Rob Ford claims that he’s kept “90 per cent” of his campaign promises. Try 23 per cent
If there’s one thing Metro‘s Matt Elliott excels at (other than rocking shoulder-length hair), it’s informational charts about Rob Ford. And so when the mayor said that he had achieved “90 per cent” of his campaign promises during a speech for the Economic Club of Canada last month, we were sure it was only a matter of time before Elliott explained, in chart form, why that’s not true. He didn’t disappoint.
By his reckoning, even if the mayor is given half credit for promises he has partially kept, like extending the Bloor-Danforth subway into Scarborough (the project is approved, but not yet underway) or contracting out garbage collection (he’s only managed it in the western half of the city), Ford has still only finished 23 per cent of the tasks he set out for himself during the 2010 mayoral campaign. Among the unkept promises are some big ones, like slashing $3 billion from the city’s budget over the course of his term, and overhauling city hall’s customer service culture.
The especially stunning part about this isn’t the disparity between the two numbers—a 67 per cent difference between Ford’s number and Elliott’s—so much as the fact that Ford put forward a number to begin with. Almost any mayor in the world would look weak if their accomplishments were measured in this way, because no politician is able to keep all of his or her campaign promises. Then again, most politicians don’t routinely go on record with exaggerated figures that are easily fact-checked.
You can view Elliott’s chart right here.
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