Public Might Save Pols’ Butts On Transit: WHOPPER WATCH

… and so the game proceeds.

It seems that Mark Sutcliffe has learned very quickly the perils of distressing his elders. It’s taken him less than a week to back-pedal on the proposed fare hike. Brian Mulroney could have told him it wasn’t a good idea. He once tried to de-index Old Age Security benefits only to face (literally) the wrath of seniors. You will note that nobody has suggested it since.

We will now see the magical conjuring up of sufficient funds to avoid taking money out of the pockets of our senior citizens in order to pay for the mistakes of a younger generation. The question arises, of course, that if these funds will be available for the Transit Commission to allocate next Monday, where were they a month ago when the draft budget was being finalized?

Secondly, if there are funds available to avoid this particular cut, what other funds are there stashed away somewhere that could be used to avoid other proposed cuts and when will we hear about them? If there had not been such a swift and strong backlash, would we ever have seen the miraculous availability of these rescue dollars? Does this mean that the multi-million dollar hole in the OC Transpo’s finances has also been plugged?

I think many of us knew that such a ridiculous hike in fares for seniors would never make it through the budget process but I wonder if Sutcliffe & Co realise just how much political capital they may have thrown away with this gambit. Do they think it was worth it? Seniors may be forgetful about where they left their keys but it’s unlikely that they will forget that this proposal made it into the draft budget. In eighteen months, we will be in the midst of another municipal election campaign and my bet would be that current members of Council including the mayor will have to answer many questions from seniors and their allies. Will some of the demands will be for a commitment not to raise transit fares during the next term of council as well as to provide improved services for seniors. I wouldn’t be surprised to see candidates promising to implement some version of the completely free transit for seniors that currently exists in Montreal.

When all’s said and done, this will have been an expensive lesson for councillors both politically and financially. Hopefully, it will cost at least a few of them their jobs when the time comes. Perhaps it will also contribute to the departure of Renee Amilcar somewhat sooner than that. This was a gross lapse in judgement and she has to be held responsible for it.

Finally, congratulations to the person or persons walking around OC Transpo’s or the Mayor’s offices with that huge smile today. They will be those who tried to stop the transit pass hike from making it into the draft budget and were overruled but who have now been vindicated.

Welcome to Ottawa, where you’re being played again.

There’s simply no way the Mayor and public transportation bureaucrats didn’t realize raising senior’s fares would cause an uproar.

The senior citizen’s fare increase was a classic example of “Washington Monument Syndrome”, where bureaucrats under pressure to reduce spending cut popular and widely supported programs to provoke a public outcry.

This tactic is intended to shield unpopular and unjustified budget-bloat spending from scrutiny and disruption.

We’ll know soon enough.

If Monday’s “solution” involves more tax hikes, cuts to other popular services, and a renewed call for citizens to pressure senior governments for more funding, it was all a choreographed scheme.