Living In A World Of Delusion

Relax everybody. Gord Henderson has not lost it. His column “Francis relieved” was designed to tell us the thinking at City Hall. It was designed to show us how out of touch our Mayor is with the reality on the border file. It was specifically designed for our Councillors to tell them that they better start doing something pretty soon or this City’s future is doomed.

Henderson is telling them that March, 2003 better start coming sooner rather than later. No wonder Eddie did not have his Special Council Meeting tonight. He knew that he would lose out on any votes that were taken from the point of view of Councillors. He suspected as well that he would be slammed and blamed by the Citizens who were prepared to use the Procedural Bylaw to speak. Tonight would have been the night when Eddie’s border unity control over Council ended for the public to see. Eddie could not tolerate that and so the meeting was cancelled.

The real risk to this City is that the Senior Levels have had enough of our Mayor’s shenanigans and decide to pull out completely since the next Senior Level elections will not take place for years now.

Pull out, blame it on Eddie to finish his and the Councillors' careers off and then come back after his second term is over, just before the next Senior Level elections.

Just think about it... the Province is so contemptuous of our Mayor that changes were made to Greenlink and the City did not even know about it. When were the changes announced ... right before the Special Council meeting. As CKLW reported

• "PARKWAY CHANGES PLANNED 2008-10-16 06:42:15
  
  Changes have been proposed for the Windsor-Essex Parkway, the controversial access route to a new border crossing in west Windsor. Unveiled last night, they include shifting a section of the Parkway 50 to 70 meters further away from existing homes between Huron Church and Matchette Roads. The move would also preserve an extra 25 acres of the Spring Garden area.
  
  City of Windsor officials have not yet seen the proposed changes. Parkway planning manager, Dave Wake, is hoping to set up a meeting in the near future."

Let me tell you how out of touch that City Hall’s thinking is on the border file. The obvious objective that the Mayor has is to divide and conquer the Province and the Federal Government.

There is no doubt at all that the relationship between those two levels of Government is not the best in the world. The Border file is only a small part of the animosity between the two levels that has been going on for a very long time.

One of the reasons for the Province’s concern is at the Windsor/ Detroit Gateway is vital for the Province and its trade with the United States but the Conservatives are more interested in the Pacific Gateway. The Province’s attempt to have a significant influence over the border crossing was decisively rebuffed by the Federal Government. Bill C-3 hurt the Province very badly and put them in their place.

That is why Eddie at certain times will snub the Federal Government and at other times will love them. Whatever works for him, he will try and do. The idea is to try and convince the Province that Eddie is snuggling up to the Feds so that the Province will do whatever it takes to get Eddie back on side---like to agree with whatever it is that he wants to do with respect to Greenlink as an example.

Here is how out of touch Eddie has to be if what Gord says is true:

• “Mayor Eddie Francis had some extra bounce in his step this week after seeing most of Windsor's federal allies on the $5-billion border file re-elected while perceived foes were rebuffed.”

Do you think this matters:

• “the landslide victories of New Democratic incumbents Brian Masse in Windsor West and Joe Comartin in Windsor-Tecumseh, both firm supporters of the city in its battle with the province for a first-class border fix, validate the city's insistence on additional tunnelling.”

DUH…who cares what FEDERAL MPs think when the building of the road is a PROVINCIAL matter! It is what Sandra and Dwight think, or rather the Premier, that is important and they are not supportive of what the City wants to do. That is very clear to everyone except it seems to our Mayor given the DRIC rejection of his new plan.

Again, Eddie has missed out on timing because of his failure to execute. Even if there was ever a possibility of having a Greenlink, the likelihood of spending hundreds of millions of dollars extra in this time of economic restraint is minimal.

Re-electing two NDPers, a party that is never going anywhere, can hardly be deemed to be helpful to Windsor. This is really Brian Masse’s file. And Brian has hardly been successful in what he has done for us in Parliament.

When the NDP held the balance of power in Parliament a few years ago, they did nothing for the border. Bill C-3 as passed destroyed any argument that the City had that it had a role in the border file. Not only were most of Masse’s amendments not accepted but he set the world’s record on the use of the word “inadmissible” as his pro-City amendments were rejected! In fact, a good argument can be made that Bill C-3 has given the Ambassador Bridge Company greater power to build their Enhancement Project.

The irony of all of this is that it was Brian Masse who signalled that Greenlink was dead by his lack of enthusiastic support for it. His interest was in ensuring that people who were expropriated for the DRIC road got fair compensation. He was not prepared to play a silly game of boosting some road project that had no chance of being successful when his re-election was at stake. Some of our Councillors could take a lesson from him on this and drop their support of Son of Greenlink if they even know what the revision is.

I really laughed hard when the re-election of a Jeff Watson was deemed to be a positive for Windsor. Does Eddie even know his phone number and has he phoned Jeff yet to congratulate him? It is always humourous to watch how Eddie squirms when he is asked when he has spoken to Watson last.

Let’s see, wasn’t Watson one of the big DRTP supporters? Watson brought the Prime Minister down to this region a few weeks ago and what did Harper say about the border? That’s right, nothing. And which Prime Minister snubbed the region in the last week of the election…Watson’s leader.

Eddie believing that he had a good relationship with former Cabinet Minister Fortier whom I believe he only met once and with Transport Minister Cannon is very scary to me. It is notorious amongst those involved in the Senior Levels in the border file that Eddie is not tolerated.

It was of course Minister Cannon who made it clear that the City has no role in the border file

• "Mr. Cannon: At the outset I will indicate to you that of course this is federal jurisdiction. That is the first point I want to mention."

He also made it clear that the City's historical argument about the earlier Statute also was irrelevant:

• "Mr. Cannon: I will let our lawyer respond to that, but I think that the legislation you are talking about pertains to the construction period."

If our Mayor truly believes that there is

• "warm and fuzzy relationship between the city and the feds on border infrastructure,"

then why does Councillor Valentinis always ask why no one listens to Windsor?

Of course, our Mayor knows that this is not true. The real purpose behind the City Hall thinking is:

• "They listen and they work with us. And some day we hope to replicate that on the provincial level," said Francis."

Clearly, this Column was designed to make Sandra and Dwight shake with fear. They are warned that they had better come onside because the City and the Feds will form a united block against them otherwise. However, the Provincial Ministers know that the last thing that the Feds want to be involved in is the building of the road. All they want to do is pay their 50% of it and get out.

I am here to tell you that this Column did make our two Provincial Liberal Cabinet Ministers/MPP's shake. Not in their boots though. Unfortunately for Eddie, they are shaking with laughter at the stupidity of it all!