Vaughan's mayoral hopefuls tread quietly on the municipal election campaign trail

Yorkregion.com
Oct. 24, 2014
By Adam Martin-Robbins

While the leading contenders for Toronto’s mayoralty are providing voters with detailed election platforms - including cost projections for their proposals and ways to fund them - Vaughan’s four mayoral hopefuls, to this point, are taking a totally different approach.

Asked by The Citizen to spell out two major initiatives they will strive to achieve, if elected, and how much those initiatives would cost - or save - taxpayers, two of Vaughan’s mayoral candidates provided largely vague answers while the other two didn’t even respond.

Incumbent Maurizio Bevilacqua emailed a 423-word response that focuses on initiatives begun or implemented during his current term, which he’s vowing to carry through the next term.

For example, Bevilacqua says he’s committed to seeing through to completion large-scale, long-term infrastructure projects including the Mackenzie Vaughan Hospital, the Spadina subway extension and the Hwy. 427 extension, which are being driven by the provincial government, as well as the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre.

He also mentions his so-called governance initiatives - program review, public service renewal and the Vaughan Accord - which he vows to continue in the next term.

For his part, Paul Donofrio provided a more concise response, but only one clear initiative - freezing taxes for the entire, four-year term.

Beyond that, Donofrio said he will “strive to ensure that the (mayor’s) role is not merely a symbolic one, but one that will act as a driver for positive change.”

And he pledged to promote “Vaughan as a gateway to the world for business, to make Vaughan a family-friendly city and a city that embraces diversity at all levels of society.”

Daniel DeVito and Savino Quatela didn’t provide answers.

This approach isn’t just being deployed in responses to questions from the media.

The candidates’ websites - or in Devito’s case a Facebook page - provide voters with little information about their visions or plans for the city over the next four years.

(Quatela doesn’t have a website or a Facebook page.)

Instead, what you find are photos of the candidates, quotes from articles or links to media coverage, past accomplishments and general, sweeping statements about transparency and accountability, streamlining government and respecting taxpayers’ “hard-earned” dollars, among other things.

Paul Nesbitt-Larking, professor of political science at Huron University College, says it isn’t a surprising to see this approach from Bevilacqua, who is highly likely to be re-elected.

“When an incumbent has this kind of built-in advantage, the last thing that they’re going to do is run the risk of alienating anybody,” he said. “They really don’t have to do anything and, in a sense, the more they say the greater is the chance that they’re going to disenchant one particular constituency or another. So what they will try to do is broadly and generally convey an image of having been presiding over good governance in their incumbency. ...”

The only way to get a candidate in Bevilacqua’s position to spell out a clear platform, Nesbitt-Larking said, is to have a strong contender in the race who is running on a clear, well laid out platform.

“I think that tends to sort of smoke out a more specific response."