When an election is coming up, voters expect to see more posturing, quarrelling, theatrics and general nonsense from those who wish to lead them. But seldom do things get quite so silly as the current spitting match between the mayor of Toronto and the government of Ontario.
Relations between Mayor John Tory and Premier Kathleen Wynne, once smiling chums, have been chilly since Ms. Wynne pulled the rug out from under Mr. Tory by denying him the right to place tolls on two Toronto expressways.
Complaining that he felt like a little boy in short pants whenever he went looking for some help from Queen's Park, Mr. Tory demanded that Ms. Wynne atone by giving Toronto, well, just about everything it wanted, including more money for public housing.
Read more: Toronto Mayor Tory 'over the line' by 'campaigning,' Del Duca says
When the recent provincial budget came out, Mr. Tory acted shocked almost beyond words that a government with more than $300-billion in debt had not handed over enough money for Toronto's massive housing repair bill.
Except that this mayor is never beyond words. In this budget, he said, the Liberal government turned its back on the city, failing to meet "the most crucial needs of the people." Driving home the point, he handed out leaflets urging public-housing residents to call their local MPP to press for more housing help.
Now it was Ms. Wynne's turn to act affronted. Her Transportation Minister, Steven Del Duca, trooped down to City Hall in high dudgeon and addressed reporters right outside Mr. Tory's office. The mayor, he said, had gone "over the line" with his leafleting expedition.
On Tuesday, the Premier herself said there was a "strong political overtone" to Mr. Tory's actions and insisted that her government had been more than generous to Toronto – the most generous ever, in fact.
Even Patrick Brown, Leader of the Progressive Conservatives, got into the free-for-all. Meeting Mr. Tory at City Hall, he said that unlike those mean old Liberals, he would be a partner Toronto "can trust and rely on." Better than that, "We will fight for the city of Toronto."
No one came out of this flurry of finger-pointing looking good. Mr. Tory was dreaming if he really thought that Ms. Wynne would ride to his rescue with a sack of gold for public housing in this budget. Toronto's plea for more housing money goes back years and it is not likely to get all it needs overnight, if ever.
Though Ms. Wynne was cowardly to deny Mr. Tory his highway tolls, after at first signaling he would get them, recent Liberal governments have been pretty good to Toronto overall, committing billions for transit and taking back responsibility for some of the spending downloaded to the city by earlier governments.
As Ms. Wynne protested, "It's just not true that we haven't stepped up." If anything, the Liberals have spent too much, leaving future taxpayers a crushing tab.
Ms. Wynne and her people, though, went over the line themselves when they suggested that Mr. Tory was on some kind of partisan mission. This is a tired, desperate government that is behind in the polls and facing annihilation in next year's provincial election. They are seeing plots around every corner.
Even if he was expecting too much, Mr. Tory was merely fighting the city's corner when he criticized the budget, not making an unholy alliance with Mr. Brown.
Mr. Tory may be a former PC leader at Queen's Park, but he has been careful not to play partisan politics since he's been at City Hall. He will talk to anyone he thinks might help the city.
Mr. Brown's intervention may have been the silliest of all. The man who claims he wants to be Toronto's champion is against giving Toronto a hotel tax, as Ms. Wynne would, and against the tolls Mr. Tory wanted. As for housing, his commitment so far extends to "being one of the funding partners," as he put it on CBC Radio.
Mr. Brown says, correctly, that the Liberals have been reckless big spenders. Does anyone really think, given his commitment to reining in provincial spending, that he will be more open-handed with Toronto?
The whole episode had a sour quality. You didn't give us what we wanted! Yes we did! Did not. Did, too.
Both Queen's Park and City Hall have big money problems. Like two old men carving up their last bean, they fall to squabbling and blaming. It's unseemly, it's ridiculous and it doesn't help anyone.
Marcus Gee