Saturday night was alright for fighting, far as mayoral candidates Jane Pitfield, Stephen LeDrew and food marketing executive turned environmental agitator Rod Muir (pictured) were concerned, but Mayor David Miller declined his invitation to the MaRS Discovery District conference room. Part of the Alphabet City TRASH Festival, the panel drew just 50 people to hear words on a topic that, in the context of mayoral debates, just provides another hysterical excuse for Miller’s two regular rivals to needle him for being wrong. Furthermore, the fact that the purchase price of the Green Lane landfill site cannot be disclosed has thrust the discussion into the conspirazoid anti-Miller realm of “secret deals”. Muir’s role heading Waste Diversion Toronto makes him the most legit of the one-issue fringe candidates, although he goes one step beyond evoking Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth: “David Miller cares as much about waste as Bill Clinton did about marital fidelity.” Muir doesn’t think the mayor deserves to bask in the success of the Green Bin recycling program, which had been under development for several years, when 200 high-rises erected in Toronto over the past three years are stuck with just one disposal chute — and the municipal government culture isn’t setting a good example, either. “Why is it that the cafeteria at city hall sells a coffee cup that is neither recyclable nor compostable?” howls Muir. “The inmates are running the asylum, and all their decisions are based on whether a union job is won or lost.” Contrary to Miller’s vocal opposition to the Adams Mine landfill in 2000, the haul to Green Lane isn’t going far to reduce the existing Michigan route ratio of two pounds of tailpipe pollution for every pound of buried trash, Muir explains. “When it comes to waste, all David Miller has done is waste the last three years,” recites Jane Pitfield, reiterating her support for a synthetic gas solution, which would create clean energy from waste. Stephen LeDrew, meanwhile, still doesn’t believe incineration is all that bad. Both familiar candidates repeat their desire for a “made-in-Toronto solution”, but Muir isn’t buying the idea that this discussion is about David Miller’s disloyalty to a local cause: “It’s only a consultant who would want you to believe that your situation is so unique.”
The following afternoon, Jane Pitfield floated the theory that Stephen LeDrew was working in collusion with David Miller to keep her from winning the mayor’s race, during a debate on Newstalk 1010 CFRB. “You’re both looking a little red-faced,” she illustrated, for the benefit of the Sunday afternoon radio audience. “I don’t know what kind of school board politics you’re bringing into this,” sputtered LeDrew, whose rural dialect sounds more pronounced without the benefit of his twerpy new waver appearance. This confrontation marked the first time Pitfield asked her bowtied sidekick what the hell he was still doing in the race, after he made an initial promise to bow out early if he looks like a sure loser, now that a Toronto Star/Decima Research poll calculated that no one was explicitly planning to vote for him on Nov. 13. Somewhere in there came the most yokelish exchange of all. Pitfield: “People in this city want inspiration”. LeDrew: “You should go to church for that.” Pitfield: “I do.” Then came Pitfield’s insistence that Miller has been absent from city council meetings half the time: “Of all the falsehoods you’ve said in the election, that is the most astonishing,” said Miller. “I thought I couldn’t be astonished in you anymore.” LeDrew brought up her history of flip-flops, and Pitfield started grasping for sympathy, the angle that would theoretically increase her support among older female voters: “Leadership is about defining reality,” she countered. “It does take courage to change your mind … I’m such a straight shooter that’s the only thing that can be held against me.” A political science discussion between LeDrew and Miller over the strained relationship between levels of government, and how it’s sabotaged the Expo 2015 bid, gave Jane an opening to fall through: “The buck stops with you,” she scolded Miller. “You’ve been a bad manager. You’re a limited person … I try to like you as a person. But as a mayor … I can’t admire you.”
A more fatigued debate Friday afternoon, on 640 Toronto — a radio station where Stephen LeDrew usually appears as a pundit and David Miller is lambasted for not being enough like Rob Ford — generated afterthoughts from moderator Mike Stafford: “During one particular argument over the ‘homeless’ I thought David Miller was going to explode like Louis Del Grande in Scanners. He really, really hates to hear the homeless described in a way we talk about our garbage or subways.” Pitfield on AM 640 cited an unscientific Toronto Star online poll that had her within grasp of Miller, but Decima’s numbers were more confounding: 68 per cent were certain of a vote for Miller, or seriously considering it, compared to 62 for Pitfield and 32 for LeDrew, although the committed numbers were 30, six and zilch. How does one “seriously consider” percentages that add up to 162?
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