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If there are to be missteps in the NAFTA shuffle, it won't be because of the Khadr mess

Choking on tears of astonishment, he fled the meeting in horror and shame. Upon recovery, being a man of resource, Asti went out and bought a few 2x4s, a fistful of nails and screws, hired a homeless man (good citizen he, spread the wealth where it is needed), and built the damn stairs himself. Fourteen hours it took, $550 dollars it cost: almost 120 times cheaper than the city’s lowest estimate.

The sage heads of City Hall felt pressures unknown since the days when the late Rob Ford used to compare his expenses to theirs. They were in trauma. A private citizen fixing something! And saving the city $59,450 dollars to boot, or knowing how public works go, more likely $149,450! Why, allow this sort of thing and it would put an end to all city government as the world has come to know it.

Mayor John Tory gave voice to their common dread. In words that should have their own statue: “We just can’t have people decide to go out to Home Depot and build a staircase in a park because that’s what they would like to have.”

Letting citizens do useful and obvious things in their own neighbourhoods, at extreme savings ... what a horror

Of course they can’t. Letting citizens do useful and obvious things in their own neighbourhoods, at extreme savings because that’s what they would like to do … what a horror. Why, that reeks of initiative, neighbourhood pride, resourcefulness, enterprise, community spirit, and trimming the city’s public works budget!

And there’s the real threat to NAFTA. If Trump hears that citizens in Canada are starting to do things for themselves, bypassing the pits and snares of planning regulations, the wind tunnel of government spending, he could very easily (we all know how spontaneous he can be) drop this whole NAFTA business altogether. As redundant.

Instead he might lure the good Mr. Adi Asti of Etobicoke — carpenter, stair-builder, employer of homeless persons — down to Washington. And hire Asti to work, as the President’s Chief Advisor and Head of the burgeoning Department of Deliverology and Not Throwing Buckets of Money out the Window Because That’s All City Hall Really Knows How to Do.

National Post