Change Isn’t Always Worse Than The Alternative

May 16, 2013

You know what the scariest word in English just might be? No, not anesthetist. pickawordThat’s the hardest word in English to pronounce but not the scariest. Unless, of course, you’re going in for surgery imminently.

Change.

That’s the scariest word.

People are averse – averse? adverse? averse? Again, tricky words. Not necessarily scary ones — to change. Even those most likely to benefit from a particular change are reticent.. reticent? hesitant? I’ve clearly thrown myself off here. Pick a word and run with it.

Change ain’t easy.

Our penchant is to view change warily, assuming it’s always going to be for the worse. This despite the fact that we are where we are, doing what we’re doing in relative comfort because of change and our ability to adapt to it. adaptchangeI mean, we could still be creatures flopping around in mucky goo, trying to figure how to breathe oxygen in through these things called lungs not gills.

This is not to say all change is beneficial and that we should simply embrace any new fad that comes our way. Change for change’s sake and other interior decorating maxims. I need a change, while usually indicating a desire to move in a positive direction, doesn’t automatically signal improvement. It could be a phrase uttered by a guy in a bar who’s been drinking rye-and-cokes all afternoon and he just wants to change to, I don’t know, rum-and-cokes.

It’s not about blind acceptance but the moderating measured space between that and an open hostility to any notion of change.

Speaking out against the proposed First Capital Realty development for the Humbertown strip mall on Tuesday, Mayor Ford clearly falls in the latter camp.

“Time equals change,” the mayor said in his speech at Tuesday’s Etobicoke-York Community Council meeting, “we have to move on but…” But what? Gradually? In a thoughtful manner? Earlier on in his speech the mayor stated that “we have to maintain these strip malls in Etobicoke”. So we have to move on to what?

We Have To Move On But is the trademark phrase of the bonafide, heels-dug-in intransigent. Frankly, Etobicoke seems to be populated by such types. Look at their representation at City Hall currently. driveinrestaurantFrom the Fords to councillors Doug Holyday and Gloria Lindsay Luby, part of a historical lineage of obstructionist and obdurate municipal politicians fighting tooth and nail against the slow march of time’s encroachment into their neighbourhoods and pocketbooks.

Read Jamie Bradburn’s Historicist piece last week in Torontoist about the city’s west end politicians battling the building of a subway in the late 1950s. All the way to the Supreme Court! ‘Bamboozled’ is a familiar phrase to modern ears, a kissing cousin to boondoggle, and one used in reference to subway plans. “I am afraid these taxes [to fund subway construction] will tie people up so tightly it will make them move out of here,” said Long Branch Reeve, Marie Curtis, “the same as some of us moved from the city.”

“Don’t be misled by visionaries who would lead you to believe they see things the rest of us don’t,” decried York Reeve Chris Tonks.

That’s not an unreasonable statement if you’re talking about visionaries touting contact with occupants not named Hatfield of interplanetary crafts. overmydeadbodyBut it was 1958. Subways weren’t some new fangled technology about to be foisted upon an unsuspecting population. Cities had been building them for about century by that time. It was a question of figuring out how to pay for an established mode of public transit and putting it in the right place.

Intensification runs along a similar line of thinking.

Sprawl is no longer sustainable. These kinds of strip malls Humbertown represents are relics of a past that was guided by the idea of unlimited space and cheap fuels to get us to these far flung places. As a form of land use, they no longer make sense.

Defenders of the status quo proclaim that this isn’t downtown Toronto we’re talking about, but Etobicoke. But this isn’t Etobicoke we’re talking about, not the one of 40, 50 years ago in its leafy-streeted isolation from the hustle and bustle of downtown. Now a fully functioning inner suburb, its quaint dreams of a pleasant village life located miles and miles past the outer suburbs to the west and north that push it closer to the downtown many of the residents are trying to keep at a distance.

I don’t think it a coincidence this heavy resistance to such change comes from the mayor’s own backyard. I think it’s a sentiment deeply rooted in the notion of Ford Nation. leftbehindThe city of Toronto has been undergoing demographic, cultural and economic shifts, accelerated by amalgamation. None of it particularly easy or cheap. But the face of the city is going to change with or without our participation. Probably not for the better if we simply choose to stand on the sidelines hoping it all passes us by without altering and costing us too much.

In 2010, a plurality of Torontonians, a healthy majority of those living in the inner suburbs and experiencing some of the biggest changes, decided to stand pat and with fingers crossed wait things out. Rearranging the furniture and painting the walls instead of undertaking a major renovation. Hopefully, no one gets too attached to the colour of the room.

– adaptedly submitted by Cityslikr

4 Comments | City Building, Elections 2010, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Mayor Nimby

May 15, 2013

For three years now, ever since then-councillor Rob Ford announced his run for mayor, we’ve been clubbed over the head with the urban-suburban divide.fordnation The narrative of downtown elites hoarding all the goodness that is living in Toronto, leaving their suburban counterparts with nothing more than the crumbs and scraps. Get out of your cars so we can have bike lanes! No subways for you! Your taxes spent on us.

Rob Ford rode such resentment into office, and the continued suburban support maintains his not impossible chances for re-election next year. He is the self-proclaimed champion of the little guy in places like Scarborough, basing his entire transit policy around getting a new subway out there. Nobody rails about and profits from deriding the self-satisfied, special interest insularity of downtowners like the mayor and the rest of Team Ford.

An accusation I’ve tried to take to heart. Get out there, learn what makes these suburban types tick, their likes, dislikes, their pet peeves, their pet causes. haughtyTry and find out why they’re so mad at us and how politicians like Mayor Ford so easily tap into that vein of anger.

The latest leg of that journey outside of my south of Bloor/west of the Don Valley comfort zone took me to the Scarborough Civic Centre yesterday for their monthly Community Council meeting. Here you can see the local councillors and their constituents at work far from the spotlight of City Hall, not dwelling on the Us-versus-Them but instead focusing on pure Scarborough time (or North York or Etobicoke-York or Toronto-East York time depending on which community council meeting you’re attending). Community council concentrates on the minutiae of local governance.

As the agenda for the Scarborough meeting showed, this is the time spent adjudicating neighbours’ fence heights, debating the need for a stop sign or traffic lights, the removal of tree from private property, parking, always parking. toilIt isn’t glorious or sexy. Just the nuts and bolts of the political process at the municipal level.

Perhaps the most charged item I witnessed yesterday was over the fate of the wading pool just outside of the civic centre. Apparently it was a community hub for the forty years of the building’s existence but last summer the This Is Not A Wading Pool sign went up due to the lack of funding to pay for a lifeguard. Scarborough councillors set out to try and rectify that situation.

Most of the time, big ticket, highly contentious, city wide items don’t dominate community council meetings. A casino, tall tower complex or the island airport runway expansion rarely find their way to be debated at North York or Scarborough community councils. The majority of those end up for discussion at Toronto-East York community council.

And Etobicoke-York, apparently.

For the last two months the west-end community council has had to conduct additional meeting time to deal with the public reaction to two developments that are being proposed in their catchment area. In April, there was an evening session at the Etobicoke Civic Centre over the proposed waterfront development in Ward 6, Mimico 20/20. nonono1And yesterday for six hours, the public came out to express their unanimous opposition to First Capital Realty’s intention to convert the Humbertown shopping plaza into a mixed up residential-commercial space.

This one was a biggie. As David Hains writes in the Grid, it was held in a 3,200 seat church on the Queensway, was broadcast on TV and streamed online and brought out much of the media as well as the big gun politicians like the mayor and his councillor-brother. (As a member of the Etobicoke-York community council, it’s not unusual that Councillor Ford was in attendance although, it is worth noting that he was absent for the Mimico meeting last month, choosing instead to attend a provincial Progressive Conservative fundraiser.)

Now, I don’t know if the Humbertown development is a good one or not. Certainly the community’s concerns over the increase in traffic caught my attention. It didn’t strike me as the disaster-in-waiting almost every speaker to person claimed it would turn out to be. villagesquireThere are voices living in the area that even think it’s a positive thing for the area.

What I will tell you, however, is that I didn’t care for the tone I heard from the development’s opponents. Like many who spoke out against the Mimico 20/20 plans, we were told the Humber Valley neighbourhood was like a village wrapped inside a big city. A place for families to thrive and grow, away from big city concerns. People were born in Humber Valley. They went to school in Humber Valley. They got married in Humber Valley. They have children of their own who they want to raise in the same Humber Valley they grew up in.

After a couple hours of this, I couldn’t help but think if these people really wanted the village life, they should maybe move to an actual village. Somewhere, I don’t know, in Amish country. Or maybe on the edge of the moors in south-west England. A village village.

Not a pretend one of their imagination, situated 1500 metres from a major east-west subway line. No, what these people want is to enjoy all the amenities a big city offers while keeping the messier aspects like intensification and underground parking (really, underground parking) at bay. usversusthemThis is a wealthy enclave with the time and resources which, as my friend Paisley Rae said, should not determine the outcome of the civic process, trying to keep the 21st-century from their front door.

And the real kicker is that these are our populist mayor and brother’s people not the poor schlubs having to endure a cold winters rid on the Scarborough SRT or even those living further north in Etobicoke, up in Rexdale. This development is right in both the Fords’ backyards and the little guys they’re looking out for are those who can afford to hire their own architect to draw up alternate plans and find the concept of shopping on a second floor inconceivable. I suppose you’re going to tell me that you’ve invented a moving staircase in which to ascend us to ladies wear.

“We cannot let these developers come in and bully us,” said the mayor who’s all in pushing a waterfront casino. He vowed to fight the Humbertown development ‘tooth and nail’. “Let’s go to the board (Ontario Municipal Board),” he urged if First Capital Realty didn’t back down, presumably with money from the city he often tries to stop at council when other communities faced with unwanted development face appeals at the OMB. Everything Mayor Ford purports to be got completely turned on its head with his strident opposition to the Humbertown development.

Not in my backyard.humbertown

The fact is, Mayor Ford doesn’t really represent the aspirations or alienation of suburban Toronto. At least not those of the hard-working little guys in large portions of Scarborough or Etobicoke. It’s a very select few he will go to the mat for, the ones who essentially live in his own neighbourhood. The overwhelming majority of suburban residents are nothing more than votes to him.

– nimbly submitted by Cityslikr

8 Comments | City Building, City Council, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Electoral Reform Gets All Tied Up at Government Management Committee

May 14, 2013

In the end, Government Management Committee item 22.15, Proposed Electoral Reforms, limped forward without recommendation for wider city council consideration deadlocked in a 3-3 tie. alltiedupThose voting against reforming the way we go about casting our ballots municipally? Team Ford. Councillors Vincent Cristanti, Doug Ford and Giorgio Mammoliti, stood firmly in opposition to any change in the status quo, even going as far as putting up a motion to defer the item indefinitely. That salvo was fended off by the rest of the committee, consisting of Chair Paul Ainslie and councillors Mary Fragedakis and Pam McConnell.

At issue was a staff report that proposed four reforms of how we can and who can vote municipally. Any possible changes that might be enacted wouldn’t occur until the 2018 campaign at the mayoral level, 2022 council wide. Nothing too radical or too quickly. Plenty of time to ruminate and consider, and all for a good cause. The promotion of wider civic participation and engagement.

Much of the conversation and most of the deputations revolved around only one of the measures, to rank ballots or not. An alternate way to vote by ranking candidates in order of preference to ensure that the winning candidate gets at least 50%+1 of all votes cast. rankedballotIt’s a pitched battle that has been going on for some time now, not only pitting those in favour of keeping our current First Past the Post system against those proposing the basic 1-2-3 alternate ballot but reformers at odds with each other, arguing the merits of the ranked ballot versus pure proportional representation. That fight is for another post altogether.

But I will say that those speaking under the banner (if not official endorsement) of Fair Vote Canada – the side of proportional representation and against ranked ballots – did themselves no favours. It’s one thing to speak out against a proposal and another thing entirely to positively offer up something in its place. They told the committee members a ranked ballot was not truly proportional and wouldn’t affect the election results all that much. What they didn’t tell us was how their Single Transferable Vote would work at the municipal level.

None seemed really all that familiar with the structure and workings of the local government in fact, intent to graft on an approach to voting much more conducive to a situation with a party system in place and multi-member representation. Not to say that PR and STV couldn’t work in Toronto. singletransferablevoteWe just needed to be shown how.

We weren’t and in reality, the PR deputations seemed to scare off potential committee support from the likes of Councillor Ford to the idea of any sort of electoral reform whatsoever. Which, unfortunately, also threatened other equally important ideas in the item for ways to increase not only voter turnout but civic engagement overall. How our ballots were counted was only part of the solution put forward.

City staff proposed holding elections on one of the weekend days in order to free voters from having to sneak away from work to vote. Staff also suggested extending the right to vote over the internet for those with disabilities. Thirdly (and most importantly to my way of thinking) the report put forward the idea of allowing permanent residents living in Toronto the right to vote in municipal elections.

The chair of the Government Management Committee, Councillor Paul Ainslie, who has been indefatigable in his support of electoral reform, talked about how when he campaigns a solid majority of the residents in single-family dwellings are eligible to vote. The opposite is true when he knocks on doors in apartment buildings. outsidelookinginYou want better election day turnout and more civic engagement? There’s no better place to start than extending the municipal franchise to those living in Toronto, paying taxes and using the city’s services.

As someone native born to this country, and with my Canadianness dating back a whole two generations now, I don’t feel particularly possessive of my right to vote here. It’s one aspect of citizenship, the cornerstone of it even. But I believe the exclusivity to it decreases as we move down the levels of government, from federal to provincial to municipal.

What I find especially egregious in the anti-permanent resident vote at the local level is that it’s perfectly fine for citizens to vote municipally in Toronto even if they don’t live here as long as they own or rent a property in the city. velevetropeI get the reasoning. If you have some pecuniary interest in city business, you should have a say in how the city is run.

Why give that right to just citizens? All permanent residents have financial as well as social interests in Toronto. Giving them the right to vote acknowledges their contributions to this city, the sacrifices they make to live here and the benefits they receive for doing so. It’s like a democracy starter kit. A welcome mat to anyone wanting to put down stakes in Toronto.

Fortunately, all this will be debated again at council despite Team Ford’s best efforts to smother it at committee. Like the representatives of the proportional representation camp, councillors Cristanti, Ford and Mammoliti were content to emphasize the negative without making any sort of positive contribution. Councillor Mammoliti bemoaned how much harder voting is in the suburbs than it is downtown without offering up any motions to address that claim. He chose instead to try and stop any talk of reforms in its tracks. Councillor Ford was all for strengthening the office of the mayor – putting forth a motion to ask the City Manager what kind of legislative amendments were necessary to do so — while merely providing lip-service to giving more power to community councils.

Trying to bolster our democratic process and extend its reach to promote wider and deeper engagement shouldn’t be a partisan issue. nonpartisanOn a lot of fronts, it isn’t. The proportional representation-ranked ballot dust up is largely being fought between the left. City council’s champion of electoral reform is Councillor Paul Ainslie who usually sits centre-right. At Government Management Committee he was backed by two of the more left of centre councillors.

But we heard loud and clear yesterday from those wanting nothing to do with electoral reform. The self-described Looking-Out-For-The-Little-Guys guys. The hardest of the hardcore supporters of Mayor Ford. They came down firmly against change without really saying why. The mark of true reactionaries.

– frustratingly submitted by Cityslikr

6 Comments | Better Ballots, City Building, City Council, Electoral Reform, Municipal Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Somebody Really, Really Wants An Election

May 6, 2013

I won’t be the first to say this but perhaps what we’re witnessing right now with Mayor Ford’s shout out to NDP leader Andrea Horwath helpfulhintto withhold her party’s support of the proposed provincial budget and trigger an election is something more of a family psychodrama than it is any sort of political strategy.

Granted, outside of the campaign trail, no one’s ever suggested that the mayor and his crack team of operatives conduct business with any sort of long view in mind. No, that’s not true. All of Team Ford’s focus is on one long view: 2014. Everything they do stems from the desire to get the mayor through to the start of the 2014 campaign not impossibly unre-electable in the belief that they are wizards of campaigning and that all the elements of 2010 will once more coalesce in their favour.

Outside of that, it’s pretty much m’eh to any sort of tactical manoeuvring that exceeds a 10 hour news cycle. It’s little more than drive-by slightings and feigned indignation. hailmary1Translate “Here’s What Gets My Goat Today” into Latin and you’d have the Ford administration’s official motto.

Under normal circumstances, a mayor’s urging of an opposition party to defeat the government at Queen’s Park would be something of an eye-popper. Such partisan involvement can turn counter-productive in future relationships between a municipality and their ultimate bosses at the province. Circumspection might be a better hand to play.

We are hardly living in normal circumstances, however. This is another Hail Mary pass flung up by the Ford camp in the hopes that an Ontario election in the next couple months or so will see the election of Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives to power. With a winning roll of the dice (mixing of my sports metaphors duly noted), strutsandfretsall of Mayor Ford’s dreams will come true, and there will be a magical appearance of subways, subways, subways in time to bolster his own re-election chances next year.

And what if the PC’s don’t win? Previous administrations might’ve worried that there’d be some retribution handed out by any other party that formed the government. As long as a mayor who openly pulled for the losing side remained in power, cooperation from the province would be at a minimum.

But maybe Team Ford realizes what we all pretty much know at this point. That aside from Hudak’s PCs, no one really sees this mayoralty as relevant to the actual running of this city. A minor nuisance perhaps; a raging megaphone of no, no, no, can’t that produces little more than noise and increasingly easily surmountable obstacles. So if not Hudak now, when?

Just another impetuous outburst in a long list of growing list of mental belches.

gotyourback

Of course, it’s no coincidence that Mayor Ford’s closest confidant is the one person in the province who wants an election like nobody’s six sigma business, councillor-brother Doug. Having quickly grown bored with the daily trifling matters of local politics, the mayor’s older brother wants to take his non-politician act up the road to Queen’s Park where, presumably, he’s told his little brother once installed there, they’ll rule this city like kings. No more will they have to bend to contend with the plebes on city council. Mayor Rob. MPP Doug. The Dynamic Duo.

Maybe the mayor actually believes his brother. That the PCs are a cinch to win the next election if it happens soon. toomanychefsThat Doug will have no problem unseating a well established incumbent who has had little trouble winning and defending the riding for three straight elections. That once elected, Doug will automatically ascend to the levers of power at Queen’s Park and call the shots of what happens in Toronto.

It’s possible the mayor actually believes all that. After all, he remains adamant that the private sector will happily build public transit and it won’t cost taxpayers a dime. Wishful thinking constitutes much of his approach to governance.

Or maybe, Mayor Ford would happily see the end of his brother’s time at City Hall. For all the initial hope that Doug would be a moderating influence on his brother, that maybe he was the smart one, it’s kind of proven to be the exact opposite. If anything, Councillor Ford has provided an even more extreme element to this mayoralty, an unhealthy nudge away from consensus and collaboration with council colleagues. The deal-breaker not the deal maker.

A successful run for a seat at Queen’s Park by Doug could provide a beneficial distance between the brothers, a more productive work environment. Too much right wing ideology in one room can make it impossible for anyone to breath. whatsgoingonEven those comfortable with the smell of sulphur.

But maybe I’m putting altogether too much thought into this.

The mayor pops off as regularly as he shows up for work after noon. Exhorting the NDP to defeat the Liberal government and trigger an election was just something he said. No more thought put into than it took to string the words together. Analyzing it or sifting through it for a deeper meaning is a fruitless exercise.

And there’s about 850 words and a few hours I’ll never be getting back.

– should-know-betterly submitted by Cityslikr

2 Comments | City Building, City Council, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, Provincial Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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A Taxing Problem

May 3, 2013

What if we took the most recent Fraser Institute tax attack report, taxmanThe Canadian Consumer Tax Index, and its claim of a 1787% tax increase since 1961 at face value and simply shrugged? Not for the reasons Matt Elliott did yesterday when he challenged the robustness of the report’s methodology but from an angle of nonchalance. Yeah, so? Big deal. I’m with Oliver Wendell Holmes. I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.

Or in other words, would I rather be living now in 2013 than back in 1961?

Infant mortality rate in 1961 was 27.1/1000. In 2011? 4.9/1000. Canadians lived 10 years less on average in 1961 than they do now. GDP per capita… well this.

chartupupup

Of course taxes aren’t the sole reason for those positive changes but neither did taxation roll us back to the dark ages. We are hardly taxed to death, as some like to say. In fact, the stats point to just the opposite.

So let’s stop operating from the premise that taxation is inherently bad. Politicians like Councillor Doug Ford should be derided and dismissed outright when they state something as glaringly asinine as “All taxes are evil as far as I’m concerned.” taxesareevilThe subtext of such a sentiment is that the person expressing it is not to be taken at all seriously. It is a mind-numbingly idiotic thing to say that only a certified crank would believe.

The negative economic effects of taxation have long been exaggerated while the benefits have been methodically downplayed. Every time you go to see your doctor and don’t have to open your cheque book is your tax dollars at work. You drive to work today? Your tax dollars paved the road you used. Whatever you kid learned in school comes from a portion of your property taxes.

Without taxes, there is no public sphere or common wealth. Everything’s for sale and anything deemed of worth usually goes to the highest bidder. Taxation is one way we seek to mitigate the damages inflicted by the laissez-faire, everybody-for-themselves workings of our free market system.

And now comes the great debate about paying for a long overdue public transit expansion throughout the GTHA region. How to fund The Big Move. No taxes, no way, no how says our mayor and his ardent supporters. Government’s already got its boots on the neck of the taxpayers and emptied our pockets. That well’s been tapped dry. emptypockets2Read the Fraser Institute report if you don’t believe Mayor Ford.

OK. So, well. How do you propose to build and run the transit network we really needed about a decade ago, oh haters of taxes and respecters of taxpayers? You got $50 billion or so kicking around, easily accessible?

*crickets, crickets*

With no credible plan to pay for any new transit (and with three years to come up with one), the mayor and his allies have switched tacks and now seek to undermine the trustworthiness of the governing Liberals, citing scandal after scandal as proof that they shouldn’t be allowed further access to the taxpayer money tree. ORNGE! EHEALTH!! GAS PLANTS!!! GAS PLANTS, FOLKS!!!!

Now I don’t want to sound as if I could care less about accountability. The mismanagement and dedication to evading responsibility for it is deplorable. I’d be more than happy to turf this government from power and start with a clean slate if I saw I viable alternative, at least on this particular issue of transit.

So far, I don’t. It’s all populist pandering from both left and right with nothing much more on offer than change for change’s sake. distractionThe Liberals are tired and fresh out of ideas. Vote for us, for a different kind of tired and lack of new ideas.

And in terms of transit building, I’ll go even one step further. Add these scandals up, right up, generously to the top. Call it $3 billion of ill-spent money and let’s pretend it was a single year outlay. What was the total spending in yesterday’s provincial budget? $127.6 billion? That represents a little over 2% of the total 2013 expenditure. Statistically, a rounding error.

Before you go all off and start labelling me a Liberal apologist, my point is, all that money, the entire $3 billion would make but a dent in the Big Move. It would pay for just over a year of the proposed 25 year timeline. Where’s the rest going to come from?

We can bitch and moan, mumble and grumble, huff and puff and threaten to blow the shaky credibility house down but we’ve still got a shitload of transit to build. Until someone comes up with a better plan* to pay for it, our taxes are going to have to do the trick. Just like they have always done when it comes to paying for the public good.

well

– impatiently submitted by Cityslikr

 

* There won’t be a better plan. If there was a better plan, we would’ve heard about it by now.

4 Comments | City Building, City Council, Metrolinx, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, Provincial Politics, The Big Move, Toronto Star, TTC | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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