WEAK-LING Label Gets Stickier

It really is sad watching Eddie Francis self-destructing right in front of our faces. If you ever wanted to witness a person with so much potential destroying himself almost daily and publicly, that person is our Mayor.

There is almost a feeling of desperation around him. Everything that he tries turns to dust. He is a small-town Mayor playing in the Big Leagues where he cannot control the kill button on the microphone system. Look at how he was outplayed on the Tunnel deal at a cost of almost two million of taxpayer dollars.

Reading the Star is very instructive because it again showed us clearly all of his failings. It shows us how weak he has become and accordingly, how much we are losing.

I must admit that I still believe that this so-called DRIC war is all a "family feud" being orchestrated with the purpose of making Eddie our Saviour while at the same time allowing the Senior Levels to build a low cost road to the border. We will demand that Eddie sue to save our children, or so he will claim, and that gives the Senior Levels the excuse to permit them to do what they really want to do but they can say it is merely an interim step until the lawsuit is over. No one would be the wiser either.

However let us play along with the charade. Let us not show others that we can see through all of this. Let us assume that there really is no deal between the Province and our Mayor and that the parties really are feuding.

Recently we had a Henderson column [you remember Gord Henderson don't you] blasting Ministers Duncan and Pupatello and a Star Editorial doing the same thing. On the other hand, we have a front-page story “MPPs blast GreenLink ad blitz” with the two Ministers saying

• “The Ministry of the Environment is not influenced by media campaigns, advertising blitzes,” said Minister of International Trade and Investment Sandra Pupatello, the MPP for Windsor West…
  
  Duncan advised the city against taking legal action that could slow down what has already proved to be a cumbersome process.
  
  “Believe me, we’re hearing from people and here’s what I’m hearing: Get on with it. Knock off the insanity of slowing things down,” said Duncan. “We need jobs. We need investment. That’s what they’re saying to me.”

Just watch this clip and especially watch Dwight's face as he threatens when the subject of lawsuits comes up. Except Eddie knows he is not threatening! It was what Pupatello's office claimed before as well and is probably for real.

It should be obvious that the Liberals have done some polling in this area. They are hitting right at the Mayor’s witnesses: wasting taxpayer money and the need for jobs. Eddie knows it too as the latest Greenlink ad shows.

We have seen the approach that the Star has taken before…when Henderson hammered Minister Pupatello day after day after day on the Arena matter and his attacks were picked up by the NDP in Queen's Park questioning. That does not work this time around because a Provincial election is a long time away. Windsor's mayoral election comes first and we know whom Dwight and Sandra will not support!

Why do I call Eddie a WEAK-LING. Because the Star and Henderson in particular have made him one. So much for Gord being an Eddie-fan as many still believe. So many times now we are being harangued in the newspaper about all of the ills that will be caused to us by the DRIC Road. Eddie now calls what DRIC says "Lies, Lies, and more Lies."

We were told that it would be unconscionable not to sue, that our kids are at risk necessitiating the use of backpacks for breathing reasons, that every known disease under the sun would befall us. Eddie is snubbed by the Ministers citing the Memebers' Integrity Act even though Dwight met Eddie in a car on the way to Toronto airport to discuss the border issue and the 2 Ministers met with Eddie in secret before. Now our Mayor should understand the consequences of snubbing the Premier and the Minister of Finance's pre-budget meeeting twice in a row.

Yet what is our Mayor's response. A lawsuit? Hardly. All he can do is talk, talk and more talk. He is going to make more representations to the Environment Minister and will run an ad campaign that will fail just as his earlier Greenlink one failed too. I am sure that the Senior Levels are shaking.

Do you read the Greenlink ads....don't send Eddie your letters. He does nto want them. Send them only to the Province. If the DRIC Road is built, then it is YOUR fault dear reader. Your letters were not good enough!

Why is Eddie a WEAK-LING? He just cannot act as a leader, as our Mayor. He relies on others to do the dirty work for him. It is always Council's decision when something can go wrong, or someone can be blamed. But guess who is there front and centre whenever there is glory to be earned.

Let Henderson do the attacking not our Mayor. Actually, Henderson has backed off rather dramatically, making the Premier the villain in his column. Otherwise, this City would lose its Queen's Park allies:

• "Have Dwight Duncan and Sandra Pupatello been hung out to dry -- and left to twist in the howling wind -- by their former rival and current boss, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty...
  
  Dwight and Sandra are victims rather than villains in the province's decision to play smash-mouth politics and try to crush Windsor on the border file rather than engage in constructive negotiations."

Whoever dreamed up that approach, and I truly hope that it would not be the Eminence Greasie or I would use my respect for one of the shrewdest people in town, is out of their mind. You don't attack the head of the Government Party personally and expect to win. I know, it was the provincial government insider who always gives Gord the big scoops. He probably wants McGuinty to retire soon so blame him.

I do have to admit though that I think that our Mayor may not be able to take the pressure anymore given the three-time use of the word "lies." Putting himself at risk is not something that the Mayor normally does. However, it may be that he is just upping the ante at Dwight and taking a shot at him because Dwight only said twice:

• "THE MAYOR IS WRONG. THE MAYOR IS WRONG."

There is no doubt that Henderson has seen the error of his ways too and does not want to appear even more foolish than he already has. Did you see anything in his column about lawsuit or our legal weapon of mass destruction, David Estrin? That is the clearest signal of all that our Mayor is a WEAK-LING.

It is not like before. Instead this is the funny part. Now even Henderson wants "constructive negotiations." For merely suggesting this, he slammed Councillor Bill Marra and called him a WEAK-LINK. Now, that is the approach that the WEAK-LING Mayor should adopt.

What the Star Editorial is doing now is trying to shut up any opposition to the Mayor. That is their role but in a much more intellectual fashion. There are too many people in town who know that the MAYOR IS WRONG and they have to be silenced by name-calling again:

• "If people who know better are suggesting, or implying, that further discussion about alternatives will jeopardize jobs, they are guilty of pitting job-desperate families in this region against families with real concerns about health risks."

Oh please, the only one supposedly pitting families against each other is the Mayor who is raising this bogus issue in the first place. For whatever reason, the Mayor refuses to acknowledge the obvious about the new technology that will dramatically reduce emissions. He has to ignore or else he has lost. In this respect, he is no better than DRIC.

The fight is futile. Eddie knows it. The Star knows it. Henderson knows it. Most important of all, the Senior Levels know it.

I found it fascinating that Eddie is kissing up right now to the Conservatives federally. Does he know something that we don’t via his good friend Brian i.e. Joe Comartin may be retiring so that Eddie may run for the Conservatives. He would be running against Dwight Duncan who would want to take over the seat for the Federal Liberals and get a prestigious Cabinet job especially because he was an Iggy supporter:

• “Meanwhile, the City of Windsor and the federal government are enjoying something close to a love affair as they close in on a property deal for an inspection plaza in Brighton Beach.
  
  "There's been a wonderful working relationship and things are moving forward very productively," said Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis as he heaped praise on federal officials who've bent over backward to be co-operative.”

Really, I have heard otherwise. I have not heard such a thing from the Government people that I talk to at the Senior Levels but then again, guess who Gord is getting his information from.

In passing, it seems like the brouhaha over the jail going to Brighton Beach has disappeared now. Just wait until the Feds don’t want to pay the price that he wants for the City’s land there. The love affair would be very short-lived.

Eddie needs to keep the Feds onside because, as he conceded at the Senate hearings in Ottawa, he knows that they have the power under the Constitution to take over control of the entire road to the border if they choose to do so. That is his ace in the hole against the Province, or so he thinks. However, the Feds are not that stupid. They don’t want to have responsibility for the roadway.

The war, if there really is one, is between Eddie and the Province and it is a war that he cannot win. At any time, as the Mayor knows, the Province can upload a road and that is the end of it. Expect them first to upload E C Row and then Huron Church Road where they will build the cheap solution. After all, that is what the Joint Management Committee wanted to do and that was part of the Nine Point Plan.

Here is the real tragedy for Windsor. We could have had it all by now including money for being the host community for the border crossing. Unfortunately, our Mayor does not know how to negotiate. His smarmy attitude and his arrogance are costing us dearly. He is not as smart as he thinks he is nor as he wants us to believe:

• “Francis pointed out that a construction technique suggested by city consultants Parsons Brinckerhoff was adopted by DRIC for the Parkway, resulting in a savings of $67 million.
  
  “A cheque from the finance minister would be greatly appreciated instead of the criticism he’s giving us today,” said Francis. “If they want to do the right thing they should pay us because their consultants left that money on the table. They benefited from the work we are doing.”

Here is Eddie again, the pompous little know-it-all Mayor who always is right and who has to shove it into your face so you know it too. Instead, if the Mayor was not confrontational and had worked with the Senior Levels, we probably would have been able to get this kind of money for our City and more because our experts would have been working together jointly.

The City could have made a good argument years ago when the Senior Levels were flush with cash and when Eddie had everybody eating out of his hands because of groups like STOPDRTP who gave the City power. He would have had a very powerful position at that time that probably would have been successful that the City was owed money because of all of the pain that we would suffer here.

I have no idea whether the City and Province are really fighting or not. I do not think that they are to be blunt about it although I also believe that the various personalities cannot stand each other by now. Look again at Dwight’s face in the video clip. Still, I expect that they are laughing at all of us as they are playing their drama. Too bad that this drama is not taking place at the Capitol Theatre. It would run forever.

In the war against the Bridge Company, the combatants have to stick together no matter how distasteful and how much each of them disgusts the other.