All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Hudakery: Not A New Cocktail

Posted on June 3, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Leading up to tonight’s provincial election debate, Progressive Conservative and Opposition leader Tim Hudak laid bare his (and presumably his party’s) approach to governing and government in an interview with Metro newspapers. And it ain’t pretty, folks. In fact, I’d call it completely and utterly devoid of substance, intelligence and imagination.

Oh yeah. Let’s not overlook a fundamental lack of understanding of how exactly our democratic society operates.

“Look, why do we pay taxes in the first place?” Hudak told interviewer Jessica Smith Cross. “We pay taxes because we’re generous Ontarians and we want to make sure it helps the most vulnerable populations. People who may be sick, people with disabilities, seniors.”

Taxation as a charitable donation.

Look, my heart bleeds for the unfortunates in our society. The sick. The disabled. The elderly. What taxpayer wouldn’t give up a little bit of their hard-earned money to help out the needy?

Everything and everyone else, apparently, goes about their business, fueled by the absence of government and magic beans.

“Leadership is about setting priorities,” says Hudak. “And I think we’re going to be looking for a politician who’s going to be straight-up and say, we can’t fund every project with this amount of money.”

You want transit improvements or full day kindergarten? Tell that to your ill, wheelchair bound grandmother. Government is a zero sum game. There’s no room to help the disadvantaged and build a healthier, more equitable society. How do we continue to cut taxes and deliver more services? The answer is, you can’t. Tim Hudak knows that. He’s an honest broker and a trained economist. Facts and figures are his forte.

And about that 1,000,000 Jobs Plan, Tim?

“I stand behind our numbers and I think that it’s been justified by other economists [or not] who say that’s the ballpark of what this will create.”

Ahhh, ballpark numbers. The stuff master’s degrees in economics are made of, evidently. When his claim of creating 120,000 new jobs with further corporate tax cuts was called into question by the Conference Board of Canada – the Conference Board of Canada, people – Hudak blithely responds, “Whether it’s 80, 112, 120 or 150 thousand, [the CBB says 15-20 thousand, but whatevs] I think we agree it’s going to create jobs.”

When you’re also pledging to cut 100,000 public sector jobs, the actual number of jobs you’re promising to create does matter. Twenty thousand minus one hundred thousand equals minus eighty thousand jobs. Kinda puts you in a hole as you build toward that million jobs mark you’ve set for yourself.

Tim Hudak’s hidebound attachment to questionable economic theories seems to be matched by his dubious grasp of democracy.

Like many of his federal conservative brethren, Hudak has an abhorrence of the idea of a governing coalition in a minority government scenario. “I think that’s cheating voters…” Hudak said. “My position is clear — no coalitions. We will follow whatever the voters tell us they want.”

And if the voters tell you they want a minority government again on June 12^th, Mr. Hudak? Regardless of plenty of parliamentary precedent being in place for coalitions, in fact, there’s one operating right now over there in Westminster, I do believe, it’s still cheating in your mind? “I say no to coalitions, let the voters decide.”

You might think that, given his inability to come to terms with traditional aspects of democracy, Hudak might be open to opportunities for it to evolve with the changing times. Like ranked ballots and proportional representation. You might think. You’d be wrong, of course.

“I think that voters should decide who they want to be elected, whoever gets the most votes wins.”

But Tim, voters would still decide who they wanted to elect under a different form of ballots, it’d just be…

*sigh*

Never mind.

Look, I’m not stumping here for either of the other two parties currently occupying space at Queen’s Park. The ruling Liberals don’t appear to have learned anything during their transition from Dalton McGuinty to Kathleen Wynne, and seem determined to continue putting politics before policy. And the NDP, I’m at a loss to explain anything they’re doing at the moment.

But Tim Hudak and the Progressive Conservatives have a fundamental disconnect to what I believe is the role of government in our lives. They see it as alien and an imposition. A beast to be tamed and shrivelled down to irrelevance. A lonely outpost for the destitute in a world governed by laissez faire free markets. Collaboration and co-operation take a back seat to competition.

Tim Hudak refuses to make the distinction between bad governance and government. It’s one and the same for him. He’s not someone we should put anywhere near the levers of power.

— submitted by Cityslikr

A New Generation Of Suburban Resentment

Posted on March 25, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

How would you best sum up Councillor Michelle Berardinetti’s (Ward 35 Scarborough Southwest) first term in office? is a question nobody’s asked me until now.

Hmmm. Councillor Berardinetti, huh? Ward 35 Scarborough Southwest, eh?

Elephants, bike lane hatred and other terribly misguided public transit views.

Yeah. That about sums it up.

As to the elephants, I can’t offer up much in the way of analysis. Something about moving them from an unhealthy environment at the Toronto Zoo to a nicer place more conducive to the elephant lifestyle. How best to do that. Bob Barker. Different coloured t-shirts in the council chamber.

I remember Councillor Berardinetti being all up in that debate. No judgement from me about it. Wasn’t high on my list of things to be concerned about. Kudos to the councillor for making it one of hers.

While she seemed to love the elephants, Councillor Berardinetti had little time for bike lanes. During the 2010 campaign, she claimed that some residents living along Pharmacy Avenue had moved because they could not “get out of their own driveway”, and within a year of taking over as councillor in Ward 35 had the damn bike lanes torn up along with those on Jarvis Street. In fact, run through this list of council votes from July 2011. Councillor Berardinetti pretty much came out against every pro-biking measure.

We get it, councillor. You represent a suburban ward. Everybody likes to drive there. Bikes have no place in your vision of how a city moves people around.

Or LRTs, for that matter.

Between she and Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker (Ward 38 Scarborough Centre), they played point for the 7 other Scarborough councillors who eventually helped then TTC Chair Karen Stintz flip the planned Bloor-Danforth LRT extension to a subway. Not so much good cop-bad cop, the two traded off on being perpetually outraged and indignant. World class transit! Scarborough is owed! Selfish downtowners!

“You can’t go to residents with revenue tools and not even deliver a subway,” Councillor Berardinetti pronounced. Subways are the only mode of transit worth paying for. Nothing for nothing. Something for subways.

Yeah so, pretty much stamp their feet, whine loudly and hold their collective breath until they got their way.

To give her full marks, at least Councillor Berardinetti had been consistent in her opinion that Scarborough deserved a subway, any subway. She went along with Mayor Ford when he sought to bury the Eglinton crosstown and agreed that his Sheppard subway folly didn’t need any of the Dr. Gordon Chong suggested revenue tools to proceed. The councillor was an early and eager adopter of the Scarborough LRT/subway swap, even voting for an additional property tax increase to fund it, an inclination she didn’t show a lot of on almost any other issue so far during her time at City Hall.

Throughout much of this term, Councillor Michelle Berardinetti has proven herself comfortably in line with Mayor Rob Ford, especially on fiscal matters. She’s voted to keep taxes low, freezing and eliminating important sources of revenue. Just this year, as a member of the Budget Committee, she pushed a motion to ignore the staff recommended property tax increase, lowering it by .25% and making up the difference with any surpluses from the projected Land Transfer Tax revenue. Credit where credit’s due, the councillor didn’t then turn around and vote in favour of a report looking at any possible reduction in the LTT rate.

She pretty much reflects the arc of the city council story during the Ford era. As an original member of his powerful Executive Committee, Councillor Berardinetti enabled all his destructive instincts early on. But as he pissed away his power to influence the agenda, she slowly changed course, jumping from the Executive Committee during the mid-term shuffle. She had also left the Budget Committee for a while from March 2012 until January of the following year. A trendsetter, let’s call her. Totally comfortable with his policies but unhappy with his politicking.

Maybe this might play well for her constituents.

In 2010, she handily beat incumbent Adrian Heaps, concluding a bitter struggle that had gone back to the 2006 election that resulted in lawsuits and all sorts of legal wrangling. Ward 35 went strongly pro-Rob Ford in that election, so maybe she’s tapped into a certain ambivalence toward the mayor amongst her residence, loving the message, just not the messenger. If that’s the case, she may be hard to unseat.

But if anybody were to run against her based on her record, take her to task for her habit of underfunding the city’s ability to pay for programs and services, call her out on her subway love taking priority over common fiscal (not to mention transit) sense, Councillor Berardinetti would have a lot to answer for. She’s been very much at the epicentre of a couple of the city’s most divisive debates over the last three years, and has not provided a particularly cooperative voice, opting instead for the us-versus-them, suburban-versus-downtown tone of anger and resentment that has plagued Toronto since amalgamation. Having been put into a couple positions of leadership as a first time councillor, with an opportunity to change that tone, she failed to provide much leadership at all.

It’s hard to imagine she’ll grow into the role going forward, having adopted the familiar position of Scarborough councillor with a chip on their shoulder that seems to be the commonplace feature with many. Why change? It’s an approach that’s been working since long before Councillor Berardinetti came to Toronto City Hall.

— unimpressedly submitted by Cityslikr

Evading A Solution

Posted on December 13, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

It should be easy. At least, it should be easier. There is a problem. The Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area has become bogged down in congestion. As it stands now, the region’s public transit network is not up to the task of helping alleviate the situation.

So… ?

Build more transit. Pretty straightforward. It won’t be cheap, in the short term. In the long run, however, the savings will manifest themselves with a general increase in productivity that comes from increased mobility.

Besides, investing in major infrastructure isn’t exclusively about saving money. It’s about paying it forward. Investing in the future, in your children’s future, your grandchildren’s future. Playing your part in posterity like previous generation did with the roads you now use, the subway tunnels that get many of us around from point A to point B.

The details will always be prickly. The wheres and the hows will inevitably be politically loaded. (At times like these, it’s good to go back and re-read Jamie Bradburn’s great Historicist piece in Torontoist, Opposing the Subway.) Paying for shit we need is never a slam dunk case to make.

But it gets done because common sense and fair-mindedness prevail. Nobody loves paying taxes. They’re just grudging necessities if we don’t all want to live in hovels in the hills.

Unfortunately, we have been living in an era where common sense and fair-mindedness are in short supply. This is how we’ve arrived at the state we’re in. Everybody hates paying taxes. They’re no longer grudging necessities but rather, egregious burdens on our lifestyles. All taxes are evil, as one of our local representatives has informed us.

In the face of such ill-will, our politicians have grown cowardly. With yesterday’s arrival of the funding report from the provincially appointed Transit Investment Strategy Advisory Panel – appointed by the province to undercut put distance between counter-balance the revenue generation report from another provincial government body, Metrolinx – the general consensus is, no political party is going to push ahead into a very likely election year with a platform of tax increases. Electoral suicide!

While it’s easy to blame them for such displays of cravenness, this is really nobody’s fault but our own. For a generation now we’ve swallowed the notion of low taxes and small governments as a path to prosperity. Not coincidentally, the very same generation where we’ve invested comparatively little in the public sphere. We sit behind the wheel of our cars, stuck in traffic, and wonder why. We wait half an hour for a bus before squeezing onto the crammed vehicle when it finally arrives, and wonder why. Bridges and overpasses crumble, and we wonder why.

This is the urban definition of the tragedy of the commons. We want and need something of a public service – i.e. transit – but think somebody else should pay for it. Gone is any sense of the greater good. Don’t look at me, jack. I already gave at the office.

There is little doubt that the ruling Liberals at Queen’s Park have for 7 years now, since the inception of Metrolinx, been doing their damndest to avoid the issue of funding public transit expansion in the GTHA. It was very much the very last piece of the puzzle they sought. When it came time to finally have the discussion, they desperately searched for partners to participate in what would definitely be tough talk.

And everybody blinked, looked the other way, made like it wasn’t their problem to help solve.

Toronto city council demurred to put in their two cents, choosing instead to draw up a list of we’d prefer nots.

The provincial NDP said the revenue should be generated solely from the corporate sector. Details to follow.

The PCs, now the fossilized remnants of the political movement that kick started the divestment in the public good, assure us we can totally pay for the transit we want by tightening our belts and dipping into the pools of unnecessary current expenditures to build capital infrastructure. Translation? Since Bill Davis, we are the party of could give a fuck about public transit.

There can be little doubt that the parties and their pollsters have delved deep into this issue and concluded beyond the shadow of a doubt that taxing (even dedicated taxing) and spending (even on something we should be spending on) remains a losing campaign platform. Nobody’s convinced Transit Champions will put their party over the top.

Before we tsk tsk our politicians for their unwillingness to nobly go down to defeat fighting for a good cause, maybe we should try and figure out how we can contribute to making it more of a winning atmosphere for pro-transit building proponents. Efforts have started with organizations like the CivicAction Alliance, Toronto Board of Trade and the city’s Feeling Congested. But 30 years of conventional wisdom that’s told us governments are the problem isn’t effortlessly overturned. It’s difficult convincing people that their long held, self-centred, narrow focus is working at cross-purposes to their best interests.

It will seem as if we’re beating our heads against a brick wall because we, in fact, are. Eventually though, even the hardest stone breaks. You just have to keep pounding away at it.

— loudly submitted by Cityslikr