Why CIBPA Could Not Succeed Last Night

I attended the CIBPA meeting last night and I am glad that I did. It was an interesting evening for me at least and an upsetting one too. I trust that it was eye-opening as well to some people in attendance who have not been very close to this matter.

I do not know how the Organizers feel this morning but they should be furious. Their hearts were in the right place. They were trying to do the right thing for Windsor. However, the Eminence Greasie and the E-Team out-manoeuvered them politically. They should be furious not only at the Mayor and Council but at the Windsor Star as well who ignored them. In fact, as you will see, there was no point in having the session at all.

For the 200 to 250 people who were at the Caboto Club, they now have a good understanding about why the border file is a mess. We were all used last night by a Mayor who has no interest whatsoever in having a solution unless it is on his terms and on his terms alone. Or unless it is finally imposed on him so that he personally cannot be blamed for his failure to achieve and waste of millions of dollars of taxpayer money after all of this time.

That was abundantly obvious as I shall describe below. His desire to force others to meet with him is real and he will use groups like CIBPA to do so. However, there is an agenda that he has, and what it is I have no idea. Until that has been achieved or the Councillors finally get some balls as they did in 2003 when Mike Hurst was Mayor and take back this City, Windsor will continue suffering as we are now.

Unfortunately, the rest of the City will not know about it unless they happened to see the EH-News clip around 11:30 last night or the audio snippets on CKLW News this morning. I do not know if the Windsor Star had a reporter at the session but there was nothing in the newspaper today about it. Accordingly, it was a “non-event,” not worthy of consideration.

I expect that City Hall believed last night would be a bitch session against them. The Mayor and Council would have been so upset if all that had been reported in our leading media outlet. They totally misunderstood what last night’s meeting was all about. They need not have worried so much. The Star reporters were busy elsewhere it seems. The Star was more interested in running a story about massage parlours than about the future of our City.

Last night was intended to be a love-in by the Organizers. They did not want to blame anyone. They did not want to take sides. They were in favour of every project in order to deliver the message to the rest of Canada that Windsor is open for business so come here and invest. All they wanted to do was to try to ensure that deals are “cut,” in their terms as businesspeople, between the various parties involved: the City, the Senior Levels, the Bridge Company and even DRTP for the doublestack rail tunnel. Why the Chair even threw in the airport transportation hub to make this even more palatable for our Council.

CIBPA in effect wants to be the facilitator to make these deals happen even if they keep people locked up in rooms until deals are done. In that way, they believe that the City would start prospering again.

The Mayor did not have to worry. He was there last night surrounded by a number of his Councillors. I guess he figured that there was strength in numbers. To be honest, I was surprised that any of them were there because I had been told earlier in the week that it was unlikely that anyone from City Hall was going to come other than perhaps Council Marra who is a member of the Association and probably Councillor Valentinis also. The session had been dismissed out of hand.

Eddie did admit, as I had been told, that he asked to make a presentation but given the nature of the session the Organizers turned him down. I heard that it was supposed to be at least a 20 minute talk that would have a bored everyone I am certain.

Nevertheless, the Mayor did speak last night. I should have timed him but he certainly spoke much longer than the one minute that the Chair said that everyone would be allowed to speak. In fact, the Mayor disrespected everyone in the room and the Chair by speaking for so long. I guess he thought that he could do so because only he controls a “kill button.” It was necessary for the Chair to interrupt him finally and to ask him to stop speaking. He agreed to do so but then spoke for another couple of minutes.

I think that I will use the Mayor’s precedent when I speak at Council next time. I will ignore the Chair and the Procedural Bylaw at Council the way that the Mayor disrespected the Chair and the rules last night.

CIBPA’s basic position as expressed by the Chair was that there is an URGENCY to forging agreements to expedite the construction of the international crossings in Windsor. He also said that there should be INTOLERANCE over any additional studies or threats of litigation or acts of delay. Finally he said that there is an IMMEDIATE NEED for economic initiatives to stimulate the local economy to create new jobs to the attraction of new industry and commerce.

There were probably about a dozen people or so who spoke and within the time constraint imposed by the Chair. The feeling in the room as far as I was concerned was frustration, anger, and fear. No one really understood what was going on in this City other than they felt it sinking and that no one was doing anything about it. The most telling comment was by the gentleman who is unemployed and said that he just wanted to find a job.

I wonder if the Mayor and Councillors will get it considering that Dan Stamper of the Bridge Company got a longer and louder round of applause than the Mayor!

No offense to the Organizers but they are politically naïve. The Mayor and his fellow Councilors were probably laughing themselves silly after they left the session. Nothing was going to be accomplished. There was no pressure on them. The Mayor was allowed to present his revision of the Border history as if it actually took place.

CIBPA want to set up a political action group and that makes sense. However they need to understand the purpose of the group is to take action against politicians and not try to make love with them. After listening to the Mayor, they should understand that. He has no interest in making what they want to do work unless it helps them achieve his Agenda whatever that is.

The most dramatic moment of the meeting and the one that explained why the hopes of the Organizers will never take place unless they are politically active occurred when the Mayor gave his diatribe and was then followed by Dan Stamper of the Bridge Company.

The Mayor was there not for the purposes of the Organizers but rather to blame everyone else for the fact that there is no border deal.

Well not quite everyone, he did say that there was something that was going to be announced in a few weeks between the City and the Federal Government. I assume that means that when Minister Baird came down here he negotiated the purchase price for the Brighton Beach property with the City. You know Brighton Beach… that is the place that the Mayor pretended that he wanted to put the jail in order to put pressure on the Senior Levels. Speaking of the Jail, I did not see a story about that in the Star either. I guess Eddie really does believe now what he was told that if the location of the jail is opposed it will be moved out of Windsor.

The Mayor was there to protect himself from having the finger of blame pointed at him if in fact the Senior Levels decide that they have had enough of Windsor. His purpose for being at the session was to try to have CIBPA pressure the Premier to bow down to Eddie’s demands respecting Greenlink, as if that is ever going to happen. The Mayor wanted to appear so conciliatory by saying that in fact that the City wanted mediation… of course he forgot to tell people that the terms of mediation are his and his alone and that the Province must agree to his terms if that is to happen.

I was interested as well that he threw in health problems of children and of cancer and of all of the horrors that you can think as if that was supposed to impress anyone. It is a shame though that he did not mention the reason why he forgot to release the DRIC response to the MoE memo about health issues.

I am not going to get fully into what the Mayor said because he rewrote what happened in the past. There’s no point trying to correct him because the amnesia disease at City Hall has affected what he remembers.

I will give you one instance where he talked about the Border Infrastructure Fund of $300 million and then had it turn into his huge success of getting that amount increased to $1.6 billion. Of course, the two programs are completely different, BIF and DRIC, but not in the world of Eddie Francis when it comes to his glory.

For another, as the person who created the expression "Montréal-to-Tijuana trucks," I believe that I can recall a lot more clearly why citizens opposed trucks on E C Row than the Mayor. It was not keep trucks off of the Expressway but rather to prevent it being a precursor to the DRTP truck road.

The Mayor spoke for much too long. If he really wanted to help CIBPA achieve its objective, all he had to do was turn to the left from the microphone where he was speaking and look at Dan Stamper who is probably sitting three or 4 feet away. All that the Mayor had to do was invite Dan to come to his office today to resolve the differences between the City and the Bridge Company. Stamper said that he was there to do so. The Mayor issued no such invitation. Why not if he meant what he said.

If the City and Bridge Company formed an alliance by working out a deal, do you truly believe that the Senior Levels would dare oppose them? Immediately we would have jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment that would force the Senior Levels to build a proper road to the Ambassador Bridge. That would create even more high-paying jobs for years, thousands of them.

• "Transport and Infrastructure Minister John Baird assured the gathering [just yesterday in Washington DC] that a new bridge between Windsor and Detroit, through which one-quarter of all Canada-U.S. trade flows, "has been and will continue to be the number one infrastructure project for Canada."

Of course, the Mayor did not do so. The Bridge Company is the City’s “enemy.” That is what the Mayor called them before. I guess he forgot that last night when he claimed that he has no bad feelings against them and was not trying to hurt them.

I talked to Stamper just after he arrived at the Club and asked him whether he was going to speak. He said to me that it was not his intention to do so. However, after the Mayor spoke, he did and he did so immediately.

He effectively called the Mayor’s bluff. The Mayor claimed that he was prepared to talk to other parties. Stamper acknowledged that this was true. He reminded the crowd that the Mayor and Council were prepared to listen to his Company’s billion dollar proposal for all of 10 minutes at Council. When he asked for an extension of five minutes, he was unanimously refused by Council. No one would dare put up their hand to allow him to do so.

He made a mockery of the Mayor’s suggestion that he was not opposing his Company. Remember, that the Star has not reported this story either for reasons that only the Star knows.

Stamper told the attendees that the City passed a Resolution (in a vote of six to three in camera at Council last Monday I am told, with Council MOM not being there,) to hire another lawyer, a US one this time, to oppose the Coast Guard decision that the Bridge Company Enhancement Project was of “no significant impact.” In other words, the Mayor is trying to put another roadblock in front of the Company, this time in United States as Mr. Estrin tried to do before in Cleveland. Dan was generous enough not to talk about the Interim Control and Anti-Demolition By-laws, the Heritage study and the Sandwich CIP as well.

Finally, and this was the ultimate insult to the Mayor, Stamper asked any of the contractors who were present if they were demolition contractors as well. He said that he had some homes to tear down and, as everyone laughed when he said that because of the Indian Road fiasco, he just said to the Mayor that he was “just kidding Mayor.”

I give the Organizers credit for at least starting something. It is about time that major organizations in this City banded together to take this City back from a Mayor and Council that are so out of touch with reality that it is sickening.

The one mistake that they made last night was not involving the Community at large. It is fine to involve business organizations and labour unions but that will not impress this Mayor and Council. They are viewed as nothing more than troublemaking pressure groups who are working for the Senior Levels and others with a vested interest. In fact, I hope none of the Organizers have to appear in front of City Council in the next little while for any kind of approval or a favourable decision from Council.

The Citizens of Windsor who are sick and tired of what is going on here must be involved. If the Organizers do not understand this and do not understand it quickly then they are wasting their time. When this City had the Senior Levels and the Americans eating out of their hands, it was not something achieved because of what the Mayor and Council did or any pressure group. It was accomplished by the power that was given to our civic leaders by the Citizens of Windsor uniting together for the good of the City.

I was there. I was involved. I saw it happen. No politician dared oppose what the Citizens of Windsor wanted if they had any hope of being reelected. We understood it and so did the politicians. I know several of them who changed their positions dramatically because they knew they would not be reelected unless they did so immediately.

That kind of feeling must be achieved again. Citizens of Windsor are tired of all of this but must be called upon one more time to take back this City from politicians who do not understand what we want. If CIBPA can forge an alliance between the groups they have talked so far and the Citizens of Windsor, then we will truly have a situation where this City will prosper again in spite of the politicians who claim that they are working on our behalf.