… ten being the number of seats out of 45 on Toronto City Council that are occupied by women.
If you think about it, that paltry showing for a gender that makes up half the population in a city that likes to boast how cosmopolitan it is, is both astonishing and frankly pathetic.
It bears consideration these days, particularly as south of the border the gender of a vice-presidential candidate has become such an important political commodity.
That question was top of my mind today when the city hall press corps caught up with Toronto’s silver-maned mayor at the ribbon cutting of the Spadina WaveDeck, a Dr. Seuss-inspired wooden deck at the foot of Spadina.
There was Miller, standing beside York-Simcoe Conservative MP Peter Van Loan at the precarious crest of the deck, the only separating them from the water being a few feet of decking and a knee-height wooden bench.
Van Loan, the Conservative House Leader, may not have the ear of Prime Minister Stephen Harper - but you’d think that during the speeches and gladhanding, that Miller could take a moment to lean over and whisper: “Hey, Van Loan - we’re still waiting for that one cent of the GST and would it kill you to ban handgun ownership like we asked?”
