All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Civic Inaction

Posted on May 1, 2015 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

“I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member,” Groucho Marx is said to have quipped.

I thought of that quote as I followed along with the proceedings of this week’s Better City Bootcamp hosted by the venerable CivicAction Alliance. Such righteous goals. Vital breakout sessions. Elevated discourse about city building.

But through it all, the one thing that kept dancing, pogo-style, around my head was: John Tory. John Tory. John Tory. John Tory.

Good intentions may pave the road to hell but I’m wondering if they also provide solid footing for entry level access into the entrenched status quo.

Is that too harsh?

I know people speak very highly and fondly of CivicAction’s founder, the late David Pecault and his Toronto City Summit Alliance, CivicAction’s early incarnation. There’s no reason for me to doubt those sentiments. Nor is there any reason for me to doubt the integrity and good intentions of those now at the helm of the organization.

It’s just… It’s John Tory, dammit.

What does it say to a group of aspiring community leaders that no matter what kind of ideas or novel approaches you may have in dealing with some of the problem issues this city faces, congestion or youth employment say, you leave those ideas and approaches behind the moment you get into any position of real, elected power? Thinking outside the box is all well and good when there’s nothing at stake, when you’re just making suggestions not decisions. Once you’re out there in the real world, well, come on. It’s the real world. Thinking outside the box is just an empty phrase you say to make it seem like you’re open-minded and all about shaking up the status quo.

Take the former CivicAction chair and now actual mayor of Toronto, the aforementioned John Tory.

Remember CivicAction John Tory and their Your 32 campaign? What would you do with an extra 32 minutes in the day if our commute times were reduced through a grand investment in public transit? That campaign, led by CivicAction John Tory (and, not coincidentally, former CEO and now Liberal government M.P.P. Mitzi “Subway Champion” Hunter), demanded our politicians start having an adult conversation about new revenue tools to pay for it. Evidently both of them have forgotten the particulars of that campaign.

“Indeed, the public has figured out,” CivicAction Tory speechified back in 2013, “that transit plans without money are almost worse than no transit plans at all because they create nothing but false hopes.”

That was CivicAction John Tory. Mayor Tory has offered up SmartTrack, a largely unfunded transit plan, creating ‘nothing but false hopes’. CivicAction John Tory’s words not mine.

So how does he face the gathering at CivicAction’s Better City Bootcamp?

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Be bold. Be innovative. Be tireless in your pursuit of doing the right thing. Just don’t expect any of that from anybody holding public office. marxbrothers1

Dare to dream. Prepare to embrace disappointment. Change that threatens the status quo can be talked about, hashed over in forums like we’ve gathered together for here. Implementation is another matter entirely.

Democracy’s all well and good. I’m as big a fan of it as there is. But there are limits. Corporate boardrooms are where the real action is. If you want to wield ultimate power and influence, put on your networking hat and get yourself mingling out in these hallways today.

Thank you very much and have a good day.

John Tory is living, breathing proof of the stunted policy positions corporate drenched organizations like CivicAction will ultimately affect. Hyperbole? Check out the board of directors or, as they like to think of themselves, “A Team of Strategic Thinkers”. The man chosen to replace Tory as the group’s chair, Rod Phillips, is yet another product of corporate and political backrooms. Chief of staff to former mayor Mel Lastman. A staffer with Tory during his time as provincial Progressive Conservative leader. Former mucky muck of OLG and now mucky muck with Postmedia.

These are not people who will be advocating for fundamental social change. They have it pretty good as it is. Tweaks to the system will suffice. Reasonable, common sense tweaks, you understand.

Look at Tory’s mayoralty so far to see the kind of changes CivicAction players really stand for. See it? Look harder. marxbrothers2 Anything? No? Yeah, me neither.

I don’t know if this is the kind of vehicle David Pecault envisioned when he established the organization back a dozen years ago, if John Tory is the kind of leader he wanted to see step up to tackle the problems the city faces. If so, it was doomed to failure from the start. A failure, that is, for everyone else but the establishment types like John Tory who use the organization as a false patina to give them the appearance of being agents of change and not the standard bearers of the status quo which is what they truly are.

— contrarily submitted by Cityslikr

Civic Inaction

Posted on June 4, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Listening to the new CEO of the Greater Toronto Civic Action Alliance, Sevaun Palvetzian, on Metro Morning yesterday, the thought crossed my mind just as host Matt Galloway articulated it. “What has that got us?” That, being the type of advocacy and public discourse generating the GTCAA undertakes. The harnessing ‘the wisdom of the crowds”, as Ms. Palvetzian stated.

The GTCAA has been on the forefront of the region’s congestion question during the past couple years or so. Its Your32 campaign sought to bring home the total cost of congestion to each individual living in the GTHA, not just in terms of money but time lost as well. What would you do with the extra 32 minutes you’d gain if we all weren’t bogged down in traffic and under-serviced by public transit?

Get building more transit, the group chimed in. Fund it. Build it. Push on with The Big Move. Now.

A great discussion to be having but where’s the action, Civic Action Alliance? The follow through? The results?

That’s probably too harsh. New transit is being built. The University-Spadina subway extension. The Eglinton LRT crosstown.

But there’s a shitload more to do and lots of questions about project priorities and where to get the money to fund them. Questions the GTCAA participated in asking and promoting to a wider audience for a broader discussion. The group helped create a real sense of urgency on the transit file.

And then, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum of decision making.

John Tory, the former GTCAA chair, and the former CEO Mitzi Hunter, both left the organization to pursue political positions. Ms. Hunter won a seat in the provincial legislature for the Liberal government in a Scarborough by-election last summer and is running for re-election in the current general election. Mr. Tory is seeking the job of mayor of Toronto.

I think it’s safe to say that neither candidate has pursued the transit issue with the same zeal they had back in their GTCAA days. Hunter, mysteriously, became the Scarborough Subway Champion as part of the Liberal’s backroom politicization of the transit file in order to retain the seat, backing the more expensive and less expansive subway plan over the original Big Move LRT extension of the Bloor-Danforth line eastward. A switch Tory also favours as part of his mayoral campaign. We’re hearing little from either one of them about any sort of funding tools beyond the dedicated property tax increase for the Scarborough subway. Rather than agents of change, they’ve settled into the role of obstructionists.

Writing this, it’s hard to shake off the feeling that politics is where bold ideas go to die. Give a listen to the Metro Morning segment following the interview with Ms. Palvetzian. Three party appointed talking heads spouting talking points ahead of the provincial leaders’ debate last night. Oh, that leaders’ debate last night! The boldest vision based on a monumental lie and the other two just carefully calculated poses.

We can talk all we want, hash out plans, harness the wisdom of crowds, but if those we elect to implement such wisdom shrug off the responsibility of doing so, what’s it matter? Do we just accept the role of demanding big change while settling for incremental?

This is where political apathy sets in. “Where has that got us?” as Matt Galloway asked. What’s it matter? Our political leaders are listening to someone but it sure as hell ain’t us.

And I have to tell you, news that the Greater Toronto Civic Action Alliance had named Rod Phillips as its new chair of the board brought me no great comfort either. Searching through his bio, nothing jumped out at me that screamed civic-minded. Maybe I’m missing something but this is someone who until just recently was the head of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming, a provincial government Crown corporation that spearheaded the push for a casino on the city’s waterfront. Civic-minded? Really?

Perhaps we need to stop looking for outside help in solving our problems. Reading Marcus Gee’s 2009 article about the Greater Toronto Civic Action Alliance’s (originally known as the Toronto City Summit Alliance) founder, the late David Pecaut, I’m beginning to wonder if maybe he had it wrong.

“The message of his [Pecaut] life is that you don’t need to beat City Hall,” Gee wrote. “You can go around it. Rather than wait for the creaking cogs of official machinery to turn, he learned to build networks of interested parties, private and public, that could forge ahead on their own.”

Maybe instead of trying to go around City Hall or Queen’s Park, we should expend our energy going through them. I think it borders on the delusional to think the major issues of our time – congestion, inequality, climate change – can be addressed without government signing on. “Let’s just go out and do it, and tell City Hall when we’re done,” Mr. Pecaut is quoted as saying. How about we cut out the middle man, and just go out and take control of City Hall?

If we’re really fed up with politics, with the inaction we’re seeing on almost every front, the conversation shouldn’t be about whether or not to vote or what the proper way to decline a ballot is. It’s long past that. We should all be looking for and demanding to see candidates on the ballot who reflect our values and aspirations. Rarely, in my experience, has that not been the case.

Sure, many have been longshots and no-hopers. As long as we stay on the sidelines or remain content to hold our nose and vote for the least worst option, that’ll continue to be the case. Our time and energy would be better spent trying to change that dynamic rather than passively accept it and trying to work around it.

— challengingly submitted by Cityslikr

What’s The Story With John Tory?

Posted on October 17, 2010 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

I was asked the other day what it was we here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke would write about after October 25^th. Pointing out that life does go on after an election, and a city will be run – for good or ill — regardless of who does the winning next Monday, so it will probably be more important to follow what’s going from that point than it was throughout the campaign. That’s when they can do the most damage.

“One thing I definitely won’t be doing after October 25^th,” I went on, “is listening to another single word that comes out of John Tory’s mouth.” Unless I were to find myself mysteriously trapped inside a demonically possessed car during a weekday sometime between the hours of 4 and 7 pm, the radio dial refusing to budge from Newstalk 1010, driving me to the brink of insanity. I rule nothing out. Odder things have happened.

It seems almost as if we’ve come full circle since our debut post, way back on the first official day of campaign 2010. We exhorted Mr. Tory not to enter the race as we believed that he really brought nothing but baggage to the table. It was nip and tuck there for awhile, as he hummed and hawed, Hamlet-style, before officially declining sometime in late August. Pheee-ew, we thought. That’s that.

And yet the man hung around, always lurking near the spotlight, a regular debate moderator. Now, I realize Tory’s a Toronto media figure and wasn’t the only one of that breed who took part in the process. But he was treated as something more, like some civic sage, successor of David Pecault at the helm of the Toronto City Summit Alliance. An agent positive change.

Now come the much heralded and desirable John Tory endorsements. Candidates (challengers and incumbents alike) flaunting His benevolent tap on their shoulder as the chosen one of their respective ward. Vote For Us Because John Tory Would If He Lived Here.

Can I just take a moment and remind everyone that JOHN TORY WAS NEVER MAYOR! He lost the 2003 election after which, he did not stick around to contribute to the general well being of the city, but moved on to bumble and stumble through the vast wilderness of provincial politics, before getting chewed up and spit out back here. You don’t like the notion of a career politician? How do you feel about a failed career politician?

As a professional pontificator doing his schtick on the talk radio circuit, Tory has done his part to create the atmosphere of Toronto being a failed city under the Miller administration. Wise, objective truth telling or a little personal score settling; burnishing his own halo as the one that got away? If only we’d voted for John Tory in 2003, things would be so much better now…

A second reminder, folks. Before declaring himself a candidate for mayor back in 2003, a certain John Tory was a member of the infamous Mel Lastman ‘kitchen cabinet’. Ahhhh, Mel Lastman. Remember that guy? He and his cronies bear much responsibility for whatever financial straits the city finds itself in now with their ill-advised property tax freeze (hello, George Smitherman) and outright refusal to deal with the financial realities taking shape under amalgamation. As corrupt (of the official, MFP kind as opposed to the Rob Ford pretend stuff) as it was inept, it left behind a city reeling under not only weak governance but more than a little red-faced out there on the international stage. From that, we are to somehow jump to the conclusion that John Tory would’ve made a great mayor.

No, in more perfect world, a John Tory endorsement would be treated as pure poison to any candidacy. Yeah, thanks for that, Mr. Tory. But you know, my opponent has a lot to offer too. Here, take a look at their campaign literature. You’re going to like what you see. Instead, it’s a big deal to be trumpeted, perhaps even a game-changer in a close race. That says as much about the truly twisted nature of this campaign than even the fact of Rob Ford being one of the front runners. Unimaginable, lamentable and more than a little unsettling.

— exasperatedly submitted by Cityslikr