JOHN BARBER
Friday, January 5, 2001
Globe and Mail
 

TORONTO -- Now I know why the propaganda apparatchiks of the former Soviet Union were willing to sell me that beautiful hardcover edition of Gogol's Dead Souls,which I found in one of their shabby outlets in Montreal a quarter-century ago, for about 50 cents. 

They wanted to make it easy for us to see what happens to capitalist societies where the counter-revolutionaries rule supreme: They turn into advanced versions of provincial Russia in the early 19th century.

Ever since I heard former municipal affairs minister Al Leach introduce it in the basement of the Hilton Hotel four years ago, I have never been able to think about "Local Service Realignment" -- the irritating question of who does what, the basic contracts between the two big governments co-existing in this city -- without my mind straying back to Dead Souls,Nikolai Gogol's gruesomely hilarious, quintessential tale
of local political grubbiness.

If that seems a stretch, consider what this fundamental discussion has degenerated into: a slanging match between mayor and minister about who more closely resembles an ape.

(As near as I can determine, Mel Lastman never directly called Labour Minister Chris Stockwell a monkey; instead, when he refused to reply to the minister's taunts, the mayor said he "only talks to the organ grinder.")

Mr. Leach ordained it all four years ago, when he introduced legislation authorizing a massive offloading of provincial costs and responsibilities onto civic shoulders.

The professed intention was good. The minister promised a clean delineation of roles and a clear, rules-based system for allotting the costs of government in Toronto and all other Ontario towns. He promised citizens they would know exactly "whose chain to yank" when something went wrong.

Then he delivered legislation that pretty much did the opposite, throwing an already rickety apparatus into chaos and provoking major opposition, even among such establishment voices as the Board of Trade.

Then such challenges as making the megacity look good required greasing with several hundred million in grants and supposed loans.

The result, today, is that there is no system. We are back in the land of the czars, humbly joining the wheedlers, the connivers and the genuinely oppressed as we shuffle forward on bended knee to present our petitions to the low-ranking, peevish officials who rule our lives completely and enjoy toying with them.

In this world, there are no laws, let alone rules; just reams of procedure and a litter of often contradictory, always arbitrary decisions. Above all, there are no facts, as we have seen in the blatantly manipulated data Mr. Stockwell used to support his criticism of taxes and spending in Toronto.

So things get personal very quickly. Personal works in this brave new feudal world. Mr. Lastman, who understands schoolyard politics intuitively, shook hundreds of millions out of Queen's Park when he first came to office simply by calling Premier Mike Harris a liar.

Now, the provincial brain trust thinks it has got wise; an unnamed official quoted in The Toronto Star yesterday sounded like a dog trainer as he outlined the latest plan to alter Mel's behaviour by punishing, rather than rewarding, his outbursts.

I never realized Dead Souls was prophetic; I didn't know civic evolution could slide backward with such ease.