LEVY: Toronto's socialist grocery store fantasy will be a disaster
Sue-Ann Levy writes, "Given the track record of Chow and her Marxist council, I’m willing to bet even one grocery store would be a giant money pit."
At the tail end of a recent council meeting, long past his prime, councillor Anthony Perruzza put forward yet another harebrained idea, one which the socialist mob gleefully jumped on 21-3.
Taking their cues from New York’s socialist mayor Zoran Mandami, they decided they too should create not just one, but four city-run grocery stores.
It is something new federal NDP leader Avi Lewis also brought up — saying he’d put them in place nationally if he became Prime Minister.
Thankfully, that will never happen in a million years.
But getting back to Chowdami, while I suspect she will be taking a page from Mandami’s playbook to fight the October election, this is so ridiculous I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
It is typical of a socialist to focus on the latest shiny object instead of actually running a city in deep decline.
They’re like little children who can never be satisfied with what they have—and constantly bite off more than they can chew.
Chow and councillors like Perruzza couldn’t even manage the very basics of snow removal this past winter, let alone deal with the agencies and projects.
Chow and TTC chairman Jamaal Myers have virtually ignored the fact that our subway is a moving homeless shelter and drug den.
But I guess if they don’t ride it, they don’t know and don’t care.
I went to downtown Toronto last week for a press conference and it is so grimy, so deteriorated, so full of construction and debris, so gridlocked, so sad-looking that it left me depressed.
Our police are useless. They have allowed the terrorist sympathizers to take over our streets in the past 2.5 years and even pray on busy downtown streets.
Now, what if I brought some Jewish friends and occupied Dundas St with our prayer books and our prayers?
I’d be scooped up in less than five minutes.
It has become absurd that the police pander to those who don’t respect Western values.
There is not just a crisis with the police but with the “security” company — One Community Solutions — that is supposed to protect ordinary citizens around homeless shelters.
Despite getting $40-million in city contracts since 2020, they have proven to be poorly trained and virtually useless.
And council keeps giving them more money!
Can you also imagine a council that pays two or three times the competitive rate to build homeless shelters using unions that are subject to closed shop (preferential) tendering (thanks to John Tory) and fair (union-scale) wage rates opening grocery stores?
They can’t even get a Cabbagetown women’s shelter completed on time and on budget.
The cost overruns are ginormous.
I first wrote about this shelter in 2019 when the city secretly made a deal with Craig Keilburger of the WE Charity fame.
The city is notorious for purchasing and leasing properties at well above competitive rates. The bureaucrats have no time imperative either, regularly running years behind on shelters and other construction projects.
But why should the bureaucrats care? It’s not their money and they will get paid no matter what.
Given the track record of Chow and her Marxist council, I’m willing to bet even one grocery store would be a giant money pit — operated by overpaid unionized workers selling subsidized groceries.
The fact that this half-baked idea was even proposed is absurd.
 | A guest post by
|
Folks, we are missing an opportunity. Given the proven track record of Socialist food schemes (they've only killed ten of millions of Ukrainians, after all), we need a BETTORS GAME. Someone with energy and an eye for odds, should devise (a) the date when the cost overruns are published; (b) the date when the scam... er, excuse me, I meant 'scheme' is declared a failure; or c) when one or more of the stores are wound up. Naturally, a share of the profits would be directed to the organizer(s), for after all, that's who we are. I nominate Sue-Ann as the chairlady of this enterprise (sorry Sue-Ann).