All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Committed To Talking About Transit

Posted on March 17, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

What can we do in the face of an overwhelming lack of leadership?

I was thinking that, listening to Premier Kathleen Wynne explain to Matt Galloway on Metro Morning today why she’d announced pulling some possible revenue tools last week to help fund transit building. You could actually hear the political calculus at work. Or maybe it was the sound of transit planning coming to a grinding halt.

No one doubts the premier is in something of a bind here. You could make the argument she’s looking down the wrong end of history’s barrel, with twenty years of anti-tax and small government sensibilities having taken solid root in the political soil, dating back to the rise of the Reform Party in the early 90s. The Chretien/Martin deficit cutting and downloading frenzy. Mike Harris. Mel Lastman. Stephen Harper. Rob Ford.

Taxation not even seen as a necessary evil but simply evil.

Of course, her own party’s recklessness with public funds doesn’t help her cause any. We all know the names by heart. Ehealth. Ornge. Gas plants. It’s a bit tough at this point for Premier Wynne to step up and ask for more money from Ontario’s residents. Trust us. We’ll spend it all very, very wisely.

And the politicking doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The opposition parties at Queen’s Park have constructed their own anti-reality bubbles in terms of revenue sources to dedicate to transit. Everybody’s got some magic beans they’re shilling, ways to get the transit needed at a cost that will come from almost nobody’s pockets. Don’t worry, folks. This won’t hurt a bit.

My guess is, as we head into the provincial budget process, the government has just handed concessions over to the NDP by vowing not to increase the gas tax, the HST or income tax on middle-class families in order to fund the Big Move. Your move now, Andrew Horwath. What does your party suggest? Using exact figures, if you don’t mind.

Who’s going to step forward first and sign their name to a tax increase or new user fee?

Because everybody knows this can’t continue. Public transit in the GTHA has to be built. That fact, at least, cuts across political lines. Only the supremely delusional Tim Hudak-led Tories are insisting it can be done without raising more revenue.

Yet, here we are, gridlocked and deadlocked.

The Liberal government has been provided with plenty of cover to take the important next step in this debate. From the non-politically realigned Metrolinx and the premier’s very own appointed Transit Investment Strategy Advisory Panel, to organization as disparate as the Toronto Region Board of Trade, CivicAction Alliance, the Pembina Institute, right down to grassroots groups like Code Red TO, all have talked up revenue tools. The pump has been primed, the ground broken.

Yet, here we are, gridlocked and deadlocked. Still.

The ugly truth about this, unfortunately, is that the well being of the party takes precedence over the strength of the idea. We’ve all been told that if party X runs with this and takes a beating in the election because of it, well, we’re right back to square one or so. The fate of transit in the GTHA hinges on the party that best touts the least amount of pain necessary to voters in order to build it.

No one’s gutsy or astute enough (both integral components of actual leadership) to step forward and challenge the conventional wisdom that voters summarily oppose taxation and are unwilling to pay more for improved service. Instead it’s just more nibbling around the edges, reframing the debate in the exact same dimensions we’ve heard for the past 20 years. Empty, empty pledges of new stuff free of charge. Promises to deliver the undeliverable.

All of which serves only to make us more cynical, more apathetic and less likely to take anything any of our politicians say seriously. Who wants to go to bat for somebody ducking from the first inside pitch they face? Why waste your time and effort?

At this point, there can be little doubt that the 3 parties representing us at Queen’s Park have failed miserably at displaying anything close to resembling leadership on the transit file. Each have wilfully disregarded the hard work and dedication put in by groups and individuals, fighting to ensure that we have a robust debate and positive outcome in dealing with an issue that threatens nothing short of our well-being and way of life in this region. We’ve been abandoned by our elected leaders.

If our provincial politicians are unwilling to provide the appropriate leadership for us, we really should start talking about why we continue to finance them and subject ourselves to their inaction and indecisiveness.

— dim viewly submitted by Cityslikr

Take Our MPPs, Please!

Posted on September 7, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

It’s times like these when I begin to ponder fondly on the idea of the province of Toronto.

Let me stop you there.

I know what you’re thinking. Premier Rob Ford? Really? You want that guy leading your province of Toronto?

Yes. Our municipal governance isn’t always pretty. It gets downright nutty at times. Pull your hair out insane.

But the thing is, it’s our municipal government. It’s right here. Very accessible. Very hands on, if one so chooses. We can directly wrestle with the beast.

Our relationship with the province is a little more distant, let’s call it, more removed. We are represented at Queen’s Park by one of 107 MPPs. That representation can be even further watered down if your particular MPP doesn’t sit as part of the government. Municipally, we have a crack at two of 45 of the decision makers. Those are much better odds of being heard and counted.

So decisions that get made at City Hall, even the ones you might not necessarily agree with, feel like our decisions, decisions we had a hand in. Provincially? Completely beyond our control.

Take this week’s Scarborough subway mess, for example.

Back a few months ago, in response to a letter from the provincial transit body, Metrolinx, asking if the Scarborough LRT was our final decision to replace the current RT, council stupidly re-opened the debate and voted for a subway instead. A very particular subway, running from Kennedy station to Sheppard Avenue, with all sorts of stipulations to it, but a subway nonetheless. And if the province could please respond by the end of September, that’d be great.

Dumb-assed for sure, and for all sorts of non-transit related reasons, mostly revolving around political ambitions and pandering, I think it’s safe to say.

This past Wednesday, the provincial minister of transportation, Glen Murray, came back and said, hey wait, I got a better idea. A shorter subway, running along a different route than the one council approved and, in the process, knee capping a couple of the anti-LRT arguments that were made during the council debate. The only thing that mattered, however, was that the subway was located in Scarborough.

This subway plan might be even more dumb-assed, but again, for all sorts of non-transit related reasons, mostly revolving around political ambitions and pandering, I think it’s safe to say.

And if you think this is some sort of recent aberration, this profoundly political game of provincial interference, take a read through WorldWideWickens and the history of how we ended up with the much maligned Scarborough RT in the first place. Whose brilliant idea was that? Not the city of Toronto, as it turns out. For different political but still political reasons, the Scarborough RT was foisted upon us by the province.

Here we are, barely 30 years on, hashing the same thing out again.

Of course, Minister Murray’s subway announcement doesn’t finalize anything despite what he might think. Reading Ben Spurr’s article in NOW, one might conclude that Murray’s only succeeded in pouring gasoline on the embers, re-igniting the whole thing back up into a conflagration of red hot clusterfuck. He’s just sent the flaming bag of shit back to be debated at city council again this fall and managed to wipe his government’s hands clean of it.

If council regains its senses and demands adherence to the signed master agreement which designates an LRT for Scarborough, they will be the ones (at least the councillors voting in that direction) denying Scarborough its subway. You know Mayor Ford will seize that club to use on any possible opponent in next year’s municipal election. The province can throw up its hands and say, what are you going to do with these squabbling kids? We tried to give you a subway, Scarborough. They just wouldn’t listen.

The combination of both levels of government involved in our lives sometimes makes it feel like a 3-dimensional game of Battleship. Shit not only comes at you from the sides but from above and below as well. It’s this double-whammy that makes me think wistfully of being our own province. Halve the number of local representatives making dumb, self-serving decisions on our part. Let’s get rid of our MPPs and start making our very own dumb decisions.

At least we’ll only have ourselves to blame.

— independently submitted by Cityslikr

Putting Ourselves Between A Rock And A Hard Place

Posted on June 25, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

On the other hand…

It was gently asked of me yesterday that if the characters in the current $150 million pooling-uploading saga now swirling around City Hall and Queen’s Park were different – like, say, a mayor I didn’t see as a raging incompetent or a provincial government I felt was more Mike Harris-y – would my reaction be the opposite of what it was. Essentially, a variation on the why is he so fucking incompetent theme. A fair question.

Yes indeed, the Liberal government is getting away with some dubious claims in this transaction, using Mayor Ford’s epic inability to get along with absolutely anyone and everyone he doesn’t see eye-to-eye with as cover. As John McGrath pointed out on Friday, over the course of the 3 year phase out of the $150 million pooling fund, the city will ultimately be short-changed just over $13 million after factoring in the uploading of services back to the province over the same period of time. (The chart is on page 5 of this letter sent to the mayor’s office by Finance Minister Charles Sousa.)

Of course, Mayor Ford muddies the waters with his immediate ballistic response, threatening to cut social programs to the tune of $50 million next year when, in fact, the pooling fund-upload exchange will net the city an additional $700,000. It’s hard to believe there can’t be some financial re-arranging at the city level to mitigate the need for any cuts. It’s also hard to believe the mayor would be willing to go into an election year with the mess of significant cuts to social programs on his hands in the hopes voters follow him in pinning the blame on the provincial government. No service cuts. Guaranteed. Remember?

This is all purely political jostling on everyone’s part. It’s just unfortunate, if not at all surprising, the Liberals decided to play along. A solid majority of Toronto residents know that we’ve elected a child-mayor who only operates through the lens of campaigning. The provincial government is supposed to be the adult in the room. Instead, they’ve started up their engines in a game of chicken.

In order to try and mask that, the finance minister threw into the pot relief from a loan made to the city by the province back when Mike Harris was premier and Mel Lastman mayor. A loan to cover the initial costs of amalgamation with the expectation of being paid back with all the efficiencies that would be found. Efficiencies weren’t found, so the loan has been ignored for most of its life.

So, the finance minister claims that’s about $230 million in savings for the city but it’s actually Ford level accounting. If the city hasn’t made a payment in a decade or and wasn’t expected to, it should hardly count as any sort of savings. Thanks for the gesture, Queen’s Park. As empty as it may be.

The politics of this goes beyond just the war with Ford. The Liberals want everyone to know that it’s not giving any municipality preferential treatment even if there are legitimate reasons it might. If the province is fully assuming the costs of the social programs Toronto bears a heavier burden providing than other cities in Ontario, fair enough. I’m yet to be convinced that’s actually the case.

But the Liberal government under Premier Kathleen Wynne, a Toronto MPP, is petrified of being seen as Toronto-centric by the rest of the province. So no special deals on a casino. No special funding treatment. As it goes in Kenora, so it goes in Toronto.

It would be unfair to suggest that it’s simply back to business as usual since 1995. The Liberals have reclaimed much of the costs their Progressive Conservative predecessors downloaded onto municipalities in the Great Savagery of 1995-2003. (Certainly not all. For one, there remains the outstanding matter of the provincial contribution to the TTC’s annual operating budget they haven’t made good on.) Let’s give credit where credit is due.

It’s sheer big-balled audacity, though, to point to the city’s annual surpluses as proof we’re sitting pretty while Queen’s Park battles heroically with a debt load that’s kept us all afloat. Lest they need reminding, cities can’t run an operating deficit. They’re not allowed as provincially mandated. Our surpluses come from conservative budgeting that leaves many of our services (some also provincially mandated but not necessarily provincially funded) and residents more than a little frayed around the edges. It’s at moments like this when it’s worth asking if the province is putting back as much into Toronto as it’s taking out. I’ve never had a satisfactory answer to that.

While it may be politically advantageous at this point to use our bumbling, stumbling mayor as a convenient punching bag, it would do well for the provincial government to remember that there are real life implications to their political calculations. Implications that will inevitably be borne by those least able to bear them. Mayor Ford won’t be among them.

Perhaps the bigger lesson to be learned from this is for the people of Toronto. Queen’s Park and the governments in power there, first and foremost will be looking out for themselves. We’re just part of their always fluid political equation, little more than polling numbers.

We need to look after ourselves and have been given some of the tools to do so. In order for that to happen, we have to stop electing politicians who refuse to step up and take on that responsibility. It makes us easy prey for those putting their own interests first.

— responsibly submitted by Cityslikr