Chris Schnurr's BLOG:

• "As for the hundreds of jobs they are way off."

How about all those fantastic IT jobs... I mean the call centre jobs where the City spent almost $200,000 on a parking lot for the employees that is rarely used. If the parking lot is almost empty as A-Channel News reported, does that mean that Sutherland does not have the number of employees that they thought they would? Has Sutherland lost some of its contracts? Has it decided that Windsor is not a good city to work in because of the risk of unionization? Will the facility remain open or will it close? Is this the disastrous news that the Mayor may know about?

There is so much more than I could say about the Star story but I'm not sure how much time you have to read everything and whether in fact the speech will be revised depending on what feedback that Mayor gets after this trial balloon was leaked. Read the Star Forum on this:

http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/story.html?id=b701551d-f1aa-4cbb-bb74-3cb72738addb&k=24383

Here is what the Eddie's game is all about:

• "According to the source, the proposal was born out of a realization that the city needs "new tools, new ideas and a new approach" to reviving a sluggish economy and preventing the losses of jobs and residents who are leaving to pursue opportunities in more prosperous parts of the country."

Ohhhhhhhhh someone had a realization finally! How absurd!

We don't need anything new and the fact that this region has needed to transform itself has been around for years. It is just that the Mayor hasn't been interested before but is forced to be now. After all he's got a high-paying job that allows him to play entrepreneur with taxpayer money.

Our situation could be solved overnight. As I have said so many times before that it is boring already:

• solve the border problem and all of our issues are resolved.

We get 15,000 high-paying jobs that will last for years, we have the time to transition our economy based on our location as the major border crossing point in North America and we have the ability to train people for new jobs based on automotive research and development, medical and educational expertise. And we tell the world:

• WINDSOR IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS!

If I was the Mayor, that is what I would be saying tonight.