Cutting through the Rhetoric: The Rise and Fall of Austerity Narratives in Toronto's Budget Battle

Abstract

metaphorical terms (e.g., “gravy train”)1 to connote fi scal waste, excess, irresponsibility, etc. “austerity measure” refers to concrete political actions that weaken public resources and services (e.g., reducing library hours) Ford’s platform fell in line with global neoliberal politics at the time, which advocated a severe austerity agenda that, notably, was heavy on the ideological rhetoric but light on specifi c policy proposals. While Ford aggressively marketed the narratives of austerity, his policy platform was essentially limited to the 2011 budget proposal. Ford was not alone in pushing an austerity agenda, however; within the same period as the mayoral election, the G20 meetings in Toronto promoted international austerity regimes. Th ese regimes gave rise to the imposition of extreme austerity policies in Greece and Ireland, as well as more limited policies throughout the European Union and in municipalities around the world. For Toronto, however, “austerity” was a dramatic shift from its previous mayoral administrations. As such, the backlash against Ford’s austerity agenda grew steadily and swift ly, achieving a measure of success one year aft er he was sworn in as mayor. Taken as a narrative case study (Riessman 2011), therefore, the story of the rise and fall of the Ford administration’s austerity agenda provides a fascinating opportunity for analyzing the ways in which narrative plays an important role in tracing the shift s in the political and ideological terrain of neoliberal economic policies more broadly. Th e unraveling of austerity narratives in Toronto is in some ways, an outlier within the global context. We recognize that the Toronto experience with austerity is quite diff erent from other international contexts, yet we argue that it can off er useful lessons for those resisting the power of the neoliberal economic ideology. As a case study of the failure of an