Toronto Mayor Rob Ford greets supporters at Ford Fest 2014. Photo: Flickr, Alex Guibord.
In 2010, Toronto elected Rob Ford as mayor. Ford had worked as a city councillor for a nearly a decade, returning every phone call, refusing basic perks, holding the line on spending. But Ford was also a bully, in council meetings and public. In 2006, he was caught lying about drinking and yelling obscenities at a couple while at a Toronto Maple Leafs game. These failings were held as proof before 2010 that Toronto would never elect someone like Ford. Then Toronto did.
I lived in Toronto through some of the Ford years, from 2010 to 2013. Edmonton feels similar to that city right now. We’re a city divided thanks in part to a loud politician — Councillor Mike Nickel — pouring fuel on our divisions. He’s declaring our city broken. He’s not offering up lines like ‘gravy train’ — yet — but Nickel is brash enough go politicking during a pandemic. It all feels very Ford-era Toronto.
The conclusion many have drawn is that Nickel’s campaigning to be mayor in 2021. It’s a distinct possibility. His new petition sounds like an election platform: Cut property taxes by five per cent and cancel the Valley Line - West LRT project.
Edmonton City Hall. Photo: Flickr, IQRemix
Nickel is not like Ford in many ways: he’s calmer, kinder, more composed. But he’s similar in a few very important aspects. Like Ford, Nickel positions himself as a defender of taxpayers. Like Ford, Nickel uses outbursts to gain attention, which he’s done recently by attacking city council as a whole. Like Ford, Nickel operates best as a lone wolf, and is not known for his ability to collaborate. Also like Ford, Nickel is highly responsive to those who have troubles with the city machine.
But Edmonton’s reaction to Nickel is why I’m writing this column. It’s been dismissive. Many point out Nickel’s numerous losses as a politician and his many gaffes. Many claim, confidently, that he’ll lose in 2021 if he does run for mayor. People point out he’s already lost to now-mayor Don Iveson once, in a race for a council seat. But Toronto’s experience with Ford surely has a lesson here. A populist with a long-constructed narrative that city hall is broken is not someone to dismiss. Given our unprecedented times, given the state of the city’s finances in the wake of COVID-19, I think this lesson applies even more in 2020.
In Toronto’s 2010 election, which saw the highest voter turnout in its history, Ford defeated George Smitherman by more than 93,000 votes. Smitherman was the centrist, progressive, safe-bet mayoral candidate in one of the most diverse cities on the planet. But Ford’s stunts and antics over a decade had built a narrative foundation. He provided his constituency reasons — factual or otherwise — to be distrustful and dismissive of city hall. He once took the city to task for paying less than $100,000 in an operations budget of $9-billion to water plants on city property. Ford complained that he watered his own plants at home, and that spending money on such things was wasteful. Most rolled their eyes, but it was another brick for the Ford narrative. Ford would sweat the pennies yet mostly ignore the dollars. The constituency Ford was building heard a story that enraged them. Waste! Excess! Flowers! That constituency, known as ‘Ford Nation,’ was told to help Ford stop the ‘gravy train’ in 2010.
This should sound vaguely familiar to Edmonton. Nickel is angry about the closure of vehicle lanes to drivers (and the opening of them to walkers, cyclists and rollers, who have few places to go right now and maintain social distance). To him this is proof that city council is spending money on pointless things during a crisis rather than making hard decisions. To be clear, whatever this has cost is pennies, if not less than pennies, when considered within the city’s overall budget. To be clear, things like bike lanes (which Nickel voted for) cost fractions of pennies compared to Edmonton’s budget for drivers and driver infrastructure. But this fits Nickel’s narrative. So he’s pouncing.
Nickel, like Ford, has been repeating many of these rhetorical targets — bike lanes, downtown, tax waste are all favourites — for a very long time. And he has slotted himself within a narrative that existed long before people knew his name. Consider that Nickel’s bio notes he was a member of the Edmonton Stickmen, a conservative group known for its simplistic billboards that targeted Edmonton’s former mayor, Jan Reimer, and helped Bill Smith win the 1995 election. Consider, too, that a quote from a Stickmen representative (not Nickel), from a 1995 story in the Edmonton Journal: “We’re not saying the entire council has to go. But there are aldermen who put bike paths, not economic growth at the top of their agenda.”
The ‘city hall is broken’ narrative is built, regardless of whether it’s true or not, and Nickel summons the anger surrounding it when it suits him. City council attempts to reign him in on this, by using code of conduct rules, will only build his brand. Unsurprisingly, Nickel has responded to this by saying “bring it on.”
Sign depicting Mike Nickel, April 2020. Photo: Conrad Nobert
What irks me about all of this is that Edmonton needs a person with Nickel’s values, if not his methods. He’s right about the Metro Line. He’s right that big projects take too long — the current LRT build included. He’s right that some things cost far too much. He’s right that administration can often manage to complicate simple things and that council can manage to speak a mean game on virtuous things (cough, anything to do with active transportation, cough) but drop the ball on basics. He’s right that Edmonton can be a tough place for small business.
But Nickel can slip into fictions to serve his narrative. These fictions lead us to argue about pennies (bike lanes) rather than dollars (dubious infrastructure projects like the Yellowhead freeway expansion). It all reminds me of Ford.
At a Manning Centre event in the fall of 2019, Nickel was part of a panel that discussed how conservatives could win council seats in 2021. During the talk, Nickel said that many constituents who skew right or left can agree if you talk about value for money. Then he brought up Edmonton’s bike lanes. Asking constituents about return on investment changes the conversation, he said. “You just ask to measure what [bike lanes] do. Count how many bikes are on that bike lane. That’s called metrics, targets and outcomes. Measure what you do. Then you’ll be able to decide whether or not it’s worth the money …”
Then Nickel added his kicker. “There are bike lanes that maybe work, but we don’t know because we’re not counting.” (Full video here.)
Nickel surely knows Edmonton counts bike-lane numbers. Its many detailed reports and maps can be found here. These facts don’t matter. His narrative demands we don’t count numbers on bike lanes. Waste! Excess! Bike lanes! Fiction, not facts. The narrative wins.
Few who subscribe to Nickel’s narrative will worry about such discrepancies. This is why Nickel should not be dismissed in 2021. Depending on those on the right, who are itching to create a slate to overthrow the centrist Iveson and the progressive-ish councillors who align with him — yet may have other plans for their mayoral horse, if Nickel has not forced their hand — Nickel might be the loud and brash mayor few believed could win.
Just realize that Toronto has some experience with that.
NOTE: I reached out to Mr. Nickel through Facebook and through email for this column. Someone viewed the message on Facebook but I received no reply to either. I gave Mr. Nickel 24-hours to respond.
Further reading:
Mike Nickel’s Facebook page
Andrew Knack’s response to Nickel
Ryan Jespersen show discussion of the Nickel situation
The Gravy Train podcast, about Rob Ford and Toronto