The Mayor Who Cried Wolf

Do you, dear reader, fully understand yet how much of a liability Mayor Eddie Francis is to the City of Windsor. Two of the most powerful Ministers in the Provincial Government are setting up a meeting in Toronto for some of the most successful Windsor business people to meet with their colleagues there to convince them to invest in Windsor and our Mayor threatens to sue the Government.

What kind of message does that deliver about this City and our local politicians? What kind of message does this send to people about investing here? Who needs this kind of aggravation from a City that apparently is prepared to fight a lawsuit to prevent billions of dollars of infrastructure investment that this City desperately needs for the jobs to be created?

It's all a joke anyway. Eddie has no intention of suing so he should stop posturing before he completely destroys this City. He would be the star witness in the lawsuit and he could not take that kind of pressure. Can you imagine if the City lost and he was forced to take the blame as the Senior Levels pulled out and 12,000 jobs disappeared!

If he won't back off, then it's time that Councillors stood up to him as they did with ex-Mayor Hurst for the good of the Community.

You know the Aesop Fable...the little shepherd boy who cried out wolf so many times that the villagers no longer believed him. When a wolf really came, no one came at all to help and the wolf ate his flock.

Isn't our Mayor the little shepherd boy. I think I have lost track of how many times he or one of the Councillors threatened litigation against the Senior Levels. Why even the nonviolent Councillor Mahatma said

• "David Brister said the city could be forced to sue the government and tie up the border plan in the courts if route concerns are not addressed. "

In each case, nothing happened. Fortunately for us and the jobs we would have lost.

In the Greenlink campaign, we can see language that obviously David Estrin helped prepare. Language such as

• "input from the affected community is a legislated requirement of the Environmental Assessment Act."
• "the public must be given an opportunity to contribute their opinion and influence the outcome."

After all, as we know, at least according to the Mayor

• "When Windsor speaks on the issue, the decision makers MUST listen."

Eddie ought to know that the DRIC people have been listening... what were all of those multi-dozens of sessions all about. Of course, what went in one ear went out the other. Their position will be simply that they took into account what Schwartz said and what Greenlink was all about in arriving at their decision.

When I was in private practice, I never threatened litigation unless my client was prepared to do so. I had no intention of jeopardizing my credibility as a lawyer by making phony threats.

Isn't that what our Mayor is doing... talking, talking, talking but not acting. It is almost predictable what he's going to say. Right after the DRIC announcement, we saw comments such as:

• "Council's Toronto lawyer, David Estrin, who decades ago played a role in developing Ontario's environmental assessment regulations, called into question the process by DRIC to reach its final feeder road recommendation.
  
  He cited the lack of any supporting data Thursday -- although DRIC claims that will be released in weeks to come.
  
  "It's inappropriate to announce conclusions without providing the data or analysis on which those conclusions are based," Estrin said.
  
  "They have skewed the process. It's completely unprecedented and in a bad way. It's not the way you do an environmental assessment. It's supposed to be a transparent, rational, participatory process."


• "Councillors have given orders to its legal team to present a report on options to challenge the DRIC plan, which they feel does not do enough to improve quality of life for local residents.
  
  "A lot of councillors feel passionate about the issue. They feel betrayed," said Mayor Eddie Francis on Friday. "A lot of them believe in a better solution and all are looking at ways how to achieve that."


• "Windsor’s city councillors threatened legal action Thursday night"
  
  "What council has expressed is they clearly are pissed,” Francis said. “It’s not GreenLink and council wants to explore all their options — legal, technical, community — all of that."

It almost makes one think that Eddie IS serious this time. Of course, most of you have not seen this comment in this story in Today's Trucking magazine:

• "The mayor told Todaystrucking.com weeks ago that he would consider legal action if he wasn't convinced DRIC followed its own EA mandate to properly consider the solution that best protects the health of citizens and the environment.
  
  Though, local media reports in Windsor stating city council is threatening legal action are premature, Francis told us. Until all the details are published in the EA, there's little the city can do. "We would be having a different conversation today if the EA was completed."
  
  And that would be…? "It would be about what our next step is and (if) we unwind the process. It's an option—one we want to avoid—but an option.
  
  The EA will be completed by December 2008, DRIC officials said at the press conference. It will then be submitted to the Ontario Environment Ministry -- which could take up to eight months to review it -- and clear a number of other regulatory hurdles."

So you see all of this lawsuit talk by our Mayor is all for local public consumption. He's not going to do anything. He will huff and he will puff but he won't blow the house down. He frankly does not have the guts to do so. The Star Editorial warned today:

• "Litigation would waste time and resources and delay a project promising to yield thousands of jobs. That doesn't mean litigation should be avoided at all costs, but it means litigation comes with a steep cost best avoided."

The Mayor and any Councillor who started a lawsuit would be run out of town.

Of course, dealing with lack of guts, we saw this easy with way out being put forward as a trial balloon by Councillor Lewenza:

• "Among them is Ken Lewenza Jr., who suggested a referendum might be a good idea, so local residents can decide if GreenLink is a preferred plan over the DRIC recommendation. GreenLink offers about twice as much tunnelling of the corridor.
  
  "It's come to a point where council has to make a decision on what's in front of us," said Lewenza on Friday.
  
  "Absolutely, I think we have to go to constituents. Have a decision made by the community to give us specific direction."

In the end you see, none of them have the nerve. They are all running scared. They have to try and work us up so that we take the blame for litigation and not them.

The results are already in. In a recent CKLW poll, about 60% of the respondents said that

• "Windsor-Essex Parkway [was] an acceptable alternative to GreenLink"

DRIC will take even more comfort in these numbers from the City's Pres Release:

• "If you have not received a GreenLink postcard by mail, or if additional members of your household would like to show their support by filling one out, please come to one of our Customer Care Centres or to City Hall to obtain your cards. Then fill them out and return them (free of charge, postage paid) to the City of Windsor. We have already received over 14,000 replies!"

Since the postcard only gives the option to support Greenlink, the assumption that DRIC will make and will state is that the balance of the respondents, 66,000 households if 80,000 postcards were sent out, are opposed to Greenlink!

In the end, the only conclusion that I can draw is that our Mayor is a sheep in wolf's clothing. All bluff, no stuff. It is time that someone else on Council become the responsible Voice of Council.

And that is no Aesop's Fable.